Older dancers

Photographer: Nagib El-Desouky

How refreshing to see that the dance world is interested in older dancers. Lloyd Newson of DV8 Physical Theatre has always been on the lookout for older performers, since the 1990s.
Wendy Houstoun is fifty-four.  She has performed with DV8 and is now with Candoco.
And then there is the extraordinary Liz Aggis, sixty this year, the Vivienne Westwood of the dance world.
These are incredible performers, see below for an example of Liz's work.
I will keep it brief.  Who says that after forty you can no longer dance? Martha Graham continued till she was eighty!
An older dancer has plenty to offer. Dance is not about being able to perform acrobatic moves, not quite so. I like the stories that older bodies tell, the depth of emotion is different.
I am so enthused by seeing these older performers that I am seriously thinking of returning to performing myself.


I totally agree with Lloyd Newson when he says:

" I am very eager, as I get older, to work with my peers. I don't want to talk too much about life in one's fifties, because I don't know that yet. But I find it a bit arrogant when I go to performances and see eighteen or nineteen year-olds trying to tell me about life — and most of the audience is double their age! So I'm very eager to take movement, maybe not pure movement, but I want to be able to look at how older people's lives are revealed through their movement. And that, I think, offers a really exciting future and new areas of development. So when most people start getting frightened about their careers coming to an end when they are only in their mid-thirties, I feel mine is only just beginning.


The danger you often have is with older dancers, some who are in their fifties and you say, "My god, aren't they incredible" — and they are still trying to imitate younger people! I'm not interested in that. I want to explore their qualities as people in their fifties, find out how they really move, how their bodies act, not make them look like they're thirteen or nineteen or twentyfive".

He said that in 1992, in an interview with Nadine Meisner.


Despite everything older dancers are still regarded as a rare species. A bit like older models.






(Photos modelled by Alex B.)