"I really want to start dancing, but I think I’m too old.”

Too old? No such thing.

I hear versions of this ALL the time. People of all ages telling me they wish they’d started younger. People watching dancers online who have trained since they were three years old and thinking they’ve somehow missed their chance.

And I get it.

Dance can give you a really warped perception of age.

When so many dancers start as children, starting at 18 can feel late. Starting at 25 can feel really late. Starting at 40 can feel almost unheard of.

But late compared to who? There isn’t one timeline that every dancer is supposed to follow and there definitely isn’t an expiry date on becoming one.

“But everyone else started when they were 5…”

Okay. And you didn’t 😂

I mean that in the nicest way possible.

You cannot go back and put five-year-old you into dance classes, you can’t give yourself the childhood training you wish you’d had and you can’t change the point at which dance entered your life.

So how long are you going to punish yourself for it?

I think sometimes we become so obsessed with the dancer we could have been if we'd started earlier that we completely neglect the dancer we could still become now.

Maybe someone standing next to you has been training for fifteen years so of course they’re going to have experience you don’t have yet but that doesn’t mean there isn’t space for you.

You don’t need the same beginning to deserve the same destination.

Your journey might just look different getting there.

Being an adult beginner is actually fucking brave

I think teachers sometimes forget how intimidating it is to walk into your first dance class as an adult. Children are expected to be beginners, they’re expected to fall over, forget things, ask questions, look awkward, not know what they’re doing.

As adults, we spend most of our lives trying to look like we know what the fuck is going on 😂

Then suddenly you walk into a dance studio, you don’t know the terminology, the teacher says something that apparently everybody understands and you’re just copying the person next to you hoping nobody notices.

Your brain understands what your body is supposed to be doing, but your body has decided it absolutely will not be participating.

And you’re doing all of that in front of other people and there’s vulnerability in being visibly new at something.

So if you’ve walked into your first dance class at 25, 35, 45 or 65 and allowed yourself to be a beginner?

Give yourself some credit.

You did the hardest bit, you walked through the door.

Stop asking “Am I too old?” and ask what you actually want from dance

I also think we need to separate two completely different questions.

“Am I too old to become a dancer?”

And

“Am I too old to achieve this very specific professional dance career?”

Those aren't the same thing.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend age has absolutely no impact on certain professional pathways. Some careers have incredibly specific physical demands, training expectations and traditional routes into the industry.

If you're 45 and you've never taken a ballet class before, becoming a principal dancer at The Royal Ballet in 2 years probably isn't the most realistic goal 😂

But does that mean you're too old to learn ballet? Absolutely fucking not.

Being a dancer doesn't have to mean making dance your career.

You can train seriously, perform, take classes every week, become incredibly skilled, find a community, discover a completely new side of yourself or even just dance because it makes you feel alive.

Dance is still yours even if you never make a penny from it.

Can we also stop acting like dancers expire at 30?

Because the other side of this conversation isn't just about starting late.

It's about this weird idea that dancers eventually become too old to dance at all.

And I think women especially feel this.

You get into your late twenties and suddenly people start talking about what you're going to do after dance, like somebody is coming to confiscate your heels on your 30th birthday 😭

Of course our bodies change as we get older, the way we train might need to change,  our careers and priorities might change but getting older doesn't automatically take something away from your dancing.

Sometimes it adds to it.

Confidence, life experience, individuality, a deeper understanding of your body, better boundaries, understanding that you don't need to throw every trick you know into eight counts to prove you can dance.

There are things an older dancer can bring to movement that their younger self simply couldn't have brought yet.

Because the dancer you are at 35 has something the dancer you were at 20 could never have had:

Fifteen more years of life to put into your movement.

And I think that's beautiful.

Your dancing is allowed to evolve with you

Getting older doesn't mean desperately trying to preserve exactly how you danced at 18 forever.

Maybe your movement changes, strengths change. Maybe certain things don't feel as good on your body anymore and other things feel better.

Maybe you become less interested in tricks and more interested in musicality.

Maybe you become stronger and more controlled.

Maybe you finally stop giving a shit about what everybody else in the room thinks and start actually enjoying yourself 😂

Change isn't automatically decline.

Sometimes it's evolution.

You don't have to dance like the youngest person in the room to prove that you still belong in it.

You do not need to “make up for lost time”

I see this happen a lot when people discover dance later.

They fall in love with it.

And then suddenly they panic.

I need to catch up.

Five classes a week, private lessons, intensives, needing to rush through levels, wanting to be as good as the people who've been doing it for ten years.

And before they know it, this amazing new thing they've discovered has become another source of pressure. You do not need to cram ten years of training into one year.

You didn't “waste” those years You just weren't dancing yet

You are not behind, you are at the start of your journey so pleaseee let yourself actually enjoy it.

You are allowed to dance just because you love it

I think adulthood has this horrible habit of making us believe everything needs a purpose.

If we're going to spend time doing something, we should be good at it.

Maybe we should monetise it, it should become a career, we should post about it, we should achieve something from it.

But sometimes the purpose of dancing can literally just be:

I fucking love dancing.

That's moreee than enough.

You don't need to become professional to justify taking class or need to reach advanced, you don't need to perform or need thousands of followers.

You can be 42 years old, take a beginner dance class every Wednesday after work and have that be one of the best parts of your week.

That matters.

Imagine never starting because you thought you were too old

This is the bit I always think about.

Imagine you're 28.

You really want to start dancing, but you think:

I should've started at 18. It's too late now.

So you don't.

Ten years pass.

Now you're 38.

And you think:

Fuck. Imagine how good I'd be if I'd started when I was 28.

That's the trap.

There will always have been an earlier time you could have started.

The only point in that timeline you actually have any control over is now.

And yes, you might feel awkward.

You might be the oldest person in the room.

You might be the least experienced.

You might spend your first class facing completely the wrong direction while everybody else somehow knows what's going on 😂

Who cares?

One day you won't be the person taking their first class anymore.

And you'll probably look back and be so fucking glad that you didn't let something as inevitable as getting older stop you from doing something you wanted to do.

Because here's the thing:

You're going to get older whether you dance or not.

So take the class, be the beginner, look awkward, learn slowly.

Start at 18.

Start at 28.

Start at 48.

Start at 68.

There is no expiry date on becoming a dancer.