Crows Feet Dance Collective is the brainchild of Jan Bolwell who is the director and main choreographer of this unique dance company. Founded in 1999, Crows Feet has grown from a small group of four dancers in Wellington city to four groups with more than 40 dancers based in Wellington, the Kapiti Coast, Lower Hutt and Palmerston North.

Membership is open to women over 35 and there is no requirement to have dance experience, which means the groups are a mix of experienced, less experienced and beginner dancers. For the past 20 years the group has choreographed and performed a new programme of contemporary dance each year.

Jan formed Crows Feet when, at age 48 in 1998, she was twice struck down with breast cancer. As part of her recovery Jan started dancing again with fellow dance educators. When filmmaker Dame Gaylene Preston saw Jan perform her dance Off My Chest she included it in her film about breast cancer titled Titless Wonders.

“After seeing the film, I had a number of women approach me and ask me to teach them to dance and from there Crows Feet was born,” Jan says. “The collective provides dance opportunities for mature performers and there are now similar groups scattered up and down the country.”

Jan is a playwright, performer, choreographer, dance educator and director as well as producer, running her own theatre company Handstand Productions. To date, five of her six plays have toured extensively throughout the country.

She has created more than 30 works for Crows Feet with the latest, Woman Life Freedom, being performed in March at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse.

“I am hugely committed to highlighting the inequities and challenges that women around the world face, hence the focus of the latest performance which is about the plight of women around the world as their rights and freedoms are diminished,” Jan says.

“With the blessing of Iranian Solidarity New Zealand, we called our new work Woman, Life, Freedom – the battle cry of the Kurdish and Iranian women following the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Iranian morality police.

It features the words of the great poets Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou and Warsan Shire and it throws open a window on the oppression of women in both the East and the West.”

Wellingtonian Trish Stevenson joined Crows Feet Collective 10 years ago and says that while she was a regular yoga practitioner, she felt that she wanted to participate in something with more movement to complement her yoga practice.

“I had not really danced as an adult, despite various attempts, but I had tap danced as a child. I lived in the country and came from a large family, and it got to the stage where my mother couldn’t keep up with transporting me to dance classes, so I gave up.”

But she never gave up that love of dance. “I lived in London for several years and made a very good friend over there who invited me to join her at the Collective when I returned to New Zealand. It’s fantastic having such a vibrant network of women who all love to dance."

The Wellington Crows Feet Collective meets weekly for 90 minutes, but when they have a performance scheduled they include extra classes and rehearsals. Classes start with warmups and stretching before moving into learning choreographed dances developed by Jan.

Trish says they all have a huge amount of fun. “I get slightly nervous the closer we get to a performance, but as long as I know the piece really well and can visualise myself performing the whole dance, then the easier the performance and the nerves become.

“Dancing and performing really activates unconscious levels of learning as we learn to use our peripheral vision and our spatial awareness, along with an increased understanding of our body movements in relation to the music and others around us. Jan’s choreography also opens up all sorts of music and movement genres previously unknown to me. It’s certainly widened and deepened my life experience.”

As a collective, Crows Feet members become involved in many aspects of production, contributing to areas where they have strengths and other skills, such as set design and visual imagery.

This has enabled Trish to go in so many directions and explore opportunities that she hadn’t previously thought about. “It really is a lyrical way of getting exercise as well.”

Wellington isn’t the only region that supports an active adult dance sector; Canterbury’s Rebound Dance Company also provides opportunities for mature dancers to participate and continue with their passion for dance.

Rebound Dance Company started in 2009 when dancers Marlene Le Gren, Tracy Scott and Fleur de Thier met for coffee and a chat. More than a decade on, Rebound is a platform for performance and professional development for seasoned, mature dancers. Unlike Crows Feet Collective that’s open to women of all dance abilities, Rebound dancers are experienced choreographers and dancers who come together to continue to dance and perform. At present there are 12 core members of the company and one experienced theatre performer. The youngest is 49 years old and the oldest member is 76, and every one of the dancers has been a member for more than eight years.

The company performs at least one contemporary dance performance a year and usually produces a theatre show as well.

Fleur says she has always danced and doesn’t really know any other way of life. “I get such joy from teaching, it’s so satisfying and enriching and I love the joy it brings to others.”

She also teaches a community dance session at the Linwood Art Gallery. The classes are open to anyone over 55 and for all levels of dance expertise, from absolute beginners through to those with a bit more experience.

“Teaching dance in this way enables me to nurture my own body as I get older as well as others. The joy it brings to others is what keeps me doing this. It’s very special.”

Seasoned

Members of both the Crows Feet Collective and Rebound have participated in Seasoned, a mature dance festival that provides genre, culture, dance and movement workshops with skilled professional tutors. The festival enables dancers to connect with mature movers from across New Zealand and Australia, with the most recent symposium being held in Christchurch in 2023. Seasoned was started by Tracy Scott and Fleur de Thier after they attended a similar event in Australia. Planning is currently underway for the 2025 event.