Dancing into Old Age

Starting to learn ballet at 63

Photo by Leila de Haan on Unsplash

I took up ballet at sixty-three in a crazy moment of enthusiasm for starting new things, after we’d sold our previous home and business. We’d run a mindfulness retreat and holiday let centre for seventeen years.

Now officially retired, at least from that, I was at something of a loose end and wanted to try out new things. I found a ballet class specifically designed for older joints and bodies, upwards of fifty-five years, called Silver Swans. It was running at our local arts centre where I’d also started volunteering. What a great match.

Silver Swans is run through the Royal Academy of Dance in the UK and has properly accredited teachers. My teacher, Suki Turner, is a pioneering teacher in many ways. She’s a lead teacher for this new setup and has been busy filming training videos and also instructing new teachers who want to offer these classes within their own teaching curricula.

Suki danced professionally, and then combined motherhood with setting up and running a dance school in the south of England for many years, until she too decided to sell up and retire to our island full-time. Except that she and I didn’t retire completely.

What I found out about my body from ballet