What is Old Dancer About?

You might be wondering what this website is all about. Well, let me take a moment and let you know why we are here.

Age should not matter when you want to take a ballet class.

Dance culture seems driven mainly by little girls. Everything is light pink, girly, and frilly. As girls age in dance, they are often criticized for "not having the right body type", which is a way of saying that they either have too many curves or too much body fat. A lot of the time, this results in dancers who give up on dancing way too early in life. Just because someone doesn't have the "body type" that is prized by professional companies is no reason to discourage them from continuing dance. After all, dance provides confidence, work ethic, and athleticism that you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.

Even if dancers don't fall prey to the body type issues as young teenagers, they will soon face the age issue. In many dance competitions, for example, dancers are considered aged out if they are over the age of 18. Sure, there are some competitions that have that 20 and over category, but they group all those over the age of 20 together, as if 20-somethings and 50-somethings are capable of the same things. I know from first-hand experience that they are definitely not. Sure, one could argue that this is because there's just not a demand for this at competitions, which is true. But, I would argue that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because of the aging-out mentality that is so prevalent in dance.

The professional world also has this attitude, where those over the age of 25 or so are considered ticking time-bombs. God forbid that you get injured. You'll be put out to pasture, but luckily not shot like an injured race horse.

The funny thing is, though, many professional dancers continue to dance in some capacity after they've been injured. They probably can't train for 8+ hours a day anymore, but they certainly don't give up altogether. That is precisely why Old Dancer is here. What we're hoping to do is to get those who left dance as children because of the "body type" issue, quit after they "aged out", or always wanted to dance but never tried. Bottom line: dance for adults should be more accessible and that is our mission here at Old Dancer.