Dancing through life: ex-ballerina reflects on a lifetime of exercise
She was one of the greatest Australian dancers. But in her 80s, former ballerina Marilyn Jones is no fan of exercise – apart from cartwheeling her legs over her cat.
Ravaged? Ask Marilyn Jones, renowned classical dancer and a founding member of the Australian Ballet, about the impact of age on her 84-year-old body and she will counter you with a laugh.
“I have a cat that sleeps with me,” she says from her quiet home on Victoria’s east coast, “and he’s always on the side of the bed which is closest to the toilet. In the middle of the night I do a cartwheel with my legs to get over the cat – and when I’m back in bed I think oh Marilyn, you’re so stupid. Just move the cat.”
Having spent a significant part of her career physically primed, those midnight callisthenics appear to be an aberration in Ms Jones’s post-work world. After decades dancing and teaching, she retired at 65. In the years since, physical exertion has become less of an imperative. “I did it all my life,” she says, “so that’s the last thing I do.”
In her mid-80s, her fitness regimen largely centres on walking her golden retriever – which in turn is limited to her ageing pet’s desire to actually move on any given day.
That paucity of exercise might be contrary to popular health advice. Yet even without much current exertion, years of dance appear not to have ravaged Ms Jones’s body. She’s had both hips replaced, but suspects this was due to age, rather than the impacts of her profession.
Overall, she says, decades of physical toil as a dancer “has certainly not done any harm – I’m just lazy; I could probably do some exercise and swing a leg or two”.
That she can still swing her legs over her sleeping cat says something of her enduring agility, to her own amazement. “I don’t feel 84 but your body tells you otherwise,” she says of her declining strength and energy, her tendency to tire more easily, and a mind that remains sharp but not quite as sharp as it was. “I haven’t got, what do you call it?” she says with a laugh, momentarily forgetting the word dementia.
Recently, in the long process of recovering from Covid-related pneumonia, a hint of loneliness has slipped into her world. Her marriage to fellow principal dancer Garth Welch having long ended, she speaks daily to her two sons, one of whom lives in Melbourne and the other in the US. She also has wonderful neighbours. But the four-hour journey between her home and her friends and family in Melbourne is becoming more tricky. “Now it’s not so much fun to travel, whereas I would think nothing of it when I was younger; just the luggage and I’m not as strong as I used to be,” she says, adding: “I’m in contact with people but I do miss that (in-person) contact.”
To be 84, she says, “is a bit frustrating because you can’t do all the things you think you can do physically.” Still, she marvels at her ongoing mobility, and the fact she has reached an age that, although increasingly common, comparatively few have or will still experience.
Growing up in Newcastle, so few people she knew even reached their 80s that she never considered she might. Her father died of a heart attack at 55 and her mother of bowel cancer in her 70s. So yes, she is in awe that her lifespan is already considerably longer than her parents: “I’m quite surprised I am still here.”
She does not miss the routine of work but still adores the theatre and continues to volunteer with artistic organisations. She has also recently been a judge for a ballet scholarship. But she declined an offer a few years back to return to the stage. “I did my bit. I’m not going back. I would like people to remember me how I was, not an 84-year-old lady that can’t turn out. If I pointed my foot (today) I’d get a cramp.”
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