Forget your age and dance the night away

Socrates learned to dance at the age of 70 because he felt an essential part of himself had been neglected. An anecdote, yes, but still appropriate to the Moving Age symposium held at Firkin Crane at the weekend, for it recognises that older people can and should dance. Moving Age was part of Firkin Crane's ongoing Older People in Dance programme, which is building links between Firkin Crane and the Southern Health Board.

Both Mary Brady and Dr Catherine Murphy of the respective organisations spoke not only of similar objectives but also of how each organisation's objectives reinforce the other's.

Both are challenging stereotypes: dancers are young, thin and lithe and old people are frail and immobile. Also, in the professional dance world dancers need to retire when they are 40 and in care centres older people are content to sit and do nothing. Daily experiences of the latter gave Dr Murphy the impetus to pursue the partnership with Firkin Crane and find ways to help day care workers who wish to introduce dance into their daily work.

Green Candle Dance Company in England, long respected for its pioneering community dance work, came to Cork to devise and implement a training programme for both dancers and healthcare workers. That pilot project has been completed, and two of the participants, both day care workers, gave a dance workshop to the delegates. Bearing in mind that neither came from a dance background and that the training consisted of just six weekends and a few refresher days, the confidence and clarity with which they taught the class was remarkable. All of the participants now facilitate similar dance workshops as part of their day-to-day work.

The benefit to the older people's health is obvious, but dance also works on many other levels. Fergus Early, director of Green Candle, encouraged us to look beyond the exercise and see the social, artistic and intellectual benefits that dance has over general fitness training. One delegate described a dance-on-prescription scheme being set up in Sunderland, where GPs will be able to refer patients to dance classes rather than the chemist. In this context the work being done in Cork would seem to have a long way to go, but it has had a good headstart.

Elsewhere, Carolyn Swift, dance critic with this newspaper, chaired a seminar entitled The Older Professional Dancer. Joanna Banks of The College of Dance, Loretta Yurick of Dance Theatre of Ireland and, Bishaka, a classical Indian dancer based in the UK, all spoke of ageism within the professional dance community. Bishaka noted that she only encountered this after moving to the West and worried that funding bodies might be prejudiced because of her age. Yurick noted the age denial that occurs with dancers who for years never think of the time when they might not be able to perform any more. Provision for career transitions might solve this occupational poverty but may be too late to prevent financial poverty.

Those who attended the conference were reminded that by their very presence they were part of the change towards reaffirming the individual, whatever his or her age. And armed with dance they have a powerful tool to effect this change. As Kalichiqu quoted: "God help me from those who think in the mind alone/He that sings a lasting song thinks from the marrow bone."

But this is only part of the solution. We also need to challenge the aesthetic that denies older dancers opportunities to perform. In their deliberations on the weekend, rapporteurs Kathy McArdle and Ken Bartlett warned us not to let our language reflect the old prejudices - not to talk of adapting dance to suit older people but of expanding our existing dance so that it includes them.