That's the philosophy of Dominique Gabella's company Next Stage Dance Theatre. The dancers performing April 17 through 19 at the Broadway Performance Hall in "The Mysteries of Life" range in age from 62 to a "baby" of 37.
The majority of the dancers in Next Stage are in their 50s. Gabella knows that most dance audiences don't expect that.
"When I first came to this country, I saw everyone worrying about getting old," she said.
Wanting to break out of the mold that says dance ends after age 40, Gabella has consciously looked for ways to show the beauty of mature dancers.
"Obviously, the body changes. What you can do at 20, you may not be able to do at 40. So much of classical technique, like ballet, is built on a younger body," she said. "But there are things that you can do and discovering how to create that movement in the dance, that's the exploration that leads to wonderful discoveries."
For example, the classical pirouette may not work for an older dancer, "but a person can still turn. So doing two or three pirouettes may be irrelevant, we may still be able to tell the story that we want to tell by doing one pirouette or just turning," Gabella said.
"There are always ways to transcend the body's limitations," she added. "When a dancer in her 60s tells me that she can't do a move, it just obliges me as a choreographer to find a new way to present my idea."
Gabella has been choreographing dance for the last 30 years. She's been dancing for even longer.
"My mother was a ballerina," revealed Gabella. "And she was my first dance teacher. Since I started at age 3, that means I've been dancing for 54 years."
In some ways, she added, "being raised as a dancer by my mother was a bit like being raised as nun. You have to serve your art no matter what age you are."
Gabella's international career includes credits with Zurich Opera under the direction of Nicolas Beriosoff, Rudolf Nureyev and Michel Descombey, with Ray Phillips Contemporary Dance Theater, and with Anne-Marie Parekh's Akar in her native Switzerland, among others.
From 1985 to 1997, she co-directed and performed in her own company, Dance Music Light, based in New York City
Then, because "I wanted to give my children a different perspective on life by moving some place that we didn't know anyone," Gabella and her husband moved to Seattle in 1997.
This change to the West Coast led to the founding of a new dance company, Next Stage, and a new exploration of what it meant to be a dancer.
"You go into the studio every day to practice. So you're constantly aware of the changes that your body is going through and how that affects the dance," she said. "And there are women, for example, who danced on pointe (on the tip of the toes) into their 60s. But I'm not one of them. I'm never going back into pointe shoes."
For the dancers of Next Stage, more important than age is "maturity," said Gabella. "With maturity, you want to give back what you've been given. That's why we do so many programs like working with Alzheimer's patients or at-risk youth."
"The Mysteries of Life" program reflects that "big philosophy that everything is linked," she added. "But it's not all serious stuff.
There is a lighter side to some pieces, like the one about the mystery of what happens to the socks that you lose in the laundry. That's an important mystery to me. I've got a lot of single socks!"
"The Mysteries of Life" includes seven new works by five choreographers. The performances begin at 8:00 p.m. on April 18 and 19 at the Broadway Performance Hall.
The dress rehearsal on April 17 is also open to the public and begins at 7 p.m. "We may dance all the way through in the rehearsal; we may have to stop and rework something. That's the fun of coming to a rehearsal," said Gabella.
Tickets for "The Mysteries of Life" are $15 to $20 and available through brownpapertickets.com or at the Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway, on the day of show.
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