As part of my job I surf the Net for positive stories about aging.  I love the two videos above they show that no matter what your age or your able-bodiedness when the music plays we all want to dance...

"We're old ... but we are good old.  Good old is right, right, right"

"We tend to think we could not be free and this has freed us"

Sadly, the world lost the ambassador of Lindy Hop, Frankie Manning in 2009, but he was dancing right to the end.

Here he is for his 90th birthday jam, where he dances with 90 follows to celebrate.

LBmuskoka,

I totally LOVE the song in the first vid, very energizing :3

Have you gotten the chance to see the movie Young at Heart yet?  If not, rent it :3

Love the videos. I tend to remember a 76 year old grandma doing the Salsa with a young man from an email that was circulating a few years ago. By the time she threw off her long skirt and started doing the Salsa, she tired me out just watching her.

InannaWhimsey, agreed .., I particularly liked the line "I can say anything because I can get away with it" ;-)

What I liked about these videos is these are "ordinary" old people.  They are not doing anything exceptional ... like dancing the salsa something I couldn't do at 21 much less 71!

In talking to seniors their biggest fear is the loss of the "normal"; the ability to do day to day things.  The videos show that no matter where you are on the spectrum of ability you can move, you can laugh, you can have fun .... you can be free.

I am going to work toward creating a similar group in my community because the other thing I have discovered being surrounded by older people is they keep me young :-)

Age takes a back seat here and we're all one age.  We are all the same.

Not dancing, but singing.  I led a worship service at a nursing home yesterday.   Most of the people in wheelchairs, some shaking with parkinsons, some partially paralized with strokes.   But they joined in singing the hymns that they would have remembered from their youth.   Short Bible reading, simple message but for most it was the singing that united them, lifted them up, brought joy into their lives.   

And some swayed, or kept the beat with a hand on the arm of a wheelchair or a tapping foot, or a waving arm.

Oh yes Seeler.

I have a lady who can't remember what she did five minutes previously, but when I play a song - no lyrics needed - she can remember every line.  It is incredible to me who can never remember lyrics at all. 

Every body has limits and every body has potential.

Appreciation of life itself, becoming suddenly aware of the miracle of being alive, on this planet, can turn what we call ordinary life into a miracle.
     Dan Wakefield

Muskoka - I am tone deaf, but I remember lyrics.  I somethings think that there would have been a place for me in the days before everyone became literate and relied on books or screens for the lyrics.   I could have been a 'liner'.   You know, the person who stands in front and speaks a line, then the choir sings it, holding the final note while the 'liner' gives the next line and they sing it.   

I not only know hymns but many of the popular and country songs of the fifties and sixties.    I can't learn modern hits - the lyrics seem to be insignificant and drowned out by the music.   

Also, sixty or seventy years ago people valued memory work.   Many people of my generation can recite long ballads by heart.   "The Highway Man",  "The Wreck of the Hesperous",  "A Vision of St. Nicholas".    Ask your lady if she remembers any poems.