Art in Other Places: Artists at Work in America’s Community and Social Institutions

Chapter 3

Liz Lerman: Dancers of the Third Age

In 1978, while at the University of Wisconsin, Liz Lerman choreographed and performed a dance piece about her mother. While the dance was meant to celebrate her mother’s life and commemorate her recent passing, for Lerman it marked the beginning of an extraordinary life path as well.

"A SAN FRANCISCO LADY"

The woman on the stage is speaking about death. Her death is coming, she says, and she wants it to "hurry up." The audience sits waiting, interested, but uneasy and a little impatient, because they are here to see a dance, and she talking. Talking isn’t supposed to be a part of a dance concert. This is unusual enough, but there is something else in addition to the talking that is unsettling. The dancer is young, but she speaks like an old woman, "a San Francisco lady," she says. And even when the monologue ends and she begins to dance on the bare, dimly lit stage, what she is doing doesn’t feel like a performance. It is too real. It is personal and intense, and even though the audience sits hidden in the dark, resisting the woman’s increasingly anxious dance, they can’t; they are a part of it.

"I am a choreographer who has always thought that dance could be a powerful tool for me, Liz Lerman, to come to grips with my own life as well as the community around me. In 1977, when my mother got very sick with cancer, I went home to be with her. It was during her dying process that I began to envision a dance which reflected the things she had been talking about during that time. She had told me about her relatives and events I had never heard in my life. I kept thinking about them like a Chagall painting, floating around in the living room."

The concert continues. It’s not nearly so difficult now as when the woman was talking. There has been more dance, more dancers, and despite the fact that the woman is clearly dying, there has been humor and many good stories. The woman has been reminiscing, jumping through time, lucid one minute, hazy the next, prompted by visits from family members paying their last respects. There are other visitors, too–characters actually–with strange names like Mr. Religion, Miss Demerol, Aunt Chicken Soup, and Lady Pain.

"After her death I wanted to make this dance. But I needed older bodies to be in the dance to make it right. There was no way that I could get a younger body to do what I wanted. So I went back to Washington, D. C., and took my idea to a residence for senior citizens called the Roosevelt Hotel. The Roosevelt is a residency for lower- to middle-class senior citizens who don’t want to be in nursing homes and don’t need to be. They hooted in the administration office, but they had recently lost their chorus teacher, and they needed some entertainment on Thursday nights. I said, ‘I’m Liz Lerman. I’d like to teach dance.’ They said, ‘Come on in. We’ll give you $5 a week.’"

The dance is coming to an end. The dancers have been superb. The audience has come a long way since the uncomfortable opening moments of the concert. It feels more like a collaboration than a concert. Now the stage is filling up with even more dancers. They’re singing as well as dancing. The song is "California, Here I Come," but wait, there’s something unusual about their movements. Some of the dancers, the new dancers, are old and are looking very fragile. They are 70 and 80 years old and trying to dance–no, actually dancing. The woman is dying and her friends are dancing. There is a celebration going on.

"I knew nothing. It is embarrassing how much I didn’t know. But I came in and said, ‘OK, I’m going to dance for you; you’ll dance for me; we’ll dance together. Let’s see what happens.’ After five months of a regular nightly class, I got up my courage to tell them that I was going to work on a dance and to ask who would like to be in it. I got six volunteers. I also used dancers from George Washington University, where I was teaching, and some professional dancers from the community. This gave people who would not otherwise have connected a chance to collaborate. The rehearsals were pretty amazing. We learned a lot about each other because we had a reason to be together."

The woman’s final solo is done. It is her last dance, a good-bye dance. The stage is almost still. The only movement is a waving of arms, old arms, young arms, like grasses in the sea or on the plains, bending, and swirling, in unseen currents. Downstage, the woman puts on her glasses and an old housecoat. The arms stop. She runs and jumps, landing in front, in the middle, between the dancers and the audience. She screams, "Now!" It is dark.

"When we performed the piece, two extraordinary things happened. First, the performance left the audience in tears. I think this happened as much because of who the dancers were, as from the dance itself. Secondly, when the dance was over, the performers turned to me and said, ‘OK Liz, what’s next?’ which I should have known was going to happen."

THE DANCERS OF THE THIRD AGE

"So I kept it going. And after a while, the people in town who run other senior centers got the word and started asking if I would come over and do something with them. And I would turn around and say to my company of seniors, ‘I’m going over to the Jewish community center next week. Who wants to come?’ Then, I’d get my George Washington students and their cars and we’d show up with 20 or 30 older adults and do a demonstration class. Pretty soon everybody would join in and we would do a class. After we did this a few times, the Roosevelt dancers turned to me and said, ‘You know, we need some more rehearsals.’ This is an example of how I have been led step-by-step by my so-called students. This is how the company was born.

"We began to hold rehearsals on Tuesday mornings in addition to our regular Thursday night class. On Thursday we would have as many as 50 people coming. Our morning rehearsals were for those who wanted to do more. This is an important distinction for me. Anybody can come and take a dance class or rehearse with us in any number of settings. These things are available not according to people’s abilities but based upon people’s willingness to make commitments. This holds true even in D. C. Village, where they are all wheeled in by staff in their wheelchairs.

"The Dancers of the Third Age is open to people who want to make a commitment to what is now a hefty rehearsal and performance schedule. They perform in schools, senior centers, and at conferences. The company has traveled up and down the East Coast. Last year we went to Sweden to perform at a big, international theater festival where we ended up on the front page of the major Stockholm newspaper and had lines around the block waiting to get tickets.

"Sometimes in my work as a choreographer, separate and apart from my work with the Dancers of the Third Age, I do ask some seniors to perform in my formal concerts, but I don’t bring everybody into a professional dance environment. The professional stage is very ego-intensive and judgmental. I have to be very careful about the context in which we perform."

EVERYBODY IS A DANCER

When she was younger, Louise was a dancer. She gave it up early on, though, for something more sensible. She became a schoolteacher. She never thought she would dance again. Now she is rehearsing, getting ready to go on stage, doing the steps, remembering. At first it was embarrassing. She felt so stiff and awkward. But there were others going through the same thing, and she was too stubborn to quit. Liz, her teacher, knew that. Louise knew it too. She is very happy to be dancing again.

"What is special about what the Dance Exchange is doing is very simple. Everybody is a dancer. When I started the company, that was my premise. Dancing is a birthright. Everybody moves. This movement can be incredibly beautiful, as long as we are willing to look at them and see what it is that they are doing. We start a class with the assumption that we are all dancers. We work a lot with improvisation. By that I mean that we set up improvisational structures so that people can be in charge of their own bodies. This is a way of working I identified with the older adults, but is now the way I teach anybody. I am convinced that this is the only way to go with movement. People will dance beautifully when they are feeling safe; when they feel un-judged; when they are feeling in charge of their own bodies; when they know they can stop; and when they know they can do the best that they can. That is what will make people dance beautifully. I do not act as a director or a critic, saying ‘Do this.’ As a teacher I will say, ‘Try this,’ but the underlying motivation has to be that everybody’s body is their own and they can make it happen."

Just when Louise was beginning to feel confident and comfortable, Liz has thrown her a curve. She has asked her to do a solo in the new dance they are rehearsing. Louise is nervous, of course. It would be her first solo since she began to dance again, but that is not the problem. The problem is that there are no steps, no choreography for what she is supposed to do. Liz says she is to improvise. Louise has refused. She says she is a dancer, a hoofer, not a choreographer. "That’s your job," she says to Liz. "Show me what to do, and I’ll do it. Otherwise, forget it."

"We do a warm-up, which, to an outside observer, looks like an exercise class. Our warm-up is, in fact, the teacher showing the students how to improvise. I might ask, ‘What could we move in a circle?’ The answer might be, ‘Our heads, or our shoulders." That’s already improvisation. This is a major element of our work. We teach people improvisational skills so that they can just turn on the music and dance. And so I have people come up to me and say, ‘My God, what did you do to me last week? I haven’t done this in years. I’ve been able to do everything in my house.’ What I’ve done is touch her spine, and that was enough for her to move. I have many miracle stories–because dancing is a miraculous thing."

Louise loves improvisation. It is one of the things she has missed most during her stay in the hospital. It is amazing how the thing she feared and resisted with every stubborn bone in her body had become the light of her life. She is glad to have danced again in this new way before she got sick. Lying here, in the hospital bed, she knows she will never dance again. It is sad to be separated from the dance, from the stage. She is not devastated though, because the dances continue, in the spotlight, on the stage inside her head.

"A Dancers of the Third Age performance can be when one side of the room performs for the other side of the room. It can also be a formal situation which involves costumes, critics, and money. This is an incredible event for older adults. It is also incredible for me and my fellow professional artists and for our society in general. What happens to an audience when they see old people doing this? What happens to the school children, and young parents, and other seniors who see this alliance between these artists and these grandparents? What we get is hope and vitality from watching the young and the old moving together. We know that we are alive and kicking."

Louise is happy to be home. She is warm and comfortable in this familiar place. She likes it when people come to visit. Her friends, almost all dancers, young and old, have been coming by regularly. The next time Liz comes, Louise will have something important to tell her, to show her, somehow. It started at the hospital. After she had her heart attack, the thing that stuck in her mind, the image that wouldn’t leave, was the EKG. The erratic jumping, the crazy movements and patterns being made by her distressed heart, started her mind working on a dance. She has been choreographing ever since. It is a dance about her heart. When Liz comes, Louise will show her, somehow. She will tell her she has one last dance to do before she dies.

DANCING FOR LIFE

"This work with older adults has convinced me of things about dance that I suspected all along, things I knew as a child dancing, and things I came to know later as a questioning professional dancer. Dancing, with its expressive and creative aspects, is a natural activity for all human beings. Although the beautifully developed ability of the professional dancer makes for a spectacular display of human potential, it is also true that the inherent characteristics and benefits of dance belong to everyone.

"Dance magically combines exercise, self-expression, fun group activity, intellectual stimulation, and spiritual uplift. All people should have access to these activities no matter what their age, ability, or body type.

"This work clearly has value for the participants, but it is also important as a symbol of the values a society incorporates for its culture. If art reflects life, certainly it is no surprise to see contemporary dancers pushing for technical virtuosity, for if there is a symbol for our age it must be technology. Dancing artists are no different from anyone else in their urge to achieve efficiency and perfection.

"Unfortunately, this places enormous pressure on the development of the technical aspects of dance. There are however, many other facets of dance to discover, maintain, and develop. They include expressiveness, the exploration of contemporary themes, and the affirmation of a community’s deeply felt ties. Older dancers can contribute in these areas.

"Senior adults, particularly those who begin studying dance after age 60, will probably not become fine technical dancers. What they bring to the activity, however, whether it is class warm-ups, improvisation, or informal performing, is an expressive body filled with life experiences. They remind us not only that dance belongs to everyone, but that it can speak on many different levels. To ask a senior adult to do a fast, repeatable combination of ballet steps, for example, will mock both the person and the movement itself. But, when that person moves in harmony with an idea of emotion that is inherently personal in the body, the result is sometimes staggeringly beautiful.

"People feel better when they dance. People learn about themselves and their work when they dance. People recognize their limits, strive to overcome them, and can see the results when they dance. These things occur as a person trains to dance. The goal is to develop a person at home in his or her body, a person capable of expressing feelings and ideas through movement, unafraid to move freely in a room filled with people, capable of learning a sequence or structure, willing to try new things, and willing to engage in the simple act of moving for no reason beyond the joy of experience.

"As I have traveled and worked this last decade, I have taught over 3,000 dance classes. Everywhere I go I see vast numbers of dancers being trained for a world where no one will pay them to do what they so love to do. The demands of the field wear heavily on many people, clearly emphasizing a narrow definition of dance as a performance art. In the end, for many, the pressures are too great, and they choose to leave dance. With that decision they lose a major part of their lives simply because they did not fit into a precise and rigid structure.

"It is hoped that the theory behind my teaching…can help younger dancers see that there are alternatives, not just in terms of social rewards and fulfillment as one experiences the joy that dancing can bring to older people but also in the effects this work can have on the dancer…as a dancer. There are people to be taught, people who will want to see their dances, people who will want to dance with them. This is in no way compromising to their art, their technique, or their own performing aspirations. It is broadening for everyone.

The significance of this work lies ultimately in its ability to bridge the isolation of artists and of the elderly. The validation and meaning come from positive use of mind and body, the sharing of knowledge, and the resultant joy of people dancing together."

In 1988 Liz Lerman gave birth to her first child, Anna. Since then Lerman, Anna, and the Dancers of the Third Age have appeared in Albuquerque, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Dartmouth, Boston, and many other cities.