“Be your best cheerleader!”
Christy Tolbert, also known as Coach Christy, was urging the Timeless Torches to move with confidence. To complete shapes. To use their plié in a deeper way that would create the necessary momentum to spiral into a spin.
“It’s never too late to feel like an Ailey dancer,” Tolbert said during a recent rehearsal at Ripley-Grier, a Midtown studio. “Stop limiting yourself, telling yourself you can’t do something.”
A performance by the Timeless Torches, the dance team of the New York Liberty, is a shot of adrenaline, a burst of vitality. Some numbers lean funny; others are more fierce. All insist on the power of movement as the foundation for a full life. In a way, what these dancers offer is bigger than dancing. But dance is their expression, and dance they do.
On a recent night at Barclays Center, the dancers — men and women, ages 40 and up — met center court. They stood still, their gazes down and hands held low in front of their bodies. The opening notes to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” began to play.
Separated into four groups, each responded to Lamar’s lyrics — an aggressive leg spiral, a runway walk with rippling arms, a blast of fast footwork — before arriving, via a triplet march, into a wedge formation. Here they exploded as one, crossing their feet and hopping in place in crystalline unison.
It was tremendous.
Aside from the rule that the dancers can’t be younger than 40 — they wear their ages proudly on the backs of their standard costumes — individuality is a must. Timeless is a team, but it is one made up of distinct people. Sometimes it feels like a performance art experiment about the aging body. Or a contemporary extension of Judson Dance Theater, the daring dance collective of the 1960s that made space for professionals and amateurs to perform side by side.
But Timeless also has a familial warmth. The team’s performances can erupt like dances at a block party, except finely choreographed. Suddenly everyone knows how to move as one and steps are a sharp dive into social dance history. The vibe can also have the unselfconscious zeal of a Zumba class at Crunch.
It’s surreal that something like this exists in the world of franchise sports. But it does. Timeless may not be the most virtuosic dance company in America, but it often feels like the dance company that the country most needs.
The idea of having older dancers was a response to the Liberty’s fans, a large portion of whom were over 40. The 23 dancers on the current roster range in age from 41 to 88.
While there have been tweaks along the way, the Timeless mission remains the same as at the start, 20 years ago: to inspire and to entertain. And the team’s brand of empowerment echoes what the progressive and inclusive WNBA is known for — expanding ideas around bodies and minds. Who gets to be a professional athlete? Who is allowed to be a dancer?
Timeless has persisted — and advanced technically, particularly since Tolbert became the coach in 2022 — because it stands for something important in an ageist, body-conscious society. Growing older doesn’t have to mean giving up.
Formed in 2005 when the New York Liberty, one of the original WNBA franchises, played at Madison Square Garden, Timeless now performs at Liberty games at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. There is no singular dance style. Hip-hop is a clear presence, but so are ballet, jazz, musical-theater and modern dance. Some members have professional experience; some don’t. Most live in New York City.
Tolbert is a relative newcomer, but she is a Timeless Torches whisperer. “Timeless,” she said, “is like my most sacred space.”
She sees through the dancers’ nerves and struggles; she is nurturing but doesn’t waste time with excuses. One evening at rehearsal, Tolbert, who can go from exasperation to delight in seconds, lost it. “‘Guys, listen!’” she said. “I cannot walk you through every step of the way. Figure it out. It’s about communication. That’s the basis of life.”
Margaret Hamilton, 55, who is an original member and a team captain, said: “She pushes us and she shows us there’s no boundaries. You are a dancer. You will get this. It might take you a little bit longer, but don’t doubt yourself. Do it.”
From 2012 to 2015, the team was coached by Criscia Long, a former dancer who is now the senior director of entertainment for Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment. She said that the sight of four generations of people dancing cohesively makes you want to continue to follow your own dreams.
“Hearing the crowd roar when they’re on their way out, before they even do anything,” she said, “It’s just the most wholesome thing ever.”
When the Liberty ended up in Brooklyn, Long eventually hired Tolbert, her former teacher, to be the Timeless coach.
“Coach Christy was a dancer that I idolized,” Long said. “So I think it is a really cool full circle moment where my mentor is now getting to work alongside me to bring through a vision.”
Trained in many forms — ballet, tap, jazz, African, hip-hop — Tolbert abides by something her mother taught her: If it’s not difficult, you’re not learning. “The first year was a bit of a challenge because I was kind of forcing them out of their comfort zone,” Tolbert said. “I make sure that they are really coming to be challenged. Not so much for me, but for them.”
When Shirley Koehler, at 88 the oldest on the team, joined 18 years ago, she was a season-ticket holder for the Liberty. “I was in a low point for a lot of reasons,” she said. “And when I joined the Timeless Torches, it was very much family and it was just exactly what I needed.”
It’s still her happy place, though the choreography has become more technical. “Sometimes I get frustrated with myself because I don’t feel like I’m learning it as quickly as the younger people,” she said, adding that she asks friends to make sure she isn’t falling behind. So far, so good.
The dancers, who must re-audition each season, are paid, but not a living wage; many have second jobs, including Tolbert, who works in the insurance business. Their schedules can be somewhat flexible: Members let the team know in advance if they have to miss a game because of work. Rehearsals are held on weeknights from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., and some dancers gather to go over the choreography on weekends at a studio or a local YMCA. They are supplied with rehearsal recordings for home study. Tolbert’s motto is if dancers come to rehearsal to rehearse, the team is already behind.
“If your train is late, practice there,” she said. “Practice in your brain.”
Timeless’s numbers, often new dances, are galvanizing and precise displays of unison and canon, moving formations, the occasional lift and sparkling solos as when dancers like John-Deric Mitchell, a rookie this season, show off a special talent.
Mitchell, 47, a member of the House of Ninja since 2007, brings a dash of runway to the court. In dances set to “Not Like Us” and Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got,” his hands swirled around his head like reams of spun silk.
Mitchell is one of six new dancers discovered at an open audition this season for which more than 400 people showed up. Long was one of a small group that made the final decisions. Beyond rhythm, coordination and the ability to pick up choreography, Long said she was looking for two ingredients. “Star quality — a way of transferring your energy through your movement, through your face, through storytelling. And the confidence to live your life to the fullest.”
David Gray Jr., 59, another new dancer, had no professional experience, though he has been dancing for years. Gray taught himself Michael Jackson dances — he knows “Thriller” like the back of his hand. Growing up in Jamaica, Queens, he was also into hip-hop, especially popping and locking.
But his Jackson impersonations — which have made their way into the Timeless repertoire — developed over years at talent shows, block parties and on the street. “It broke me from being shy around people,” he said. “I saw how they were enjoying what I was doing, and it made me want to do it more.”
Now Gray, whose day job is at United Airlines in Newark, is finding some fame for his childhood obsession: “I’m sorry I took so long to get into the business.”
Eboni Osavio, 45, another new recruit, was definitely in the business. She thought she had retired from a 15-year professional career that included performing in videos by artists like Ludacris and Sean Paul before turning to choreography and teaching. She pushed her mother to go to the audition, but Osavio was so impressed with the level of dancing that, she said, “I decided to step my game up.”
Osavio had already taught two hip-hop classes in Manhattan before arriving in Brooklyn for a recent game.“To be out there in front of lights again and in front of an audience?” she said. “I’m usually used to being behind the scenes now, so for me to be front and center is a little like” — she whispered — “wow.”
The experience has given her a new respect for dance. She trained under a taskmaster. “I mean you couldn’t get water,” she said. “He would tell you to swallow your saliva.”
She was tough with her students, too, but now her “patience level has been adjusted, for sure,” she said. “Now I’m like, can you just give me grace?”
Timeless continues to grow and change, too. Earlier this season, in honor of Juneteenth, there was a special performance by the team’s Black members to Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” The idea was to pay tribute to one, Myna Majors, 72, a Timeless dancer who grew up in the South.
“She was a part of the civil rights movement,” Tolbert said. “So I thought it was only fitting that she got a chance to really tell her story through the art of dance.”
It was the only time that Tolbert has ever performed with the group. (They were ecstatic.) She still can’t forget her first season when at her first court rehearsal, the team “could not get it together,” she said. “It was just a disaster.”
Tolbert knew her choreography was more demanding than the dancers were used to, but she was frustrated. “I’m telling them, ‘I don’t know what’s going on: Why are we here?’”
She could tell that the number was going to be cut, so Tolbert gave it one last shot. She asked them to pray. When they got back on the court, “it was the most insane thing that happened,” she said. “They knew their steps, they executed, they knew their formations, it was amazing. It is amazing. Timeless is like a force.”