Behind the doors of the Forest Lake Community hall every Monday at 10:45 am songs of the 60’s and 70’s start roaring and the tapping of feet begins for a certain club in town.
Open the doors and you’ll discover the Lakeside Boot Scooters line dancing away. The group has been teaching line dancing in Forest Lake, Camira and Redbank for 20 years, and just three months ago arrived with their dancing shoes in Greenbank.
Class organiser Irene Taituha says that there are 15 Bootscooters in the new Greenbank group who enjoy the fun and friendship of line dancing.
“Lakeside Boot Scooters are a line dancing group for older mostly retired people,” Mrs Taituha said.
“We do a repetition every week so within about six weeks they know a dance.”
Mrs Taituha says she loves line dancing with the boot scooters because they play a range of old classics that take her back in time.
“We do all the dances we used to do when we were young like Rod Stewart and they can just relate to a lot of them. We also throw in a lot of new songs too,” Mrs Taituha said.
“It just brings back memories of what we used to do. Once we learn the steps and the music comes on that beat is where our foot goes like we used to in the old days when we used to go dancing.
“By the time you leave your problems are not there anymore. I just love love love it.”
Not to mention, line dancing is great for people to get active in retirement.
“One of the ladies we went to a dance party on the weekend that went for four hours and she clocked up 10,000 steps on her pedometer.”
One thing that has surprised Irene about dancing, is the power music has to influence memory.
“Do you know what happens too? It’s doing something to our memory, things are coming back,” she said.
“Your memory seems to get better. At our age sometimes we go ‘Oh what was that?’ But once you get on the floor and the music starts it’s like our memory comes back on that song.”
Want to become a boot scooter? The Monday 10:45 am classes run till 12 at 60 College Ave, Forest Lake and cost $6 a lesson.
To book, call Irene at 0416310930.
