The Art of Living
“ Dance lets you express everything— whatever is going on in your life. It makes you feel powerful.” —Debbie Allen
AS A CHILD, choreographer Debbie Allen
spent hours dancing “to the birds” in her
backyard. “It was the smallest backyard, but it
seemed like the universe!” she says. Now, at 59,
the busy producer and director says she gets that
“sense of freedom and unlimited space” from
dance, and it’s feeding her longtime dream. The
Debbie Allen Dance Academy, which opened
Gotta Dance!
58 AARP SEPTEMBER&OCTOBER 2009
eight years ago in Los Angeles, enrolls about 400
young students, many of them underprivileged.
Call it art meeting real life: Allen famously portrayed a demanding dance teacher in the 1980
movie Fame and has reprised the role in the remake, opening in September. “If you can become
accomplished on the dance floor,” Allen says,
“you can succeed anywhere.” —Lindsay Miller
