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ONE STEILACOOM SENSATION ; It's Never Too Late to Join the Dance. The Women of the Steilacoom Dance Company Entertain Just for the Joy of It, and for the Enjoyment of the Audience.

Posted on: Saturday, 11 December 2004, 15:00 CST

The rule is: If you've got it, flaunt it. And the women of the Steilacoom Dance Company have definitely got it.

The joy of dance, that is.

It's clear with every click of their high-heeled tap shoes, every beat of recorded big band or Broadway music, every shimmy of a shoulder or swish of a pastel skirt.

No matter that several of the Steilacoom dancers didn't join this chorus line until they were eligible for Medicare.

"Oh, look at that!" shouts a man in a baseball cap, as costumed dancers take their places before two dozen patients at the Veterans Administration nursing home at American Lake.

When dancers lock arms and kick their shapely legs in unison, a round of applause ripples through the audience. One man in a wheelchair smiles, his eyes intermittently opening and closing. Another keeps time to the music with his hands, even as they tremor with age.

"It's the music," says Mary Petersen, who helped found the nine- member group (ages ranging from the 40s to the 80s) and who choreographs their moves and designs their costumes. "Every single step has to correspond with the music. To me, the music dictates the dance."

The dancers click castanets during their Spanish-influenced number, "Grenada." They work their way through a repertoire that includes music from Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, classics like "42nd Street" and "New York, New York." And the show-stopper from "A Chorus Line," called "One." Dancers don leotards decorated like tuxedoes and hold top hats aloft for a big show-biz finish.

After the show, each dancer works the room, shaking hands with the veterans and thanking them for their service to country.

"I want to thank all you guys for being here today," Petersen says. "I salute the people here, and the staff."

"My heart was going," says a happy 85-year-old Dennis Finley, a World War II veteran who watched the show with his wife, Helen.

"Did you like the legs?" Petersen asks another veteran.

"Yeah," he answers. "Very nice."

The dancers perform at American Lake twice a year, every year. They've been going there for 13 years.

The performance is, in part, a thank-you from Petersen. Her husband, Jack, a World War II pilot, spent the last years of his long battle with multiple sclerosis at the American Lake VA home. He died in 1991.

"He always used to say, 'Where are the dancing girls?'" Petersen remembers. "I thought to myself, 'I can do dancing girls.'"

She's always been a dancer. Years ago, she performed with the Aqua Follies, a 1950s-era extravaganza that combined dancing, diving and synchronized swimming.

Petersen's childhood dance teacher taught her ballet, as well as dances from around the world. That's why, in addition to kicking up her heels to Broadway and show tunes, Petersen also runs a Polynesian dance company. Both are based at the Steilacoom Community Center.

"I have the nicest group of ladies," Petersen says. "Everyone helps everyone else."

Rei Mei Zoellner, who grew up in Taiwan and lives in Spanaway, met Petersen after renting the community center for a Chinese New Year celebration. Zoellner teaches Chinese dance. While she was checking out the center one day, the Steilacoom dancers' rehearsal caught her eye.

"I popped my head in, and now I'm here," she says. She's been tap- dancing with the group for nine years.

"Dancing makes you happy," she says. "Physically happy, but also mentally happy. Especially if you can share it with others and make them happy."

Elaine Rhue, from Tacoma, hadn't strapped on her tap shoes in probably 60 years until she started with the Steilacoom group about 10 years ago.

"You have to use it or lose it, you know," she jokes.

Rhue and her husband had enjoyed ballroom dancing for many years, but after his bypass surgery, he hung up his dancing shoes.

That's when Rhue found the Steilacoom company.

"It's excellent exercise," she says. "And a lot of fun."

She especially enjoys dancing for nursing home audiences because "it's doing something for somebody else."

At 87, Thelma Malone of Gig Harbor is the grande dame of this intergenerational group, whose ages span five decades. She didn't start dancing seriously until she retired, some 20 years ago.

As a little girl, Malone always wanted to take dance lessons. Once in a while, she'd have the money. But with a father who was an alcoholic, the family often couldn't afford the 50 cents for a lesson.

So Malone put her dancing dreams on hold, worked as a legal secretary and a real estate saleswoman, then retired in her 60s.

That's when she started serious dance lessons.

Malone says she's been dancing "long enough that I should be doing better."

But don't let her humility fool you. Her agility would put many a younger woman to shame.

"Some days are better than others," she says. "I know one of these days I won't be able to do it. I hope by then I'll be ready to sit down."

Watching her dance, that seems unlikely.

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Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635

debbie.cafazzo@mail.tribnet.com

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SIDEBAR

The Steilacoom Dance Company presents "The Spirit of the Dance," a performance of tap and Polynesian dances at 7 p.m. Friday at the Steilacoom Community Center, 2301 Worthington St.

Dancers will showcase dance steps from the mainland to the islands. A donation is requested to benefit the Comprehensive Health Education Foundation. For information about the performance or about joining the Steilacoom Dance Company, call the Steilacoom Community Center at 253-581-1076.

Source: News Tribune, The

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