Dance Baltimore wants you to know that dancing is not just for the young. With its 16th annual “Ageless Grace” dance performance Sunday, the audience will see a dance group where the youngest performer is 40, and the oldest dancer is 93 years old.
In “Ageless Grace: Dancing Through the Decades” dancers aged 40 and over perform a variety of dance styles: jazz, tap, cultural, modern, and more. Dancers’ training levels range from lifelong professional international dancers to local recreational dancers. Some have just begun dancing as adults, and others have danced as children and are rediscovering their love for the artform as an adult.
Dance Baltimore founder and director Cheryl Goodman told Baltimore Fishbowl the concert features both Dance Baltimore students and performers from the community.
“This is an annual event and many area dancers say they have been waiting to get to age 40 so they can perform in the show with us. Some of the performances are by the classes of our students and others from a general call we put out every year,” Goodman said.
Putting together a dance concert with performers over 40, and with no upper age limit, involves sometimes making accommodations for dancers with a diverse set of mobility, physical, mental, and neurological needs.
“We’ve frequently had dancers in wheelchairs, with a cane, or who need to remain seated when performing,” Goodman said. “The fact that the dancers are 40 and over is always front of mind.”
Goodman described a previous performance year in which one of their dancers was suffering from cancer, having just received the diagnosis after she began dancing with Dance Baltimore.
“She continued throughout her treatment and made it a goal to dance in Ageless Grace the year before last,” Goodman recalled. “She passed away about 3 or 4 months after the performance. I spoke at her funeral to let people know how important it was for her to dance that last dance.”
Maria Broom has been dancing since she was six years old and will be 75 in August. She danced at Western High School and Peabody Preparatory, and won a Fulbright Scholarship from Morgan State University to study dance in Berlin, Germany.
Broom was a television reporter, first in Miami, then in Baltimore for WJZ-TV from 1973 to 1977. She left broadcast journalism in 1977 to become a dancer and actress, performing across the US and internationally. She was a recurring character in HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Corner,” with smaller roles in “The West Wing” and “Homicide: Life on the Streets.” For the last 12 years, she’s hosted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Music Box Concert Series, and she’s the subject of a documentary now in production called “Viva Maria“.
Broom has been with Dance Baltimore since its inception.
“I heartily share and promote Cheryl Goodman’s sentiment that everyone can dance, and I offer doses of ‘Dance Medicine,’ getting folks to come shake, shimmy and sashay,” Broom said. “As an elder, it has been a blessing to be invited to open the Ageless Grace concerts every year.”
This year, Broom will be presenting the piece “Amma and Her Secret Dances,” accompanied by master drummer, the Drum Talker Jali D.
Lois Stokes was an educator, teaching grades pre-K through 3 in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, retiring as an elementary school principal from Baltimore County in 2022. She is 66 years old and says her mother would claim she’s been dancing since she was born.
Stokes has done modern dance, ballet, hand dancing, salsa, and more. She stopped dancing in earnest, however, when she went into education to focus on her career. Once she retired, she went right back to her longtime hobby, starting with hand dancing at first. After she noticed an advertisement for Dance Baltimore, she began attending classes there.
In the Ageless Grace concert, Stokes is performing in two modern dance pieces. She told Fishbowl she’s looking forward to the concert because it’s been such a good experience.
“Number one, we’re older,” Stokes said. “And so just having the opportunity to work with other people who are interested in and dancing at this age, just really keeps us moving, has us feeling good and in good spirits, so I’m just enjoying the experience.”
She’d encourage others who might be hesitant to try dancing for the first time or return to dancing as an adult to visit one of the classes at Dance Baltimore.
“There’s a class that Renee teaches called Just Dance,” Stokes said. “We come and she and Cheryl both help you to feel relaxed and say, ‘Just enjoy it.’ When you come in, you have that experience. You’re nervous the first time, but then you’ll see that kind of all comes back to you. The experience is a relaxed experience, and there’s no pressure, you just kind of ease back into it, and you end up staying like I did!”
Ivy Fox has been a professional dancer nearly all her adult life. At the age of 62, she’s performed all over the world with first international and national tours of “Chicago,” “Kiss Me Kate,” “Starlight Express,” and “Beauty and the Beast.” She attended Point Park University and graduated from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Fox has also danced in the Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectactular.
After a lifetime of professional dancing, Fox appreciates Dance Baltimore and Aging Grace.
“I like working with Ageless Grace because you know, you’re giving the mature women who have lived their professional lives an opportunity to still move, to still perform, to still grow within their art, within what they love, not just their regular 9 to 5,” Fox said. “So, it’s been a joy to work with them and help them to learn to have more presence on stage and have more confidence within their movement and to trust that they can do this and it’s not something that’s just for the young.”
Fox is performing with her mother, Betty Lee Fox, who is 93, in Ageless Grace this year. Fox told Fishbowl that her mother is the one who introduced her to dance, teaching dance at Frederick Douglass High School, where she had a troupe. Her mother also started a lyrical dance group at New Shiloh Baptist Church.
She is choreographing the piece she performs with her mother in Ageless Grace, though she is also performing in other ensemble pieces on Sunday. Fox and her mother are both looking forward to the chance to perform together.
“It’s been great working with her and getting her to use her arms more, you know, to use her mind more to remember,” Fox said.
This is a benefit for all the students at Dance Baltimore, Fox asserted.
“For the women at Dance Baltimore, they’re getting stronger and stronger every day. You know, their bodies are getting stronger, their breathing is stronger, their confidence,” Fox said. “Just Tuesday rehearsing it was nice to see them, creating themselves, finding music, deciding what costume they would like to wear, and giving them an opportunity to use the creativity that they have swirling with inside and putting together. Teamwork, community, being supportive of each other. I love seeing it. I think the arts will change people. Change your personality, change your attitude towards others to be more open.”
This year’s Ageless Grace performance takes place at Creative Alliance on Sunday, April 21 at 4 p.m.
Creative Alliance is located at 3134 Eastern Ave., Baltimore, Maryland. Tickets are $20 for general admission and $18 for seniors. Purchase tickets by clicking this link.
