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Old Dogs, New Tricks: Intergenerational Dance

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Staging Age

Abstract

More than any other medium, dance can seem to neglect and even abhor the aging body. A major factor in the neglect of the elderly by concert dance1 is the tendency to think about older bodies as being in a process of decay. Expectations of physical infirmity are a part of the “degrading, even contemptible myths” about old age, as Anna Halprin enumerates in her introduction to Liz Lerman’s Teaching Dance to Senior Adults:

Old people should be dignified and circumspect.

Old dogs cannot learn new tricks.

Old people are closed minded, set in their ways, slow, and senile.

Old people are ugly.

There is no future for old people, so why teach them?

Old people don’t want to touch or use their bodies.

Old people aren’t interested in sensual or sexual experiences.

Old people like to sit and be quiet. (vii)

Age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight jades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Old age is no place for sissies.

—Bette Davis

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Authors
  1. Jessica Berson
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Editor information

Valerie Barnes Lipscomb Leni Marshall

Copyright information

© 2010 Valerie Barnes Lipscomb and Leni Marshall

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Cite this chapter

Berson, J. (2010). Old Dogs, New Tricks: Intergenerational Dance. In: Lipscomb, V.B., Marshall, L. (eds) Staging Age. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230110052_9

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