Judith Lynne Hanna, stars in her first music video at 82 years of age- Blog de Danza
Egg Drop Soup’s “Partying Alone” video is about a dance audition with a mature woman’s vision of girl power. The jury is stunned when a gray-haired, 80-year-old granny tosses aside her cane and lets go, letting her hair down and dancing.
With a second glance at that head-banging grandmother we observe that: she is none other than renowned dance researcher and anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna. An affiliate research professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, author of numerous scholarly books and an expert on essays for dancers, she has devoted her career to thinking about dance’s relationship to society. Hanna, 82, said she hadn’t performed since college when she got a call from a music video producer, who saw her dancing with her 13-year-old grandson. The rockers at Egg Drop Soup loved her energy and took her to Los Angeles for a day-long video shoot.
This is the interview that Dance Magazine conducted with him;
He recently starred in a hard rock music video for Egg Drop Soup in Los Angeles. How did this happen?
The Fox Force producers knew about me through Merrick, my 13-year-old grandson who tells stories through hip hop. It takes place on “America’s Got Talent” and was filmed backstage.
#UNameItChallenge with my 80 yr Old Grandmother! Full Version!
I usually take one hour of class a day, maybe two hours. For the shoot, I did the routine about 10 times over seven hours with the camera people shooting from different angles. I was so exhausted, mentally and physically, by the end of the day. I was surprised by Alexi Papadimitriou’s choreography. I had wild rock and burlesque concert moves that I had never done before. The video directors wanted me to be an angry old woman who amazed everyone by dancing like a young person, so I just followed the instructions.
When did you start dancing?
I was about 8, I studied ballet because I had flat feet and the pediatrician said ballet would make them strong. Alicia Markova’s experience with flat feet and ballet was different from mine. She became an amazing dancer, but well…my feet never got strong, but I got hooked on dancing. I became a dance researcher.
Tell us about your research.
My research began when my husband and I spent a year in Africa, 1963, in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and Egypt. In Africa, dancing was the way to tell people what it was like to be a mother, a father, a warrior, a good wife. All these things are reflected in who dances what, where, when and how. And it was through dance that people were able to criticize the leaders, often through metaphor, but people knew who the dancers were referring to. Dancing is often a libel-free place.
And you’ve observed how the sexes meet through dance in the United States.
I noticed that as I observed dance in the United States, over time I saw different gender relations: first it was women flying into the arms of men, then there were men flying into the arms of women. Finally, it had unisex couples: men interacting with men and women interacting with women. Sexual representation on stage changed. It is difficult to know whether the arts influenced society or society influenced the arts. But some people will see those images for the first time and learn about the social roles of them.
He has also researched and written about exotic dance and has served as an expert witness in more than 140 trial cases across the country since 1995. Why is this important?
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of expression, and exotic dance is, in fact, a form of dance and communication with its own aesthetic, and therefore, falls under the umbrella of the First Amendment. If the expression of one group is suppressed, this can happen to another group.
His most recent book is Dancing to Learn: Cognition, Emotion and the Movement of the Brain. What can you share with us about this?
Dancing to Learn updates the field of dance on what has recently been learned about dance from the brain sciences. One of the important elements about the mind-body connection is that you use the same parts of the brain for dance and verbal language. Dance creates new brain cells and their interconnections, which help improve cognition. Research has shown that dance can also help us cope with stress and help improve Parkinson’s symptoms and prevent dementia and other diseases.
When dance is used in schools, it can improve academic performance because children like to be active and dance motivates them. For example, creatively dancing a mathematical concept means that you have to know the mathematics to be able to translate it into dance; the dance imposes the concept. Many people focus on somatics and the idea of the body talking. But the body can only speak through the brain because it interprets bodily sensations to give them meaning. So this focus on somatics, without acknowledging the neuroscience research of the last decade, misses some pretty critical information.
Do you still dance every day?
Yes, I take Flamenco and Oriental Dance at the Seber Method Academy in Washington, DC. I also do jazzercise and go salsa dancing.
As an octogenarian, I am the poster child for dancing at any age.