On one the coldest days of autumn so far, a coterie of GLBTQ+A elders were warming up for their twice a week Danceteria class. They are residents of the John C. Anderson Apt. building in the heart of Philadelphia’s gayborhood. The project was conceived almost a year ago by dancer-choreographer Michael O’Rourke, who named the class after the legendary 80s gay NY club. Late last month the troupe started preparing for their first public performance Dec.16th in the building’s community room.
The group of eight dancers have been rehearsing run-throughs of the upcoming program with choreography by O’Rourke and Grace Miha Lee, who also co-lead the classes. Each bring different technical and artistic skills from various dance idioms from ballet to contemporary to mixed styles.
Danceteria classes are free and O’Rourke has structured them so anyone interested in participating can come in and join the class, which usually run two hours. Except for one or two of the troupe’s regulars, none of the participants have had any formal dance training.. On this day they were working on ballet turn-out, improvisational movement and social dance phrases, set to a wide variety of music “the floor is theirs to explore,” O’Rourke says.
For O’Rourke it is a return to dance. At age 5 he was taking ballet class with his mother, in his teens he was also a competitive ice-skater, eventually touring with the Ice-Capades. In his 20s, O’Rourke had a dual career in dance, as a teacher and performing with his partner- visionary dancer-choreographer Andy de Groat. O’Rourke stopped dancing professionally over 25 years ago, and since he moved to Philadelphia, he has, at 67, been returning to the ballet barre, taking technique classes with companies around Philadelphia.
Open Rehearsal
As the classes developed over the past year O’Rourke stressed that participants shouldn’t have “preconceived notions about what dance is or misconceptions about working in a dance studio environment. We’re not following a syllabus. Or that you have to be able to do particular things to be a dancer. And I think that was particularly freeing. They are at the level of developing their own physicality.”
Lee cites the unique concept of the class for “mature adults with no prior dance experience required and to build over time a complete dance experience.” Lee said.
O’Rourke adds that they want to let the classes “ evolve organically. I look at our role of imparting some knowledge, and most important, making sure that you are always moving safely. But also encourages these senior dancers to develop their own dance personas.” Meanwhile, the individual personalities are expressing so much as they rehearse for their first public performance.
In an interview after a class, O’Rourke talked about why he started the program-“My initial interest in doing this class was because I couldn’t find a modern dance class for myself for older people when I moved here three years ago. I want to find former dancers like me for a place to go, and people my age who are learning. All I could find were classes that didn’t fit me.”
With less than a month to go before their public performance, the Danceteria troupe is working on choreographic counts and the critical transitional steps that make the choreography flow.
During a break in one sessions, O’Rourke said that the dancers are “moving with more freedom, not just doing steps. Their exploration of their own movement has increased their movement vocabulary. And I’ve been hearing wonderful things over these months from the dancers, things like it’s such a great thing in my life right now and during one particularly challenging session burst out and said ‘I’m dancing… finally.’”
Cue Music
There is a novelty to the idea of senior dancers learning multiple elements of classical, and contemporary idioms. After a break, the dancers are swirling to a country singer waltz one minute and the next free-form groove to a Beyonce hit or grape-vining a vintage Philly line-dance (remember the Wagner Walk?… well it’s back). One cover song of a 70s classic ballad segues to a hip-hop beat and the troupe members show they got the moves.
“If we throw things in that are above you or below what you can do, don’t worry about it.” He notes though that the core group is picking up steps, memorizing combinations much quicker and doing things in improv they would never have done six months ago.”
The dancers have handled mid-tempo chasse across over the dance floor with arms in flight. And even isolation steps with turns forward and backward. Then O’Rourke and Lee instruct them to keep their hands behind their back or in their pockets, and stop whenever needed, but dance around the room just moving their heads and torsos, to a lush cello sonata. This scrambling improv didn’t give this group pause, they went for it.
The uniqueness of bodies of a certain age dancing as a troupe might be at first a curiosity but the age factor fades as we watch the dancers’ esprit de corps expressing the elder body beautiful in space.
