MEMORIES AND MEANINGS OF DANCING FOR MANY YEARS: WHAT ELDERS WHO HAVE DANCED THROUGHOUT LIFE TELL US

One of the activities most often sought by the elderly is dancing. However, the meaning of dancing at that age remains to be examined. This study aimed at identifying memories and meanings brought by dancing to its practitioners throughout their lives. We interviewed elderly people who have danced for 57 years on average. For eliciting those memories. we used the Oral History technique; for extracting the meanings of dancing we used assumptions from Bioecological Theory of Human Development. The themes that emerged from the interviews were: Dancing as a life habit: Pathways travelled for learning how to dance: Reasons to practice dance; and the Meanings of dancing. They started to dance influenced by family and friends: now they keep dancing and they prefer evoking only good memories. By dancing they changed and were changed by the different environments. Dancing is a possibility for resilience, which drives the very possibility of dancing and adds will to live.