Old People in Tap Dance: Gingers Group

Abstract

The article presents a phenomenon that has been growing in Brazilian society in recent years, in which elderly individuals are seeking tap dance classes and, through this, creating their own space within the artistic and aesthetic context of this art form. From this observation, the following question arises: how can one work with such unusual, almost unimaginable bodies that deviate from the conventional stereotype of this artistic practice? Approaching tap dance from the perspective of gesture enables the expression of each individual. The field of creative aging within social gerontology reveals that aging processes are diverse and that each individual can invent their own “beautiful old age” (Goldenberg, 2017). In this sense, the focus is on those who have chosen the art of tap dancing as a life project in aging, like the members of Sapatos Ageless Tap Group, self-titled the “Gingers”, who have chosen to grow old with the glamour of the great Hollywood stars. The autoeth-nographic analysis of the performative experience with the elderly cast, based on authors such as Arguello and Ayala (2017), Lepecki (2016, 2017), and Tótora (2016), leads to the understanding that tap dancing and aging share diversity and creativity as common points.