She’s helping old souls tap into a new passion.
Betty Markowitz has been teaching tap dance to senior citizens for more than two decades, and at the age of 96, she has no plans to slow down.
On Wednesday night, the great-grandmother — who is New York City’s oldest known dance teacher — put on her first show since the COVID-19 pandemic at Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Senior Center, where she was honored by her troupe of tappers.
“It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful,” Markowitz told The Post of preparing the new performance in her mid-90s. “It’s done to show that seniors don’t have to stop and lie on the couch and watch TV. Get up, get dressed, and get out!”
Markowitz’s troupe, known as “The Rhythm and Style Tappers,” consists of 15 dancers aged 60 and up.
Classes are held every Monday morning, and some students struggle to keep up with their sprightly teacher, even though they’re more than three decades her junior.
“I’m trying to find out where she gets the gumption at her age to do everything that she does,” one told The Post at the center, where the troupe performed 12 tap numbers, cheered on by a large crowd of spectators. “I’m tired already!”
Markowitz first began teaching beginner classes there 20 years ago, recruiting retirees who were eager to learn new skills and keep their bodies moving.
At one point, the troupe consisted of 30 seniors, who would bus around the boroughs performing at police and military inaugurations, nursing homes and fundraising events.
“We were a unit,” Markowitz recalled. “We were a family.“
But in March 2020, the outbreak of the pandemic prompted the senior center to shutter, plunging Markowitz into isolation and tearing the troupe apart.
“I was totally miserable, sad, lonely, and all the other things that knock you out and take the joy out of your life,” the isolated Brooklynite, who lives on her own, said.
One day, I said, ‘I can’t stand this anymore,’” the spry senior said, deciding to venture out for a change of scenery. “I was losing weight; I was feeling terrible.”
That day, Markowitz ran into a friend who had a nearby studio and had received permission to reopen it in a case of fortuitous timing.
“Somehow or other, I got six [students] back, and we had to go up in masks and be spaced apart, and have our temperatures taken. But that’s how I started dancing again.”
Eventually, the Fort Hamilton Senior Center reopened, and Markowitz worked to recruit new retirees to join her class.
Markowitz told The Post that she’s been dancing since she was 4 years old.
Born in England in 1929, she moved to New York as a “G.I. fiancée” in 1947 after falling in love with a U.S. soldier stationed in the U.K. during World War II.
She settled in Brooklyn and ballroom danced as a hobby while doing “12,000 different things for work.”
After her own retirement, she decided to teach tap classes for beginners, and quickly realized she had a knack for it.
While COVID-19 caused challenges, Markowitz knows better than anyone that the show must go on.
“It’s very joyful — that’s why I do it,” the nonagenarian enthused, saying classes will continue even as she approaches her 97th birthday next March.
“I get back what I give — and I love it. It gives me life.”
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