Keep Dancing- with Chris Wilson

Here is our Keep Dancing class in action with Chris Wilson . Check out this Blipfoto blog
and this one of us in action

What's old age like?...

From my sketchbook.....

Jazz Hands

Great workshop for older dancers this morning with Chris Wilson, a young choreographer, who introduced us to the work of Bob Fosse.

This was all part of Luminate- Scotland's Festival for Creating Ageing- held t the Macrobert arts centre Stirling.


Here are some photos from this morning's session.

Mud painting workshop

Here are some paintings from my mud workshop held in the Macrobert arts centre, part of Luminate- Scotland's Creative Ageing Festival- except nobody has ever heard of it!
Liz (left) did a series of da
ncers but it was her cartoon of Cameron and the pig that caused much hilarity.

Unfortunately the Macrobert arts centre were not amused . They thought it reflected badly on them and asked for the hashtag on Twitter to be removed! they said they were non-political.

Hmmmm...there is such a thing as creative freedom.

This is Joy Scott with her first ever painti

ng- in mud.

Joy, age 82, is a former Scottish Water Ski champion. Now she has taken up dancing, T'ai chi and today- mud painting.

Finally we all did a scroll. Now I have got to find somewhere to show it. Any suggestions?

Music in the afternoon

Live music is always a special treat and an afternoon of chamber music in a private house in Bridge of Allan makes it all the more exceptional, especially when it starts off with drinks and home-made canapés served in a beautiful garden.

The occasion was a fundraising event for 

Pollok House Arts Society and the musicians were a group of women who first met as students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Fifty years later, Shona Gidney, Angela Welch, Phyllis Strachan and Anne McKinnes still maintain that friendship, they love of music and today after a lifetime working as  professional musicians they now play for pleasure.

Shona, their leader, explained that this is how Schubert would have performed -in a private house to a group of friends.

   

Playing the ukulele

Ken Fraser always wanted to play a musical instrument but he never had the opportunity.
Now 72-year-old Ken is fulfilling a lifelong dream. He is one of a growing number of people taking up the ukulele.
 
He attends the weekly ukulele group in our local golf club, Bridge of Allan, one of 16 people who have taken up this instrument  for the first time.
Ken says in his busy life as a project manager for a construction company working all over the UK he never had the time to learn to play.
“Playing the ukulele is great fun and we are now doing gigs too, so if we can entertain others then all the better.”
 
   
Well, I am thinking of taking it up myself…

Dancing - Young and od

Our Spanish dancer

This is Victor, our young Spanish dancer whom I had heard so much about. He’s keen to add tap to his repertoire so he joined our group of Happy Tappers some weeks ago. ( Yes, yes I know…wrong age, wrong sex but hey! whose complaining?)

I had not met him until today because I have missed several weeks and I was curious to see the effect he had on our class. Suddenly the presence of a young male had energised all the tappers and I had never seen them dance to well!

However, Victor earns his living working in the tourist industry and the season is about to start.

 
But he has approached our dance teacher, Anne Aiken, ( pictured with him) about starting up a class in Callander. I suspect there will be a queue of women in that small Trossachs town who suddenly have a desire to take up tap-dancing…

Exits and entrances

"Exits and entrances"

“All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

   

They have their exits and their entrances,"

          All the Worlds a Stage  ( Shakespeare)

When you reach a “certain age “you discover the

morning post brings a plethora of leaflets about subjects you would rather not think about.

 Take this one which I received today

 Campaign for Dignity in Dying. Now this is a very worthy cause and I wholeheartedly support it.

I just wish I was not inundated with reminders of my own mortality, especially on a bleak dreich Monday morning with 60mph winds whipping through the glen.

But it’s the ones from the Co-op urging me to pay for my funeral in advance that annoy me.

Tap dancing in her 70s

Rosemary McGregor has just joined our tap-dancing class in Stirling.

She has waited a long time fulfil this ambition –over 70 years.

For Rosemary, the youngest of 11 children loved dancing as a child but her mother could only afford for one of them to have lessons and an older sister got the chance.

Now Rosemary, 74 years of age from Tullbody in central Scotland has finally fulfilled her dream.

But she is no newcomer to movement- something that quickly became apparent once she took to the floor. She already goes to Scottish country dancing, salsa and aerobics.

What does she think? “I love it, at last I have got the chance to try it for myself. I used to love watching  my sister perform.”

Older People get dancing and dating

Some members of our Keep Dancing class, Macrobert Arts centre, Stirling

Dancing oldies are causing a stir in China by creating major disturbances in the streets and parks by dancing early in the morning and late at night- they claim its their way of keeping fit. Quite quite right too!
 Read this account from the Wall Street Journal

And the New York Times  carried an article on a new dating service for the  over 60s which has also spawned  new jobs- consultants who help older people how to date.

Here’s some advice:

“ Don’t talk incessantly about — or show photos of — your deceased spouse. Don’t talk disparagingly about your ex. Don’t whip out your collection of diabetes, cholesterol or heart medications."