For our new show, we'll be dancing in black shoes. (Until now, I've only danced barefoot.) Some Crows are wearing character shoes, but jazz shoes will be acceptable.

That makes me happy. Maybe dancing in character shoes with their snappy little heels would be fun, but that would take some getting used to, and time is short. Instead I'm going to buy a pair of flat, soft, friendly little jazz shoes.

Today I looked in Paula Hunt's secondhand sale, and found only character shoes and ballet shoes. I hurried to Gubbs, but they're moving their store today. Maybe Tuesday?

Meantime Tania has kindly lent me a pair, around 25 years old and still hard at work. Thanks Tania.

Crowsfeet practises have now stepped up to 2 a week - 2 hours on a Wednesday night and 3 hours on a Saturday afternoon.  And suddenly the realisation sets in that the show is not that far away!!  Apart from 'How to be a Domestic Goddess', a smaller group of Crows are working on 'Leaving Home' remembering and finetuning the choreography.

Six dancers from Crows Feet were involved in a performance at Te Papa in December. The piece entitled "The Monstrous Red Dress" was the work of Lauren Skogstad, and formed part of her studies in Spatial Design for Massey University.

It was an amazing experience being part of this event. Lauren's creative thinking and design is exceptional and the impact of the train going over the edge of the building and hanging down was very powerful. The performance day was a creative delight, although because of the wild wind the final throwing of the red train over the side of the building was more complex and we had to improvise with what we could do with the grey dress/train.

As we came around the corner of Te Papa, holding for dear life onto Tania's grey and red trains, I felt moved to tears (apart form the wind creating it's own tears in my eyes!) as Tania looked up at Elizabeth. The power of the wind was in the powerfulness of the production. Because of the danger of Tania 'taking off' we had to change the ending and return her to the point at which the red dress started, thus emphasizing the interweaving of the sensual and flamboyant red, with the more sombre everyday grey - even the business/everyday woman has a sensual and flamboyant self!

I have just returned from India where, with fellow Crows Tania and Carolyn,  I attended 2 classes in the classical Indian dance form Kathak. Here we are in our dance costume, tightly wound round with a long scarf, what you cannot see are the beautiful bells tied to our calves that tinkled as we rhythmically stamped our feet. We only touched on the basics but that was still quite a challenge! We had a lovely teacher, ably assisted by her senior students who we were also lucky enough to see dance.

We had a lovely time with our photographer Penny Towns in Liz Melchior's kitchen taking publicity shots for our next show.

Tania bought some suitably garish looking cup cakes at the supermarket which gradually got demolished throughout the shoot.

Jan is now busy researching pearls of wisdom from the lips of the gorgeous Nigella Lawson for the script we will use during the show.

Time to think about the cossies now - need to find some sexy stockings!    

We're working on our next show, whose name is still a mystery to me. But these are my notes on a little section of the Pastry Dance. I was finding it hard to remember because A. we keep changing it and B. my granny brain makes me a little slower to catch on.

When we showed our piece to the other groups there was much unseemly mirth, as my revered Latin teacher used to say. I thought it was because I kept losing the beat, but Jen kindly advised me later that dancers usually keep their tongues inside their mouths.

I knew my husband stuck his tongue out when fiercely concentrating. I knew my kids did it and even my grand-daughter Elsie does it. But me? Never!

Jan looked like a particularly fit and gorgeous 40-year-old at a low-stress birthday party last Wednesday night - - agree? Liz offered her home for the event and Sarah did the catering. Verdict on both: fantastic. We counted the Crows in our 60s, and there are seven of us now.*

On her actual birthday, Jan went whitebaiting with another over-60s dancer, Jamie Bull. It's bliss out there on Otaki Beach, regardless of wind and cold. You just tune out of life's hassles and into the universe. And as a special birthday treat, Jan caught about 10 ounces of bait. This seemed like a miracle after the shocking season they've had so far, with whitebait dribbling into the nets in ones and twos.

*That statistic holds until I turn 70 next February...

 I went to a conference in Jamaica...watch this space for more detail!!!

I recently returned from a trip to the uk (June 09) and had the good fortune to see two excellent examples of older adults performing. This is now no longer becoming unusual but in the past 5 or 6 years seems to be a growing movement. The first example was a wonderful BBC programme in the Imagine series about a Sadlers Well's project and the second was  the Belgian Les Ballets C de la B showing how wonderful a dance company can be when its dancers are not uniform in size shape or age.

Company of Elders 

"An inspirational group of amateur performers all over the age of 60, the Company of Elders are the jewel in the crown of Sadler’s Wells’ Connect department and an off shoot of the theatre’s arts appreciation club. Fulfilling the theatre’s commitment to the local community and to making dance as accessible as possible, Connect’s work includes all abilities and ages spanning 0 to 90, challenging perceptions of who can and should dance." (Dance UK - the national voice for dance)

They recently were the feature of a BBC documentary hosted by Alan Yentob which aroused much public interest. It showed the Company working creatively on a contemporary dance piece with Choreographer Chris Tudor.

"Challenging pre-conceptions about the physical and creative abilities of the over 60s, the film follows the company in their quest to choreograph, learn, practice and perform a brand new work."

See the Dance UK link:

http://www.danceuk.org/metadot/index.pl?id=26161&isa=DBRow&op=show&dbview_id=22558

Les Ballets C de la B

Les Ballets C de la B, an internationally renowned and popular contemporary dance company  performed their wonderful new work "Ashes" by choreographer Koen Augustijnen, at Southbank in London, as part of a current European festival tour.

Excerpts can be seen on U Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyQrK_Q2HOo

A leading contemporary dance company they also excite because their company contains dancers of all shapes sizes cultures and ages, with dancers clearly in their 40's and maybe 50's, perfoming not only with strength and stamina but also the depth and richness that comes from maturity.

Tania Kopytko