Ask anyone to draw a picture of a dancer and the overwhelming likelihood is that they’ll sketch a body that is slim, graceful and implicitly young. Mainstream dance fetishises youth perhaps more than any other art form, but in celebrating athletic agility it also narrows the opportunities for audiences to see their own bodies reflected on stage. 

More recently, however, the genre has been starting to catch on to the notion that we are all going to age, there is beauty in it, and the ageing process itself is a rich seam of substance to explore onstage. All of these ideas were entry points for dancer and academic Finola Cronin, when co-creating new piece Dances Like A Bomb, along with fellow performer Mikel Murfi and Junk Ensemble artistic directors Jessica and Megan Kennedy. 

‘It’s not just about the experience of being older,’ says Cronin. ‘It’s also a much wider interrogation of how society views somebody getting older.’ The piece, Cronin says, reveals things about the body that are both frail and strong, while at the same time testing perceptions (both our own and those of others) about our ageing bodies. 

‘We’ve had great fun teasing out these ideas about what it means to get older. Because, of course, people say, “oh gosh, I feel like 25 inside”. And we do at times. We don’t go around constantly saying, “I’m 45 or I’m 65 and therefore I must behave accordingly”. It doesn’t work like that.’

Cronin’s own experiences of the dance world are perhaps more unusual than most when it comes to appreciating the power of an ageing body. In her 20s, she danced with Pina Bausch’s company at a time when the German was a pioneer for working with older dancers (indeed Bausch herself continued to dance into her 60s). ‘When I joined the company, there were already people there who were a good ten years older than me which, of course, in your 20s, that’s ancient,’ Cronin says. ‘One couldn’t help but be impressed by their wealth of experience and ability.’ 

Bausch also made space for women to return to dance after giving birth, frequently accommodating children in her rehearsal room. ‘And this was in the 80s,’ says Cronin. ‘It wasn’t, in my experience, something that I would have met or heard about in other walks of life; you know, that sort of latitude.’ 

Now Cronin believes attitudes are starting to change. ‘I had, I think, assumed wrongly that this piece would be something for older dancer festivals. But that’s not how it seems to be panning out at all . . . I think people are interested these days in looking at difference; different kinds of bodies.’

Age, says Cronin, doesn’t have to stand in antithesis to that preconception of the agile dancer. ‘The image of the dancer is about being lithe, flexible, muscular, capable; and I suppose we are those things as we age, but in different ways.’

Dances Like A Bomb, ZOO Southside, 15–27 August, 2.40pm.