It’s never too late to live an active and vibrant life. Just ask Phyllis Sues.
She dances the tango, composes and performs tango and jazz music, does trapeze and starts each morning with yoga.
And she’s 88 years old.
Phyllis started dancing in her teens and eventually performed on Broadway and on some of the world’s top stages. She also married “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” star Alan Sues and performed comedy with him across the country.
She also had a successful career as a fashion designer, eventually running her own shop for more than 20 years.
But she never lost her love of dance. So, when she was in her early 80s, she started tinkering around on a piano, composing jazz and tango music. That led her to take up tango dancing.
And at the same time, she was enjoying the thrill of soaring through the air on a trapeze, so she started doing yoga to give her strength for trapeze and balance for dance.
Phyllis says numbers don’t mean anything to her.
“I just turned 88 and what does it mean? I’m still doing what I was doing at 20 and 30 and it still feels incredible,” she tells Growing Bolder. “The fact that I returned to dance in my 80s? That was best thing I ever did. It was really amazing.”
She describes how important it is to listen to your body — not your mind and not society — about what you can and can’t do as you age.
