For the love of dance
Older and Reckless amateur dancers will perform at PAC
One by one, each woman reaches into a toque and pulls out a small rectangle of paper. On it, one line of poetry.
They find some alone space in the dance studio at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre to carefully read and absorb the words. Claudia Moore, award-winning dancer and choreographer, has challenged them to create a sequence of movements to convey the meaning of the phrase, pulled from the poetry of Mary Oliver. One gesture, one physical expression for every word.
“It’s not charades,” one woman declares, laughing.
“It’s a little hand dance,” suggests another woman.
“I like that,” says Moore.
She offers some instruction. The gestures should be dynamic; clearly focused. Eyes are important. Feet must remain planted on the floor; movement comes from the upper body. Think head, hands, fingers, hips.
Ear lobes? someone asks
Yes. Even ear lobes.
“Go and have a little fun with your phrase,” she offers.
Seven women, amateurs to the poetry of dance, have come together to collaborate on a community dance project through a program called Older and Reckless.
Over six, three-hour sessions, the women created a dance and will perform it on stage at the PAC, on Friday, March 23.
“Dance is something we all have in us,” says Alice Burke, dance animator at PAC.
Indeed, most of the participants have either never had dance instruction, or danced when they were much younger.
“They want to claim back their artistic side,” she says. “They just want to move again for the fun of it, to let go of their inhibitions.”
The project is funded by the Ontario Arts Council’s Ontario Dances program.
Moore is their visionary. Their most enthusiastic cheerleader. Their teacher. In her 60s, she has danced professionally all her life and through the Toronto-based Moonhorse (or MOonhORsE as it appears on their webpage) Dance Theatre, and created Older and Reckless to showcase senior dance artists in solo, duet and ensemble creations. A community project is part of every Older and Reckless performance.
It’s a journey that might lead adults to shed the self-consciousness learned over years and to rediscover the liberating creativity they knew as children.
“When the older adult discovers that, or rediscovers that, it’s a huge revelation,” she says. “Those things are still in us.”
Moore takes them on a journey of warm-up moves and activities that will become the fabric of the dance.
When dancer and massage therapist Rachel Clarke-Smith, 49, was a young girl she did the requisite ballet and tap lessons. Although the flurry of scheduled classes are long gone, the spirit of dance never really left her life.
“I love to dance. I clear my kitchen. It’s usually a nice big space to dance,” says the Welland woman.
“I try to get my kids to dance. They all love dancing and moving.
“It’s good for the spirit. It keeps me alive.”
This time, the experience is for her alone.
“I want to do dance for me,” she says. “I want to express myself and feel good in my body.”
As a stage manager at the Shaw Festival Theatre, Diane Konkin, 53, lives on the other side of performance. She danced as a girl, but lost that connection to movement after university, until she heard about this project.
She felt inspired to create dance with a group of like-minded women.
“Whether we perform or not, that really doesn’t matter to me,” says the Niagara Falls woman. “It will be fun to have an audience witness what we’re doing and feel the energy from that crowd.
“But the main reason I’m here is to create some dance with other women, who are similar to me.”
Maja Bannerman, a St. Catharines women in her 60s, is a writer, singer and performer. But never a dancer.
She, too, studied ballet as a girl. And then dance left her life.
A few years ago, she danced again, then participated in a workshop offered by Moore. It felt right.
“I would dance with my eyes closed, and just dance,” she says.
Dance became another language of communication. “It was so powerful, after using words and singing for years to communicate with an audience,” she says.
“I look at you. I cannot speak to you. I cannot sing to you. But I have to give you something,” she says.
“I have to tell you something. It was just a very different feeling.”
Exploring creativity in a community of other novice dancers is empowering, she says.
“Everyone here has a desire to move and to move with other people and create something with other people,” she says.
“And that’s profound, to meet people who have the same fire within.”