Our Encore The Silver Swans Taking The Lead

Meet Onehunga’s Bold Ballerinas

- Amy Prebble

Fresh from ballet class, AnneMay Morris and Rosemary Hepözden are sitting companionably in the kitchen at the Auckland Academy of Adult Ballet. The bench groans with baked goodies, courtesy of AnneMay, who got up early to whip up some treats, despite being in hospital with suspected appendicitis two days earlier. “She’s a miracle,” says Rosemary (63) fondly.

The pair are members of the Silver Swans, a ballet class for dancers aged 55-plus.

Rosemary was instrumental in getting the class up and running. She decided to go to an adult dance class after reading an article about it in the local newspaper nearly three years ago.

At that point, she’d moved house, her mother had just died and her son Jacob (now 21) had been hospitalised. “Everything in my life was so surreal,” she recalls. “There didn’t seem to be anything strange about taking up ballet aged 60 than anything else going on.”

The writer and editor was in for a rude awakening, though.

“We got up to the barre and I got a bit of a shock because I’d forgotten that people in their twenties are adults. I was standing next to a tiny woman who came up to my waist. I was this great galumphing thing. Fortunately, when you’re 60, you don’t mind so much looking ridiculous.”