Stories and the life cabaret – Dwelling and becoming in music: Creation of a multi-art dance performance among people over 65

The aim of the study was to describe and analyse what aspects of musical learning constitute the process of developing a collective artistic performance among twenty amateur dancers over 65 years old. In focus is how the musical learning proceeds throughout the project, where a series of workshops, consisting of training, choreography and improvisation, leads towards a common performance built on the participants’ life stories. The study takes Heidegger’s existential phenomenology as a starting point. Workshops, rehearsals and performances were observed, and video recorded regularly for one year. A sample of the participants was also interviewed. Generated material was analysed in a hermeneutic phenomenological manner. The results imply that the elderly people become themselves through movement in different musical situations. Crucial factors seem to be how they get to use themselves, each other, their bodies, their stories, their personal artistic forms of expressions and their imaginations, in interplay with music.