Alice Barker dancer, Alice Barker, a 102-year-old former chorus line dancer, recently watched film footage of herself performing during the 1930s and ’40s Harlem Renaissance, and a video of the moment has gone viral.
“Making me wish that I could get out of this bed and do it all over again,” Barker said while watching the footage at her Brooklyn nursing home.
David Shuff and Mark Cantor of the Celluloid Improvisations Music Film Archive found footage of Barker filed under the name Baker, The Washington Post reported.
“It’s just fabulous. Fabulous to see these and remember all these things that was happening,” Barker said in the YouTube video that was filmed last year and posted to YouTube this week. “I used to often say to myself ‘I am being paid to do something that I enjoy doing and I would do it for free.’ Because it just felt so good doing it because of that music. I just get carried away in it.”
Her love of dancing began as a young child.
“My mother told me she was getting ready to bathe me, and on the corner was a band playing. She had forgotten something, and she went back in the house to get it and when she came out I was gone. And I was down there naked just going, dancing,” she said.
Shuff told The Washington Post that he had long been hoping to find footage of Barker, who danced alongside such stars as Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly at clubs and in movies, commercials, and TV shows.
“I knew Alice for several years — my dog is a therapy dog and we visited her nursing home — the recreation nurse and I always talked about how amazing it would be to find her films and show her, and we finally were able to,” he said.
The video has brought widespread attention.
"She knows her video is up here and is loving it," Shuff wrote on Reddit. "Says it makes her feel connected to the world again."
David Shuff and Mark Cantor of the Celluloid Improvisations Music Film Archive found footage of Barker filed under the name Baker, The Washington Post reported.
“It’s just fabulous. Fabulous to see these and remember all these things that was happening,” Barker said in the YouTube video that was filmed last year and posted to YouTube this week. “I used to often say to myself ‘I am being paid to do something that I enjoy doing and I would do it for free.’ Because it just felt so good doing it because of that music. I just get carried away in it.”
Her love of dancing began as a young child.
“My mother told me she was getting ready to bathe me, and on the corner was a band playing. She had forgotten something, and she went back in the house to get it and when she came out I was gone. And I was down there naked just going, dancing,” she said.
Shuff told The Washington Post that he had long been hoping to find footage of Barker, who danced alongside such stars as Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly at clubs and in movies, commercials, and TV shows.
“I knew Alice for several years — my dog is a therapy dog and we visited her nursing home — the recreation nurse and I always talked about how amazing it would be to find her films and show her, and we finally were able to,” he said.
The video has brought widespread attention.
"She knows her video is up here and is loving it," Shuff wrote on Reddit. "Says it makes her feel connected to the world again."
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