By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — A group of local seniors put themselves up for rigourous training to join a troupe that will perform on the High Line for the first commissioned dance at the park.
Fall storm clouds may be getting most New Yorkers down, but the crew of dancers in their 20s, 80s — and in between — will celebrate the change of seasons with a series of performances high above Tenth Avenue.
"Autumn Crossing," a 25-minute sequence danced along the High Line's Chelsea Market Passage section, will run at 6 p.m. this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with a Saturday performance at 2 p.m.
Choreographer Naomi Goldberg Haas' company "Dances For a Variable Population," trained elderly women from the Hudson Guild Senior Center, some of whom hadn't danced in decades, for the performance, which was commissioned by the Friends of the High Line.
Lower East Side resident Dolores Weiss, 82, said she stumbled across the project while looking for a belly dancing class at the Hudson Guild.
"What's hard is that I'm tired because I'm 82 years old and can't keep going that well," Weiss said.
She added, "It's exhilarating, exciting and rejuvenating."
Juden Chazen Walsh, 73, helped mentor the elderly newbies who joined the group.
""They started off being very quiet and very shy, and saying I can't do this, I can't do that," Chazen Walsh said. "But when we tapped into... what they can do, they just blossomed."
Choreographer Goldberg Haas said the distinctive setting influenced her choice of steps.
"The High Line is such a beautiful place," Goldberg Haas said. "I think about what's already there, the elements that you have, the history of the High Line of it, and a journey that starts from one point to another."
