Dancing provides camaraderie, exercise for brain and body at senior center

On a Wednesday afternoon at the Sixth Street Senior Center, Pam Moore is setting up to teach a class. As dancers filter onto the hardwood floor, she connects her phone to Bluetooth and turns to address the group.

“So,” Moore said. “We’re gonna do ‘What the Cowgirls Do.’”

She begins to slowly move through the dance as she talks. 

“That one is going to start: Stomp, three heel taps and this foot is going to slide heel-toe across the floor,” she said.

Moore’s class watches attentively, and she continues. 

“Heel, toe, heel, toe, stomp, tap,” Moore added, tapping her foot. “Heel, toe, heel, toe, guiding steps back.”

Once she’s explained the dance, Moore turns on the music and counts the class in. Just like that, they’re dancing. 

Moore later says she sped it up a little, on account of a reporter and photographer coming to watch. Normally, the walk-through is slower.

Even so, several longtime line dancers, like 84-year-old Maja Rodrigues, pick up on the steps quickly. As the music plays, the sound of boot stomps and claps begin to provide a rhythmic accompaniment to the song. 

“We are showing the young ones that you can do it even if you’re 80,” Rodrigues said. “If you had asked me three years ago when I started, I would not have been able to do it.”

Pam Moore watches the steps of those around her while leading a weekly line dance class at the Sixth Street Senior Center. (Credit: Liesbeth Powers / Moscow-Pullman Daily News)

Rodrigues said she likes the camaraderie. She also enjoys the exercise for her body and mind that learning new dances provides. But she wasn’t always as good as she is now. It took her years, and help, to get to where she is.

“People around you, they’re so helpful,” she said. “They don’t laugh if you make mistakes because we all do.”

Moore first began instructing line dancing classes about ten years ago. She taught classes at the Elks Lodge for over nine years before bringing the class to the senior center.

“I love music, and I’ve always enjoyed dancing,” she said. “And I don’t sing well. So, this is a wonderful way for me to enjoy music and get exercise.”

For Moore, and many of the regulars, the classes are also a welcome social outing in addition to needed exercise. Many folks who have been coming for years never would have met each other if they hadn’t decided to take the class, she said.

“I just love it,” Moore said. “All of these people are my dear friends.”

One of those friends is Camille Holley. Holley retired in 2002, and first started dancing after seeing an ad in the newspaper for tap dancing.

“So, I took tap dancing classes, and while I was doing that, my sister started coming to line dance. This line dance at the community center had been going on for 20 years prior,” Holley said.

Eventually, Holley joined her sister at line dancing. When the former instructor decided it was time to pass the torch, it was the two of them who took over instruction.

“The lady that was leading it then was in her late 80s,” Holley says. “So, after a couple of years, she decided she was done.”

When she hit 80 in 2020, Holley decided she’d had enough instructing. But she still loves to dance at 84. 

On the dance floor Wednesday afternoon, she was among those leading the group, easily gliding through the moves in her skirt and cowboy boots.

Holley has even gotten other family members, including her daughter, into line dancing, who she says just went on a line dancing cruise.

Several members of the group danced into their 90s, Moore says, and others have gone on to teach their own classes.

“You see their love,” Moore says. “We’ve had some really close friends who have passed on.  But they danced right up almost until then.”

Holley remembered one woman who danced with the group until she was 93.

“She was getting up, getting ready to go line dancing and had a heart attack and died,” Holley said. “Now, that’s how I want to go.”