97. Pacemakers Dance Team- Living Proof That Age Is Just a Number

In this uplifting and high-energy episode, host Amber Bardon welcomes the dynamic and inspiring Pacemakers Dance Team, a senior dance troupe breaking barriers and shaking up aging stereotypes one dance step at a time. Ranging in age from 60 to 86, these talented performers use hip hop, jazz, and tap to inspire audiences and redefine what it means to grow older with style and vitality.

From flash mobs in airports to standing ovations at baseball stadiums, the Pacemakers are dancing into hearts around the world. Now, they’re sharing how it all started, what keeps them moving, and why dance is truly for everyone.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

•  The origin story of the Pacemakers from cyberbullying to global stardom
•  Why dance is about heart, not just choreography
•  How they accommodate dancers of all abilities and backgrounds
•  The team’s viral rise and global impact, including a trip to Austria and Lady Gaga’s album launch
•  The science behind choreography and cognitive health in older adults
•  The power of kindness, community, and joy in building a purpose-driven team
•  Behind-the-scenes stories of unforgettable performances and flash mobs

Connect with the Pacemakers
🌐 Website: www.pacemakersdanceteam.com
📱 Instagram, TikTok & Facebook: @pacemakersdanceteam
🛍️ Shop their brand-new merch
📺 See them perform: Catch their recent performance on The Drew Barrymore Show and viral videos with over 59M views online! 

Find us online:
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Transcript

Amber Bardon: Welcome to Raising Tech podcast. I'm your host Amber Bardon, and today's episode is going to be absolutely amazing. We have joining us the Pacemakers Dance Team. The Pacemakers dance Team is a fierce, funny, and irresistibly inspiring troop of seniors ages 60 to 86, whose mission is to upend stereotypes and celebrate old age one groovy grapevine at a time, this high energy crew performs crowd pleasing hip hop, tap, and jazz routines, plus surprise flash mobs to cheering crowds in standing ovations.

Ooh, I love that flash mob. I wanna ask you guys more about that. The pacemakers wear their years of birth big and bold on the backs of their costumes for all to see proving there is no shame in getting old. It is a badge of honor and it's aspirational. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you.

Thank you. [00:01:00] Thank 

Alfred Gonzalez: you. 

Amber Bardon: . I'd love to have you all go around and just say hello and maybe tell our audience a little bit about who you are to start off with.

Joanne Wolfring: Hi, my name is Joanne Wolfring and I am here on Long Island and I'm part of the Pacemaker dance troupe. I'm one of the dance captains, and I started as a pacemaker in 2019, just around when the pandemic occurred and I was able to audition on Zoom online actually in this room where I am right now with my dance shoes on and from the rest of there is history.

It's just been an amazing journey being part of this wonderful dance team and to be helping out with Alfred with choreography and helping out each week. And of course our amazing leader, Susan.

Alfred Gonzalez: Hi, I'm Alfred Gonzalez and uh, this is my fourth season with the Pacemakers.

I'm originally from Southern California. I moved to New York 50 years ago in the seventies to be a professional dancer. And after that I had a long career of being a dance teacher. [00:02:00] And uh, finding the pacemakers was a real blessing and. I gave my dance performing career, a real recharge at the age of 71.

Amber Bardon: I can't wait to hear more about how the pacemakers came to be. Susan, can you give us a little bit of background on that? Did you start the, the concept. 

Susan Avery: It wasn't my idea. I'll tell you the backstory. Back in 2017, somebody saw me dancing in public and took some video and put it on social media and some stranger.

And I learned what it was like to be cyber bullied. People started commenting and saying things like, you're too old to dance in public. You should stay home. Really horrible things. You're ugly, you're this, you're that. You're just too old. And so that evening I was at dinner at this very table I'm sitting at right now, and I said to my daughter I guess my dancing days are over.

And she said, why don't you start your own old person dance team? And I thought. I was journalist at the time and journalists worked solo. I don't know anything about, being on a team and so [00:03:00] I, I thought it was an interesting idea. So I did I put an ad in Playbill Magazine and backstage and asked for old folks to show up to an audition for, to start a dance team.

Whole bunch of people showed up and. We started rehearsing, but the thing was we weren't rehearsing with any goal. We just started learning dances together. So I sent out our rehearsal videos to friends and one of my friends works at the Brooklyn Cyclones, which is the New York Mets farm team, and she said, I want you to perform.

At a cyclones game. And I said to her, but they don't like old people. People don't wanna see old people dancing. And she said, just come. And that was July 6th, 2019 was our first performance. And to my utter shock, we had got a standing ovation. And ever since then, our dance card is full. 

Amber Bardon: Wow. That is incredible.

So how did you find the other dancers?

Susan Avery: Truthfully, anybody who showed up [00:04:00] made it onto the team because we like it.

I always say it was like Gilligan's Island. We were going on a tour to, we didn't know where. And we we just started, these people just started meeting every Saturday. Rehearsing and um, we got our first gig a couple of months later it's been a wild ride ever since. So 

Amber Bardon: where did you come up with the name of the pacemakers?

Susan Avery: That's a great question. I meditate every day and one day I was meditating and the word pacemaker bubbled up in my meditation. And I did a quick search on the US Trademark Office website to see if anybody owned the word pacemaker.

Nobody owned the word, so I immediately trademarked it. I trademarked our slogan, which is We Dance With Heart. My daughter created our logo, so I trademarked that and then I trademarked in it in the European Union as well. So it was just one of those things. Everybody loves the name because it really, it's this double entendre of, we're setting the pace and you know what a pacemaker is as it keeps your heart going.

Everybody loves the name and gets a good chuckle out of it. [00:05:00] 

Amber Bardon: Wow. It's amazing. And you guys can tell from my questions, I don't know anything about the dance world, so I'm really interested in just like being educated. So, Alfred, tell me a little bit about your background and your story and how did you come to, to be part of the pacemakers?

Alfred Gonzalez: Like I said, I moved to New York originally to be a professional dancer and and then. Like most professional dancers, you transition into a dance teaching career eventually. And I did that for a lot of years and I really wasn't performing much at all. And I saw pacemakers on the news and they said, oh, pacemakers are having an audition.

And I was like, yeah, great. And they, but it turned out that the auditions had ended the day before. And so my husband was watching it and he said, he just pointed at me and he says you have to join that team. Being a performer in my blood. And he could see it, and he said, you gotta get back in there.

Yeah. So it was, like I said before, it was a blessing to find and research in my career. Since I joined, I hope that I've helped [00:06:00] to up the level. Bringing my expertise as being a former professional. I was in ballet Spano, and I worked with dance companies, you know, serious dance companies, you know, so, uh, I've had that experience.

But this is unique in that we're all the same age, and it's not being worried about being the oldest one all the time. Pretty soon, like you're the oldest one in the company and it's just there's that kind of nail biting that kind of goes on in inside.

But, no more of that. Here I am, I'm in the middle age of people. I'm not the youngest. I'm not the oldest. And I, I get a chance to dance full blast and just keep doing it as long as I can. I guess 

Amber Bardon: I really admire. People who have that talent to be able to dance.

Like I, it's one of the things I wish if I could have like magic powers and suddenly have a talent, it would be to dance because I'm a terrible dancer. And it's so fun though. So 

Speaker 3: that's great. 

Amber Bardon: It's so exciting to hear your stories that you came from this professional career and you're able [00:07:00] to continue it for on past when you thought maybe you weren't gonna be dancing publicly anymore.

Joanne, tell us a little bit more about your background and then I'm gonna come back to Susan and ask her some additional Sure. 

Joanne Wolfring: I am actually a retired elementary school teacher. I taught kindergarten through sixth grade for 34 years. And prior to that I was a dancer as a little girl and then became a dance teacher, and then did the choreography and drama clubs at school and all.

And I just loved teaching dance and of course loved performing. So that kind of went by the wayside kind of after my as I was teaching school and having my family. And then I ended up, reinvigorating what being reinvigorated with tap dancing. And I had a friend who was already on the pacemakers and she told me, Hey, guess what?

There's going to be an audition and it's going to be on Zoom. And like I said before, it was in this very room that you auditioned for the pacemakers. And I never knew that it would bring me to this journey. And being able to be. Able to perform with all of these amazing people. And, every week we do a name game and Susan did a name game a few weeks [00:08:00] ago and it's where we say our name and she poses a question to the truth, not like what's your favorite color, but really some like in-depth questions.

And it's really one of the questions was like, what did it mean to you to be on the team and like one word to describe yourself. Everybody around the room was able to come up with different words. And the one that really resonated with me was being reinvigorated and also being able to say, what's my next chapter?

What's my next chapter going to look like? And this has given us, like Alfred and I were able to travel with Susan to Austria, and I remember having a conversation with Alfred, say, did we ever in million years think that we would be sitting here? Austria dancing and performing and bringing that love of dance to every age, and we had no idea.

And it really has just given us a whole avenue to explore and to be able to reach so many people. And I kind of love how you said that you're not a dancer because we really brought ourselves in that everybody is a dancer. So on the team we're, we come from all different walks of life.

We have doctors and nurses and teachers and [00:09:00] psychologists, and it's just the puppetry. We have somebody who does puppetry and everybody comes from a different dance background and some people learn a little quicker than others, and that's where Alfred and I come in with that choreography piece.

But when we perform and we're doing something like the YMCA, if everybody can move an arm, their legs smile, you're dancing. So I think we have to do a little dance at the end with you, Amber. 

Amber Bardon: Yes. Oh, so many questions. Okay. What do I wanna ask first? So I was gonna ask if everybody comes from a dance background, so that, that was one of my questions and I was, I wanna ask a little bit more about that.

But before I ask anymore, I just, this is so amazing. I, as I shared before we started recording, I've been working in senior living for 20 years. I think that there is just we need to have such a shift into against ageism and that once you hit a certain age life just isn't that fun anymore and you guys are just showing what's possible and how to have fun and that that you can start over and get back involved in something.

And I'm curious to hear about people who've never been dancers before who come and become part of the organization. So [00:10:00] Susan, like how do you pick who the dancers are? Like what are the qualifications? Do they have to be dancers? Are they. All from New York. Tell me a little bit about that process.

Susan Avery: We have one major qualification. You have to have a good heart. You have to be a good person. We take care of the dancing. Alfred has been dancing all his life. Joanne's been dancing all her life. Most people on the team are like me. People who picked it up later in life. We always loved dancing at Sweet Sixteens and Bar Mitzvahs and weddings, when we were younger, but no.

Serious dance. Most people do not have serious dance training. They're just, most of the people are like me, who just have a love of dance. So Alfred and Joanne are in that special category of people who've done it, very seriously at younger ages. But the most important thing, and it's in our contract, is what we call the kindness clause.

You have to be a good person, supportive of your fellow dancers. Just, you have to be a compassionate [00:11:00] person. We could take care of the dance. We can't fix somebody who has a like, you know, isn't. With us on the same level compassionately. And that's really a key because I'll explain why.

We say, when you come into rehearsal, we rehearse every Saturday without fail, rain, shine, holidays, whatever it is, every single Saturday, you leave your troubles at the door and you come in and you bring joy into the room. And that's what we bring out into the world. So we're all about laughter. Our dances are.

Very funny. People get a kick out of them. We get standing ovations. We do amazing moves that people don't expect, people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties to be able to do. But you come in with a good heart, with an open mind and being supportive, and the rest takes care of itself. It's magical.

Amber Bardon: Wow. So that's, I'm just imagining me in my forties trying to do some of you have 20 years to be on the team. Yeah. I know 

Alfred Gonzalez: you said a long way to go. I, 

Amber Bardon: I'm sure that you are [00:12:00] probably more physically agile than I am in many ways. Do you ever run into issues where someone has like physical limitations?

Like I'm even thinking at my age that there's things I can't do and like how do you work around that? 

Susan Avery: So there's nobody on the team who doesn't have a physical disability. I'm not kidding you. And mental health also truly every single person on the team has something going on. And I am absolutely not exaggerating.

I could tell you that Joanne and Alfred, if they're, if they wanna share, have had some major things. I've had knee surgery in the past couple years. Back problems. We have all kinds of issues. We have people with stage four cancer on the team. People who just the immobility is there.

We work around it, we make it work. We're not, we are a precision dance team. And we do the best we can to make our performances look right. We don't, just so you know, we practice, Alfred said a serious dance team. We are very serious in rehearsal. So that we could bring the joy [00:13:00] outside.

We practice for hours and hours on one dance routine week after week. Like I always say, our middle name is, do it again. We just practice over and over. So if somebody is having hip surgery, we deal with it. If some, whatever it is, everybody on the team has something going on.

Amber Bardon: So Alfred and Joanne, are you primarily responsible for coming up with the choreography and how do you incorporate people's limitations into that? Good question. So Susan, do you wanna speak of the choreography? Yeah, I'll take 

Susan Avery: that. We have a choreographer that's part of our team who's 30 years younger than I am, and she is amazing.

She's. She, even though she's 30 years younger than I am, we, she's like our mother. She comes up with all the choreography. She is the role model for compassion. She's just an extraordinary person. So she comes up with all the choreography, teaches it to us over and over again. 'cause one problem with being older is we forget things.

She's [00:14:00] very understanding about that. So Marissa is our amazing choreographer. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah that's incredible. Did you, Alfred, were you gonna add something to that? 

Alfred Gonzalez: I was just gonna say and because Joanne and I have dance backgrounds, there's vocabulary in dance, like their ballet terms and their jazz terms, tap terms, all this stuff.

And since Joanne and I pretty much are familiar with all of them, whenever Marissa, who has complete professional, variety of training, even, cheer, drill team training, when she starts to, to to relate the certain moves, we we can, we kinda understand her and we can maybe translate it because Joanna and I were both dance teachers and we both taught kids.

So sometimes you have to boil down movement. So we'll be good for you, Amber. We can boil down movement into like really simple language and just, and just, and that's how we help people along with it, understanding these kind of different levels of ability that that kind of that we have to work with.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I 

Alfred Gonzalez: had a complete shoulder replacement, [00:15:00] so it's, I had to, whoa. It was like, it really backed me up for quite a few months, but, hey, you live with it. Yeah. 

Joanne Wolfring: Yeah. You do your 

Alfred Gonzalez: best with what you have. 

Joanne Wolfring: And to add to that, what Alfred was saying was like the terminology and us. Teaching children, it's the same thing if I'm not really an artist.

So if I had to learn how to draw something or do something else, I would have to start with the basics. So we're able to use certain counts, we're able to help out with using certain words during a song to help with choreography. Susan and our choreographers send out videos every week. So just like with anything, it's like homework, but it's fun homework.

So we sit at home and we go over the video. She has extra rehearsals on Zoom and in person. So anything to help along everybody to have that level of comfort and to be able to bring that joy to the dance floor. And I myself had two knee surgeries and three long surgeries. So one crazy story, I was tap dancing with the pacemakers and I had a collapsed lung and had no idea.

And then the next day I was. On the operating table. So we had like a video of me tap [00:16:00] dancing and doing it all. True 

Susan Avery: story, true story. 

Joanne Wolfring: Said staying in shape, really helped along with that. And I wore my pacemaker jersey outside of the hospital when I left, so I could just get right back on that dance floor.

So it's a goal for all of us. 

Amber Bardon: I know that one of the big challenges with older adults is social isolation and loneliness, and just thinking about, the purpose and routine that you're bringing to people that get to be part of the troop just sounds it sounds like it just is inspiring to you personally, but I'm, as I'm assured, all of your followers as well.

So along those lines, Susan, one of the things I'm curious about, so you started in 2019 and then you had your audition and you had your dancers, and then of course we all know what happened. The pandemic hit. So how did you grow the pacemakers? How did people find out about it? How did you deal when, deal, deal with it, when you couldn't perform publicly during the pandemic?

Can you tell me a little bit about that? And then what as a follow up to that, what is the size of your audience today and what does your performance schedule look like? 

Susan Avery: [00:17:00] Okay. So we didn't miss a beat. Our final rehearsal was ever, what that Saturday, I think it was March 9th, 2020, whatever that Saturday was.

And. We didn't miss a beat right after that. We went right on Zoom and because we're in New York we have lots of friends in the Broadway community. So we had one of the choreographers from Hamilton came on Zoom with us because there was no theater. So they would, so people from different Broadway shows would come on, zooms with us and teach us Broadway choreography.

They even choreographed new numbers for us. So we never missed a beat. We just stayed on Zoom throughout the whole pandemic. And we just, we're, I hate to say this 'cause this is gonna sound so trite, but it becomes like a family. So when, when you said the thing about Joanne had a collapsed lung, Alfred had his shoulder issue.

Even with those things, people still come to rehearsal and just the, if they can't move, they just sit in the back because they wanna be with us every Saturday. We don't ever want somebody [00:18:00] to stay home and isolate. That's the worst thing you could do. So we always say to people still come to rehearsal.

Like we had, one member who had foot surgery, that's major. He couldn't dance at all, but he came with his crutches every single week for months and just sat in the back to be with his. His crew. So we, we're, it's, we're more than just a dance team. We are a very special community to each other.

We care about each other personally. I open the doors every Saturday at 10. Rehearsal starts at 10 30 and at 10, you would think it was a high school reunion every single weekend. Every single weekend from 10 to 10 30, that room is buzzing. Nobody walks in like miserable. Everybody's oh my God, how's your grandchild?

I heard about the baby, blah, blah, blah. It's so loud. I actually have to yell to get everybody's attention. So that's just, ongoing. So 

Amber Bardon: yeah. So how did you grow awareness about the pacemakers and how did you start your public performances? [00:19:00] And just tell me a little bit about that process and where you started and where you are now.

Susan Avery: Yeah. The Brooklyn Cyclones is our where we started, and we are always beholden to them. They are our foundation. They started us. And from there people started hearing about us. The fans at the Brooklyn Cyclones would post video of us and, was this one of those word of mouth things?

And then I just started to cold call and knock on doors and ask people, and just send an email with the subject line that says Old people dance team making a splash. And the first line in my email is, call me old. And I say thank you. And that's one of the things about us, Amber, is we are not embarrassed about the word old.

Just like the L-G-B-T-Q community took back the word queer. There are role models. We are taking back the word old. We are old because what's the alternative? Yeah. The alternative is not here at all. Yeah. We say it's aspirational. It's a badge of honor, and that's why we wear our years of birth on the backs of our jerseys to see that.

Yeah. [00:20:00] For all to see Alfred and Joanne are turning around also, you could see theirs. And that's just foundational to who we are. So people heard about us through word of mouth and also, me sending an email and saying, hi, we're here. We'd love to perform for you. And then something wild happened.

Last year we had about 400 followers on Instagram, which is embarrassing. But we were getting our gigs even though, we didn't have that many followers. And Marissa. Young person, amazing on social media, took a video of us in through her lens and her way of editing. She put it on Instagram and it immediately went viral.

I. It's up to almost 59 million views now. 30,000 comments from around the world. And it was like one, one viral video after the other, she kept posting and that shot us to the moon. And that somebody from Austria had contacted us and said, we want you to come here. And we thought [00:21:00] okay. Like a lot of people from all of the world, every continent would, had been messaging me.

But this guy from Austria was persistent. We got on a Zoom with him. And a few months later we were performing and doing dance workshops all over Austria. And it was wildly fun and terrific. Now we're getting like major national attention because of Marissa's amazing talent with social media.

So not only is she an amazing choreographer, she's extraordinary on social media and we're so grateful to her. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna comment on, what you said about taking back the term old, as you can tell, like with the way I'm speaking, it is a sensitive topic in the industry I work in.

And people do have very specific ideas about the phrases they use and the terms and things like that. I love that you said that because I, to me, like personally I agree. That, we should call things what they are. I will use the word old going forward for the remain remainder of this podcast.

Susan Avery: Yeah. We're, we love the term because we're, yeah I can't, I hate when people say, I feel young. You don't feel young. [00:22:00] When you're young, you're insecure. You don't know anything. You have no experience. You're old and you're vibrant, you're vital. We use other adjectives. We don't say old is bad and young is good.

Old is just chronological. It is age. That's all it is. What you're feeling is active and sexy and powerful and vital. Those are the terms that people mean when they're our age and they're feeling so great. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. And it's a privilege too, right? It really is privilege. It really is. 

Susan Avery: Absolutely. 

We perform to these amazing standing ovations, but another component of who we are is very important, especially to your audience, is we do these dance workshops and day discos at senior places all over. All over. And what.

That it's not like Zumba. There's nothing wrong with Zumba. Zumba is great, but we actually teach our choreography because studies have shown, and I have all the studies and in my file that learning choreography activates the same part of the [00:23:00] brain as learning a language which can help ward off dementia.

Or delay dementia. Actually learning choreography. And we do that and we do we call them dance workshops. And at the end of that we do what's called a day disco, where we do line dances and freestyle and that kind of thing. And they're always sold out, like people love our dance workshop.

We practice what we preach. We don't just perform, but we give. What we know is so good for aging, we give that to anybody who wants us. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. You must have read my mind 'cause I was actually just about to ask you about that. I was gonna ask you what opportunities you've had or how do you extend what the pacemakers is doing to a broader audience and get more people involved.

And so it sounds like you're actively working on that. And I'm hoping we can introduce you to our clients and through this podcast, the industry, for anybody that wants to learn more and take advantage of it because you know it, it is. I think it's just it's so amazing what you're doing.

And to be able to have those resources and have a bigger impact is [00:24:00] incredible. So you went to Austria, do you do other tours around the country? And I wanna hear about the flash mobs. Tell me about that. Yeah, we 

Joanne Wolfring: can I just interrupt, I wanna go back to the day. Disco only it's re it's connecting something.

So our last day disco, which was a few weeks ago. Susan said at the end, we played music, and music brings people together. You hear a song, you think it's 1965 and you're in your bedroom with your hairbrush singing and dancing, or you think you're at the prom. That's just me. But I'm there and we're on the dance floor and this woman is there and she's all decked down and she's dancing and following the choreography.

And clearly there was another woman with her sitting and it was her daughter. So I went over to her daughter and I said, did you wanna join us? And she said no. This is for my mom. She has dementia. So it was like such an aha moment to see this daughter knowing to bring her mom to something that she loved so much and this woman was clear on, was getting the choreography smiling at the end, dancing with everybody.

So that is really also, this comes [00:25:00] full circle to what you're talking about and aging and that music and dance brings people together. And that her daughter, had the mindfulness to bring her to this day disco, to really reconnect her mom to her love of dance. True. Yep. Yeah. 

Susan Avery: Yep. And so in answer to your question, Amber, we go all over.

Last year we were invited to Boston to the American Physical Therapy Association National Conference. And we did a flash mob there and it was wildly accepted. We also did in the 

Alfred Gonzalez: airport, annoyed Austria. 

Susan Avery: We did in the airport on the way to Australia. I love the airport flash mobs. Those are, we did, we also did it at the Boston.

I forgot what it's called. They're big train stations. 

Alfred Gonzalez: It's like their pin station. Oh. Have you ever done 

Susan Avery: them in like the subway in New York? No, but that's, we've been asked to do that. Okay. And it's like on our list, we've been asked a few times to do it and we have to coordinate that. But yeah we go wherever we're wanted.

We've done it in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun the big casino there. So yeah, we will go wherever. We just got a request to do it in Detroit [00:26:00] at a library. So wherever. You want us we are happy to go.

Amber Bardon: So if someone wanted to get into dance as an old person, what would be your advice? If they're nervous, scared, worried about physical issues, what would you say to them? 

Susan Avery: I'm gonna let Alfred take that one. 

Joanne Wolfring: Yeah. 

Alfred Gonzalez: Oh, thank you. First up, just, get on your feet, most dances done to music put on your favorite music, or just maybe the music that makes you wanna, kinda bouncing your seat and start, just start moving around.

Look at our stuff on Instagram and look at the films of our day discos and maybe get inspired and take it back to the sixties or the seventies when, there are all those high school dances. And we had all those dances we all knew how to do. And that's, and that, and I think that's what it's all about.

And if that inspires you to to do more, or even if you want to perform, you can always audition for us. Yeah. We're always looking for folks. Just. [00:27:00] It's, it takes some a little self-motivation, but if the self-motivation comes from watching us do something, then please that make that be the start as well.

How, however, what, however you, whatever gets you going, moving. 

Amber Bardon: Joanne, 

Joanne Wolfring: what would be your advice? So I think exactly like Alfred said even if you don't have that ability to walk or to even move your feet, you could sit in the chair and do it with your hands and clap and learn to beat and just put on that music that.

Brings you back, like Alpha was saying, to high school, to grammar school, to parties, to even, things in your family, different types of music and all that you dance to then. And also looking at your senior centers, like I know that we've done and again, alpha would speak to that leading at senior centers for dance workshops and how many people, maybe a little bit reserved at first, but once you hear that music and you only need one person, it's like anything.

It's like being at a wedding. Someone has to get up eventually to dance. One person to get up and say, you know what, I could do that too. I can move my hips. I can hold [00:28:00] somebody's hand and groove. It just takes that little bit of motivation just to bring you on that dance floor or to have that smile and to start grooving like we do.

Alfred Gonzalez: Even in our workshops, as Joanne was saying, we have people who are sitting down and doing, whatever they can do. Then we have our group that's standing up and really, trying to, doing the choreography seriously. And then maybe some people who just stand up and sit down or maybe walk by and give us a little, whatever.

But it's just, just get everybody involved at their, at their own level, you at their own starting spot point. 

Susan Avery: We, we always say that dance is for everyone. Wherever you're at, you're, you can dance with us. And I say this a lot given that the pacemakers was my daughter's idea, I always have to say my daughter doesn't have rhythm.

She wasn't born with rhythm. And she, God gave her a lot of great stuff. She has this giant brain. She's hysterically funny and beautiful, but rhythm is not her thing. And even my daughter. Has learned our choreography because for her, she has to learn in counts. [00:29:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. She, learning by music doesn't come to her.

She can't hear the rhythm like that, but she can learn in counts and that's what she did. So dance is for everyone that we are a hundred percent convinced. Amber, we would love to have you at one of our day discos. Sweet. Oh, I'd 

Amber Bardon: love to. I think that might be my problem. I think I don't have rhythm. It's never say never.

Speaker 3: Never. Yeah. 

Amber Bardon: It's one of my goals. I'm the kind of person, anything in my life that I wanna do, I go out and do it and it's been one of my goals to learn to dance. Maybe I'll be inspired to join. Join lessons here. Some at some, fit it into my schedule at some point because, you gotta go after what you love doing.

Do you ever envision like having additional like pacemaker groups, like around the country that are like spinoffs from what you're doing that you could have other pacemaker groups around the, the whole US and even around the globe?

Susan Avery: There is not a week that goes by that I don't get a message through our website. Hi. We're [00:30:00] in Australia. Can you please franchise the pacemakers here? Hi Nebraska. Hi Arizona, China, you name it. I have gotten requests every single week for years to start a pacemaker somewhere else. And my response is, there's only one Madonna.

There's only one pacemakers, however. This is what we do. We're 50 dancers strong on our team. You want us to come to China? We will come to China. We'll do, we will show you what we do. I. To so you guys could get started and do your own thing. We, we are just we're not planning to franchise.

That's not a thing. We are who we are, but we will go wherever and when we come I keep a pretty detailed spreadsheet. So if we are invited to Nebraska to perform, I have all my Nebraskans and we would invite them to come and perform with us when we get there. So we would send them the choreography, they would learn it.

When we get there, we do a rehearsal with them and we bring them onto whatever [00:31:00] it is, the stage, the field, the court, wherever we're performing. So we wanna be inclusive of everybody. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, that makes sense. I like your comparison to Madonna. I think that's spot on icon, right? Yeah. I'm gonna ask each of you, can you share your favorite memory or experience with pacemakers?

Susan Avery: Yeah. I can come up with one, the fir the one I remember so vividly like it was yesterday. I'm not somebody who gets nervous. That's just the thing about me. I have other issues, but nerves is not something I, getting nervous is not something I have the, we were getting to go out onto the field baseball field on our very first performance.

And we were waiting in like this tunnel to go out onto the field until that inning was over. And then we would run out onto the field, get in our spots, and start dancing and. In that moment, I completely went blank on the choreography. This was our first performance, July 6th, 2019. And I turned to the person nearest to me, which her name is [00:32:00] Etna.

She's been on the team since day one. And I turned to her and I grabbed her shoulders and I said, I forgot the choreography. Like a crazy person. I don't talk like that. That's not how I roll. These guys could tell you I don't get anxious. It's not a thing. And I said, what is the first eight count?

I don't remember it. And she. Very calmly. She's a professor and she said, okay, here it is. First day account. And she told me what it was and I said, thank you. And I will never forget that went out onto the field. And the thing was that it didn't, nobody knew what the reaction was gonna be to the crowd, so they could have booted us.

We didn't know. And I'm also not a crier, so as much as I don't get nervous, I also don't cry, which is weird, but it's a thing about me. I came off the field when I saw this standing ovation and everybody was clapping, running off the field, and I burst out crying. So that, that is, one of my biggest memories with pacemakers.

Amber Bardon: Oh, I love it. You're giving me chills. I love it. Joanne, how about you? What? What's your, okay, 

Joanne Wolfring: so I feel like mine is [00:33:00] the day that I found out from Susan that we went viral, because it can show you how. Old I am because she texted me and said, Hey, we went viral. Look at this. I had really had no idea, and within moments my older son was texting me, mom, what's going on?

You're not gonna believe this. This is so cool. And shooting all these comments at me. I could not believe it even the capability of what the internet can do in such a positive way. But really it was multiple favorite moments within that because the comments that were coming from around the world.

Were not, oh, look at your dance move. It was, wow. I wish I could have something like that here. My mom, my dad, my aunt, my grandmother, she can do this. She can dance in the kitchen. This is amazing. Not even that, but like you're saying that you wish when you're 40, now you're in your forties. So many people were saying.

This is what I wanna be like. I aspire to be this, I wanna take back that word, aging. I wanna get old. I can't wait to be six or years old to join the dance team. But it's [00:34:00] almost if you want a really good feel, feel good moment, you go to those comments and you could just sit there and read them for hours and know the impact that just the power of the internet had.

And just that one minute of a song that you saw the joy in everybody's face, just doing what they love to do, what it brought people, how it brought people from around the world together. So I feel like that has just put us on this trajectory of where we're going now. 

Amber Bardon: Wow. Thank you for sharing. I love that.

And Alfred, what's yours? That's great. 

Alfred Gonzalez: I've been thinking about that also. There's so much and just being part of our group is really a great, it, everything's a great experience. But when we first did the the Mohegan Sun, when we first did the, casino up there, and we did the games for the Connecticut Sun, I realized, wow, this is the WNBA, this is the, this is not a farm league.

This is the WNBA. And we're here in the, their arena surrounded by this gigantic casinos and they paid for our hotel. And, and so it's, so it was one of those we've arrived moments for me. So it was, so I think me, I. That, of course, among others. But that [00:35:00] was one of my favorites.

And actually then Susan and I had a little moment before that also we're like, oh my God, we're really here. We're really, we've really arrived. It was it was really great. It was a completely 

Susan Avery: full, completely full arena. It was the playoffs, it was the final game of the playoffs, and we're like.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, you got picked. All of your stories in different ways are remade it moments. Like at different parts of the journey, which, yeah, I'll just give all of 

Alfred Gonzalez: us, I wanna say one more thing, Amber, just about this whole aging versus being young. We've all been young already.

Amber Bardon: Yeah. 

Alfred Gonzalez: And we did everything and I did, oh my God, I, you know what I've done. I'm like, good thing it was before 

Amber Bardon: the internet, most of it. No, 

Alfred Gonzalez: exactly. Way before the internet. My, when I was teaching, I taught on the, she, so the kids could not believe that I was born during a time where there were no computers.

They just could not concede that. But anyway, was gonna say, we've been through all that. We've been young, young is now for the young and we're now old and this. This is our thing. This is our thing. Now we're not trying to, we're not trying to, be echoes of what we used to [00:36:00] be, or we love our youth or anything like that.

Just oh, and I'll just tell you also with this whole viral stuff. The first time I've ever been proposed to getting married. Someone asked, 

Speaker 3: yeah, 

Susan Avery: it's true. 

Alfred Gonzalez: Asked about, I would marry them a second. 

Susan Avery: We, we have this this viral, this video that we do, which is called now and then where we show our picture now, and then our picture when we were like at our hottest or whatever, the day and Alfred's picture.

He's a gorgeous man now. He was. 

Speaker 3: He was. 

Susan Avery: He was a different age. Gorgeous back then. And the comment, it's like 500,000 views on that. And the comment people are like proposing to Alfred, 

Joanne Wolfring: oh my God, that's so good for your ego. Isn't it? Really cute. Oh yeah. So great. And another Amber, when our video went viral, somebody from high school, over 40 years ago, I haven't seen this girl.

She found out my email and said, Hey, I just saw, are you teaching a senior dance troupe? I saw a video. I said, she goes, how are you doing that? I said, we are the [00:37:00] seniors. I'm like, yeah, we're seniors. 

Speaker 3: I'm a senior.

Joanne Wolfring: Oh my God, I just realized that. I'm like, yeah no, I'm not teaching it.

I'm part of this group. This is who we are.

Amber Bardon: And I think, I think there's been a whole redefinition of what getting old looks like. You guys, I'm sure you've seen like the memes that Golden Girls, they were in their forties or something like that, that Oh yeah. And you look at what does people being in their forties look like today versus people being in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and you're redefining what that can mean and what the possibilities are.

Like you said, you, you did being young and now you're doing being old, but you're redefining what that actually means as part of the process, right? 

Completely. 

Susan Avery: Recently, I was talking to an executive from a pretty giant company and he, I said, how do you reach old people?

And he said, oh, our advertising includes going to the Phil Harmonic, and knitting and art. And I said, what about people like me who love Cardi B? And Lady Gaga? And he just laughed. And I was like, yeah, you're not getting it, [00:38:00] dude. I don't remember the last time I went to the Philharmonic.

It's not like it's wonderful. It's just that's, I would rather go to a Cardi B concert. And so I think that it's just stepping out into who we are and not having societal norms or former norms def define who we are. We love Cardi B. Yeah. We dance with music. Yeah. And I don't know if you know this, but last month we won the Lady Gaga choreography contest.

Amber Bardon: Oh wow. I didn't know 

Susan Avery: that. Yeah. 

Amber Bardon: What song was it? 

Susan Avery: Abracadabra, her new song. Oh yeah. 

Amber Bardon: The one that's like on TikTok, that's viral. Yeah. 

Susan Avery: So she had posted that she wanted us, the whole world to imitate the choreography, and she had this contest and. Last month she flew us out to LA to her album launch party, and we got to go there and dance with her, and it was wonderful.

And 

Amber Bardon: none of you mentioned that as your favorite moment? 

Susan Avery: It was, truthfully, it was If Marissa, her choreographer was here, she would say she, 

Speaker 3: there you go. She 

Susan Avery: actually said it was better than her wedding day. [00:39:00] Oh. And not to tell her husband that. So now I just said it on a national podcast.

Okay. It was a, an amazing thing. That we were and such an honor that we were invited to come to LA on their, their dime. They paid for everything. Yeah, it was a beautiful thing. And and tomorrow we're gonna be on the Drew Barrymore show, so you should tune into that. We're so 

Amber Bardon: lucky we got you on our podcast.

You're so famous. Thank you. Going on all these famous shows, the Drew Barry March show. Ugh. I that's so great. Yep. The other thing I'm thinking about as you're talking is that, do you consider this to be your legacy too? And that it's interesting 'cause I think a lot of people feel like they haven't done enough or they haven't accomplished enough.

But I think again, it just goes to show that you never know the impact you can have at what age and the legacy that you can leave behind. 

Susan Avery: I thought of that a couple of years ago when, the pacemakers is a legit business, an incorporated business and with a lot of assets. And what I mean by assets, I don't mean [00:40:00] money.

Like we have a website, we have social media we have these trademarks. And a few years ago my attorney said, you should put the pacemakers in your will. And I was like, oh, you're right. Like somebody needs to take this over when I die. And so I did the youngest member of our team actually gets the pacemakers again, assets, because we feel like, she's gonna outlive us and, so she'll take on the next generation.

But yeah, I feel like. We're, this is all of our legacy. It's not just me because truthfully, and I say this all the time, people are like, oh, this, you started the team. Yay you. And I'm like, it's not about me. Nobody wanted me to show up at a baseball team going, look at me hip hop. No, it's a team. We are together.

This is who we are together. It's all of our legacies. It's not just me. Because it would, there would be no pacemakers without the other 49 people. 

Amber Bardon: On the 

Susan Avery: team. Wow. 

Amber Bardon: Okay. I know you said you wanted to do a dance. Before we wrap up, are you still willing to do that? Before we do that, I'm just gonna ask you to share [00:41:00] where our listeners can learn more about you.

Susan Avery: Yeah anybody could contact us through a web, the website, which is Pacemakers dance team. Com pacemakers, plural dance team.com. You could see what we're all about. You could see our pictures, our videos. You could message us through there. We also, yesterday just started our own merchandise shop. We get, I get emails all the time because people want, to wear their years of birth on the back of their jersey.

So we just started a merchandise shop that went live yesterday. And that is really the best way to reach us. Obviously follow us if you're on social media, follow us on Instagram. That's the best way to do it. It's at Pacemakers Dance team. Same thing with TikTok and Facebook at Pacemakers Dance Team.

Best ways to reach us, 

Amber Bardon: and again, thank you so much for coming on this podcast. I do feel really honored to have you here, especially you're going on very much.

Joanne Wolfring: Yeah.

Susan Avery: All right, so I'll give us a 5, 6, 7, 8 to do Cardi B.

We don't have the [00:42:00] music going, but we all know it, 

Joanne Wolfring: right? Alfred, could you count it 

Alfred Gonzalez: . 5 6, 5 6, 7, 8.

And the hip. And the hip. And are you ready?

Susan Avery: We don't have the music going until, yeah. Yeah. That's our, that's part of our Cardi B song. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Fun fun. I love it. 

Amber Bardon: I love it. Thank you. We got a little taste of it. I'll definitely come to see you if you're ever, if we're ever in the same geographic area. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Excellent. I love that would be [00:43:00] great.

Amber Bardon: All right. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank, 

Susan Avery: we'll be in touch. 

Alfred Gonzalez: Thank you.