Shake What Ya Momma Gave Ya: Growing Old, Performing Bold

This keynote address narrates my reflections as an ageing dance artist. Here I seek to discuss the space where I, as a practitioner, (re)negotiate the process of ageing, and embrace my new embodiment in its maturing performing form. I seek to explore the possibilities of performance beyond the culture backdrop of dancing youthful elitism, and by doing so I question the cultural expectation of 'dancing your age'. My age-awareness and age-innovative agenda will be explained through alternative popular representations of the dancing body in my collaborative performance and installation based works: Falling Apart at the Seams (2000, 2007, 2008); Council House Movie Star (2012) and Dying Swans and Dragged Up Dames (2013, 2014). This example could be a springboard for many other choreographic laboratories giving ageing dance performance more visibility and shaking off notions that discriminate against the matured skin/mature mover.