Dancers Over 40.

According to a recent Mellon Foundation survey of 116 large and small schools (see September 1995, page 71, Education), 78 percent of the ballet studios that responded to their questionnaire offered adult nonprofessional classes. Estimates place the number of adult students at 46 percent of a studio's enrollment. Although no statistics are available from schools that teach modern dance, jazz, musical theater, or other forms of dance, an informal telephone survey has shown similar percentages of adult participation.

The majority in these classes are recreational dancers, but professional dancers, choreographers, and those in related theater arts - all of whom have passed their fortieth birthdays - have formed an organization, Dancers Over 40, in New York City. They are a rapidly expanding association, creating high visibility for this viable, employable group and acting as advocates for continuing work in the profession.

"I still get chills thinking about the performers who came to our early meetings," says Christopher Nelson, one of the founders of Dancers Over 40. "They were the celebs of the past, the history of dance in our time. It was April 25, 1994. I'll never forget that date."

"It all started when Eileen Casey, who had been interviewing older dancers for a documentary, and I got together. Zoya Leporska joined us as we met in my living room or a coffee shop, and before we knew it, Dancers Over 40 was formed. In one year we grew to thirty dancers, forty to eighty years old.

Nelson, now joined by John Mineo and Frank Pietri as founders of the group, points out that the formation of an organization for older dancers was inevitable - older stars are currently performing on Broadway with great success. Choreographers such as Liz Lerman, Maguy Marin, Martha Clarke, and Graeme Murphy, have been employing dancers over forty for some time.

"Everyone is beginning to see," says Nelson, "that older dancers, although able to perform less physically, have more to give dramatically, are more expressive, and have more confidence onstage than younger dancers. They are reliable, mentally flexible, and disciplined. And they arrive at a new role with a range of experience that enables them to handle a diversity of styles, to have insight into characterizations, and to employ a variety of phrasing, dynamics, pacing, and spontaneity in performance."

Nelson's background, like that of many former dancers, included a mixed bag of training - modern dance (Graham school, Jean Erdman, and Sophie Maslow), ballet (Don Farnworth), and jazz (Frank Wagner). He was a successful performer until he hit a midlife crisis. It led him to New York University, where he obtained a degree in liberal arts with a concentration in psychology. "But when the underbrush cleared away," he admits, "I was still unsatisfied and not living the creative life I wanted. I was still a dancer, who had lost what he loved to do. So I got into Broadway shows. Then, three years ago, again I realized that basically I was still not expressing myself creatively and wasn't being honest with myself"

Back to class. This time to the New Dance Group Arts Center in the Broadway district, a venerable institution founded in 1932. He passed an audition for his first job in years - Woody Allen's movie, Mighty Aphrodite. It reenforced his belief that dancers over forty were still employable and needed to bond and network. The informal meetings began, and before long the members voiced their needs and made plans to:

1. Provide a newsletter with announcements of projects, events, and articles specific to older dancers. 2. Plan panel discussions. 3. Arrange workshops with prominent teachers and choreographers. 4. Assist an ongoing playreading group for dancers. 5. Create a source for casting directors and agents. 6. Schedule regular workshops with psychotherapists on issues relating to older dancers. 7. Maintain a stimulating space in which to try new things.

"The response to networking," says Nelson, "was overwhelming, but we had no idea how to formulate an organization, didn't know what the legalities were, or how to fund-raise. But we were determined to find help." Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts came to the rescue, and the New York Foundation became the group's conduit for funds until it achieves nonprofit status in the near future.

Dancers Over 40 have learned many things about themselves, including the importance of adding conditioning therapies such as using weights, stretching, and aerobics to their regular dance schedule. Despite some physical limitations, they are amazed at how the body grows in stamina with regular work. They accept the fact that safety and freedom come from following proven methodologies and that there are no shortcuts, as they once thought in their younger days. They have found sympathetic teachers and know that there is no need to apologize for not doing everything offered in the class because they have earned the right to chose what is good for them.

Now grown to 200 members, the group has discovered that casting directors are looking at this new group in a nontraditional manner. More work is on the way.

"I'm over seventy years old," Yuriko, a former principal dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company, admits. "But that did not occur to me as a deterrent when I was asked to perform at a memorial service and stage Graham's Celebration in Japan. What amazes me is what the human body can do and how long it can do it, if it has not been abused or misdirected."

She choreographed her solo, Cry, " set to Andre Jolivet's Concerto for Bassoon String Orchestra, Harp, and Piano, in 1965. It remains an original eight-minute tour de force of drama and power. "Cry," she says, "is about a thought that becomes larger in sadness, despair, or pain. It follows a direction of its own. Of course, there are technical considerations, but that is a separate study. To a great extent, the dance itself takes over and it must be allowed to do so as you work."

Yuriko, who had studied, danced, taught, and coached at the Graham school and company since 1944, left the organization because of philosophical differences but had no idea what to do next. She felt it was time to sense her body again and returned to body conditioning sessions with Robert Fitzgerald (Graham herself spent years with Fitzgerald, as do many Graham, American Ballet Theatre, and New York City Ballet dancers at the present time).

What did Fitzgerald say when she arrived for her first appointment? "You've been absent for fifteen years. Let's get to work." One year later she was ready for the stage.

"As I look back over those years teaching and giving, I seem to have been in a cocoon from which I am now ready to emerge to do new things."

"It was all an accident that I dance," Dudley Williams remembers. "One day, as a youngster, I went to the School on the Hill at 145th Street in New York City, with an uncle who sang. I heard music in a downstairs studio. I peeked in; the teacher invited me to enter; I watched and was stunned to see people dancing. I went home and told my mother I wanted to dance. Classes were once a week, and my only reference was roller and ice skating.

"Then, another lucky accident: I wanted to audition for the music division of the High School for the Performing Arts because I played the piano. But I was too late so I was put into the dance department." Thirty years later, Williams still feels lucky to be dancing with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. At one point he was a member of Martha Graham Dance Company as well, until both went on tour at the same time and he had to choose between them. "Ailey won out because the rep was better for me," he says.

Williams admits that he became part of the drug culture rampant in the theater a few years ago. He took uppers, then fell into excessive drinking. One day onstage during his solo, "I Want to Be Ready," in Ailey's Revelations he saw his hand shaking and it frightened him. He stopped the abuse.

When people ask him how he manages to perform at his age (past fifty), he says he just goes out and does it. "Get up and go do it," is his advice. "Don't listen to what society or statistics, or the mass thinking tells you. Just do it. Don't waste time on negative thoughts. There are times when I don't want to do it. But, hey, you get over it."

He maintains his physicality by going to Robert Fitzgerald's body conditioning sessions three times week, rests one week after a long tour, reads a lot, eats only when hungry twice a day, and enjoys being alone.

He is a frequent guest performer in addition to his seasons with the Ailey company and is usually asked to repeat his famous "I Want to Be Ready." "Each time I did that piece," Williams recalls, "Alvin would ask me to whom I planned to dedicate the solo that night - there had been so many deaths from natural causes and from AIDS in the profession. I used to dance for just one person as my inspiration, never phrasing the same way, and I still do just that. The hardest performance was when I danced it for Alvin."

For Dancers Over 40 information, contact Frank Pietri, 150 E. 77 St., #2C, New York, NY 10021.

Dancing Over the Hill, a bimonthly newsletter that serves as a forum for adult students of dance and their instructors, can be had by writing to Scrutiny Press and Text Services, P.O. Box 15087, Washington, DC. 20003.-0087; [phone].