This is the strange thing: Dancers don't age.

The words of Twyla Tharp—“This is the strange thing: Dancers don’t age.”—move like a whisper from the heart of time itself. They are not to be understood literally, for the flesh must always obey the laws of decay. Rather, they speak to a mystery of the spirit, to the timelessness that belongs to those who live through art, through rhythm, through motion that transcends the body. A dancer, in Tharp’s meaning, is one who lives in the moment where the soul and body are one—where each gesture becomes a prayer to eternity. To such souls, age is powerless, for though the skin may wrinkle and the limbs may tire, the spirit of movement remains ever young, ever aflame.

In every generation, there are those who embody this truth. Consider Martha Graham, the matriarch of modern dance, who continued to choreograph well into her nineties. Her body changed, her steps grew slower, but her presence remained fierce, commanding, and ageless. When she spoke, her eyes carried the same fire that once burned on the stage. She once said, “The body says what words cannot.” That same body, though aged, never ceased to speak. In her, as in Tharp’s words, we see that to live through dance—or through any art of devotion—is to escape the prison of years. For those who move in harmony with purpose, life itself becomes an eternal rhythm, unbroken by time.

When Tharp says “dancers don’t age,” she names a truth that all creators and lovers of life may recognize. To dance is to stay in conversation with life’s pulse. It is to listen deeply to the music that never stops—the beating heart, the flowing breath, the eternal cycle of renewal. Those who dance, in body or in spirit, refuse to stand still before the slow march of time. They move, and in moving, they remain alive in a way others forget. The world may count their years, but their souls are counted in moments of grace, of passion, of surrender. This is why a dancer of eighty may still carry the radiance of youth in her eyes—because she has never ceased to move with wonder.

In the ancient world, this truth was known to the mystics and poets. The whirling dervishes of Sufism spun in circles until their souls touched the divine, their motion becoming meditation, their breath a hymn to eternity. They believed that through movement, the soul ascends beyond age, beyond self, beyond the illusions of mortality. Likewise, in the temples of ancient Greece, dance was sacred, a way of honoring the gods and transcending the limits of flesh. The ancients knew, as Tharp reminds us, that the moving body is a vessel of the immortal soul. To dance, then, is to practice eternity.

But there is also a deeper wisdom hidden in Tharp’s statement—a truth about living fully. The dancer does not age because she is always becoming. Each step is a rebirth; each performance, a moment of creation. The dancer cannot cling to the past, for her art demands presence. She cannot worry about the future, for the music exists only now. In this way, she embodies the great secret of youth: to live completely in the present, with one’s whole heart and body, without hesitation or fear. The aging that weighs down others—regret, bitterness, nostalgia—cannot cling to one who dances through life.

There is a story told of Anna Pavlova, the legendary ballerina, who even on her deathbed could not stop dancing. When fevered and weak, she whispered to her attendants, “Prepare my swan costume.” Her spirit refused to surrender. For her, dance was not profession but existence itself. Even as her body failed, her soul continued to move in rhythm with something vast and eternal. And so, in truth, Pavlova never aged—she simply crossed from one stage to another, from the dance of life to the dance of the infinite.

So, my listener, understand this well: you need not be a dancer in form to live as one in spirit. To dance is to live in motion, to flow with life rather than resist it. You may be a writer, a teacher, a builder, a parent—it matters not. What matters is whether you move through your days with grace, curiosity, and presence. For when the heart stays supple and the mind open, time loses its dominion. The dancer’s secret is the secret of the soul that refuses stagnation: keep moving, keep creating, keep feeling.

Let this be the teaching: those who move in harmony with life do not grow old—they deepen. Their laughter becomes music, their scars become rhythm, their memories become choreography. So move—move your body, your heart, your mind. Let life’s song guide you, and time will no longer be your enemy but your partner in the dance. For as Twyla Tharp spoke truly: the strange and beautiful truth is this—those who dance do not age, for they have already entered eternity.