Dancing the years away

The lithe partners dance five nights a week in bay area studios and clubs. Their fitness and flexibility belie their age.

By Leonora LaPeter Anton, Times Staff Writer
Published November 25, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - On the oak floor at 1st Dance Studio, couples glide around the planks beneath the silver disco ball, like distant planets circling the sun.

Others sit at tiny tables around the edges, sipping Sprite.

One pair - petite, slender, dressed in matching black outfits - never sits down.

While the other couples try to follow the scripted steps of the foxtrot or the tango, Harriet Commander and Martin Elman flit around the dance floor like teenagers.

They've been dancing together for more than two decades and he can still lift her up over his head. He swings her like a machete, over his left hip, his right. He lobs her between his legs, pivots her upside down. Her long, slender legs curl around him, her tiny black skirt inching up her thigh.

The other dancers feign indifference to this acrobatic display. Here at the dance studio, appreciation goes to those who have perfected their ballroom steps. No one is going to applaud you for twirling your girlfriend like a baton, even if you are both 75 years old.

Harriet and Marty dance five days a week at dance studios, ballrooms and nightclubs throughout the Tampa Bay area, sometimes for as much as four hours.

They show us that people in their 70s have the capacity to be as young as they want to be - as long as they work at it. Their plan for retirement: to keep dancing as if the Grim Reaper were waiting at the table with the Sprites on it.

Marty and Harriet live in a small two-bedroom apartment in Seminole with a bench press, a treadmill and a gravity machine cramped into their small living room. They play basketball and tennis. They bowl and run.

Harriet - 93 pounds - works out her arms with a Thighmaster. She spritzes herself with fragrances by Mariah Carey and Cher and shops at places like Rave Girl for her junior clothes - satin halter tops, sequin dresses, short skirts. She's not above putting on a pair of fuchsia pants in an alligator print.

"She dresses like a kid," Marty says, pride in his voice.

He's 135 pounds and can bench press 150. He does 101 pushups and 1,000 situps just about every morning. He eats 15 vegetables a day and wears silky shirts that form-fit his chest.

"He's got the energy of a much younger man," Harriet says.

Marty says he feels 16. Harriet dates herself at about 35.

"That's a whole concept that I had to teach Harriet when we first met," says Marty, "that sitting too long and not exercising is not the best thing for a person who's getting on in years."

In 2000, Marty found out he had prostate cancer. His doctor told him to rest after his radiation treatments. He says he went for3-mile runs. Now he's in remission.

"I wanted to challenge my body and I'm none the worse for it," he says.

- - -

Harriet and Marty met about 22 years ago at a dance in Brooklyn. She was a widow with three daughters who had been a housewife for 33 years.

Marty owned a New York typesetting shop. He had "busted loose" from his marriage with a divorce that was so nasty he's still estranged from his three children.

Harriet and Marty spied each other across the dance floor and circled around. She wore black slacks, a white blouse, tied her dark red hair back with a barrette. He had curly dark hair and wore an olive green suit and a yellow shirt.

She walked up to him.

Harriet: "Are you with anyone?"

Marty: "No I'm here alone."

Harriet: "Do you dance?"

Marty: "I dance a little bit."

On their first date at a Chinese restaurant, she said: "Show me your divorce papers."

They were both Jewish, both 53, both looking for a new start. A little more than a year later, he gave her a 1.12-carat heart-shaped diamond. She placed it on her wedding finger and they decided never to get married. They don't need to, he says.

- - -

It's just after 7 p.m., a Saturday night at the 1st Dance Studio in St. Petersburg. A handful of couples quietly perform the West Coast Swing around the dance floor in front of a bank of mirrors and a string of white lights.

Harriet is griping at Marty on the dance floor. He has just twirled her out and pulled her back in like a yo-yo.

"Your grip is so hard on my hand," she tells him. "If you danced with another woman, she'd walk away."

"Sometimes I have to tell him to calm down. I'm not steel," she says later. "He's a very energetic man. Sometimes he demands too much and I have to say no. I don't feel up to it."

She's 5 feet 2, reed thin with short white hair and hazel eyes. She has scoliosis and the condition has curved her spine almost into an S. Sometimes, when she's been dancing awhile, she gets a slight limp.

Harriet broke her wrist at the beginning of a dance Memorial Day weekend. She took a few steps backward and one heel caught the other, sending her onto the floor. She had to wait at the emergency room for eight hours in an off-the-shoulder gold sequined blouse, pants and 3-inch gold heels.

"So you finally dropped her," several dancers said to Marty when they returned a few weeks later. The "I told you so" was thick in their voices.

"No, I didn't drop her," he replied indignantly.

Marty is 5 feet 6, with thick glasses and gray hair smoothed with spray. His back is a little hunched, like a turtle's, but his muscles bulge. He has practiced his moves so long with Harriet, he claims it is impossible to drop her. This is a point of pride for him.

But he acknowledges Harriet has slowed down in the past few years. "I've had to accommodate it and if I don't, I hear it," he says.

Long after the other dancers sit down for breaks, Marty and Harriet are still blazing across the dance floor. They've been dancing for about two hours.

"They're the proverbial pink bunny beating the drums," says Wendell Reid, 84, sitting with his 82-year-old girlfriend. "What do you call it? The Energizer Bunnies."

- - -

As the lights go out at 1st Dance Studio around 10 p.m., the couples slip out, done for the night, headed for home.

Harriet and Marty head on over to Bricktown 54, a Clearwater dance club that plays '70s and '80s music.

The place resembles a massive warehouse with dance platforms, a disco ball and dozens of lights splashing waves of red, blue and yellow across the floor. Here, people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s work the room, many of them hoping to meet someone, to the blaring sounds of Come on Eileen and Brick House.

Harriet and Marty are easily the oldest couple in the club, but they fit in here even better than they do in the dance studios they frequent the rest of the week.

Harriet even won sexiest Halloween costume one year when she donned a short red sequin dress. Marty dressed as a rapper.

They prefer to dance center stage on the raised platform in the middle of the club. Sometimes, they dance together with their fancy lifts and flips. But mostly they dance freestyle. When a bride and her bridesmaids form a conga line on the stage, Marty shakes his hips and his arms and sports a big smile. Harriet holds on to a pole in front of her, swivels her hips and does partial back bends.

A guy with a peach shirt opened down to his navel, a tan beret and snakeskin boots takes Harriet in his arms and before she knows it, he has tossed her down over his knee, his hand in the small of her back, her skirt hitched up.

He is impressed with her flexibility.

"You're killing me," says Otto Johnson, 47, of Clearwater.

When she goes to the bathroom, young women fawn all over her.

"You're awesome," says a girl with long brown hair in a sock cap.

A woman in a low-cut striped shirt approaches Harriet. She has a peachy complexion and shiny hair. "I was here on your birthday last year. How old are you?"

Harriet is washing her hands in the sink. She takes a paper towel from the bathroom attendant.

"I'm going to be 75 next week," Harriet replies.

"Ooooohhh. I want to grow up and be like you."

Harriet turns to go.

"Be like yourself," she says over her shoulder.

Leonora LaPeter Anton can be reached at 727 893-8640 or lapeter@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 23, 2007, 11:59:45]