Crescent Elderflowers

It's not often I find myself wishing myself older but that's what happened today when I met the Crescent Elderflowers Dance Company, a lively, lovely bunch of older women based in the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast. I wanted to be one of them. But to be an Elderflower you have to be aged over 60. The youngest is 62, the oldest 80.

Renee, 71, tells me she has two artificial knees but that hasn't put her off embracing her "inner dancer" as she calls it, although yesterday's knee bending warm up was a bit much. She told their 27 year choreographer Eileen McClory to go easier on them!

Moya, one of the youngest, in her early sixties, said they've been discovering bits of themselves they haven't used in a while.

They've got a show coming up this Friday. "Here Comes the Sun" has been devised by the women themselves, who have lived, worked and raised families in Belfast for the past 40 years.

They appear as mothers, wives, British army, paramilitaries and children playing with toy guns.

They talk about how, when their teenage children went out at night, during the height of the Troubles, they didn't rest until everyone was back under the roof of the house again - worried that they would get caught up in trouble or end up being arrested.

Set against the drama outside their front door, life ticked on and, in one section, they try to remember who among them was the first to own a washing machine. 

There's so much laughter and energy I'm reminded of that film "Cocoon", when the older people get a new lease of life from the rocks the aliens have left in the swimming pool next door to their retirement home. Except this time, there are no extra terrestrials but a lot of endorphins released by exercise and movement.

And as well as a health kick, local older age groups like the Elderflowers could be in line for a financial kick too. A new fund has just been announced by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which is giving £700,000 in an Arts and Older People programme.

 The Crescent Elderflowers perform "Here Comes the Sun" in St Mary's University College as part of Feile an Phobail on Friday 6th August at 3pm.