At 82, Christine Thynne is just beginning her journey as an artist. “Risk? There’s a huge amount of risk involved,” she says. She’s preparing to perform her show, These Mechanisms, over three weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe. While “emerging” isn’t a term usually associated with artists in their 80s, Thynne believes it fits. “I wasn’t doing this before,” she explains. “I wasn’t a solo performer.”
Her show blends elements of her life—she trained as a physiotherapist in the 1960s—with her other passions. Among her props are planks, stepladders, and water. “Things I probably shouldn’t be doing at my age,” she laughs. “Moving scaffolding planks, reshaping ladders, carrying water.”
Thynne has always embraced adventure. She took up sea kayaking in her 50s, progressing from lessons to paddling around Norway’s Lofoten Islands. “Sliding up a wave and down the other side—it was thrilling,” she recalls. But when she spotted a brochure for a dance class at Edinburgh’s Dance Base, she hesitated.
The class was free for over-60s, and at 68, she thought, Do I dare?
For most people, kayaking in open water would seem scarier than dancing, but Thynne admits, “There are times in life when you lose confidence, even your sense of self. I was nervous—could I do it? Would I be good enough?”
Growing up in northeast England, she had dabbled in ballet and tap, and loved sports—not for competition, but for the beauty of movement. At 16, she trained as a physiotherapist while working at a chemical company.
“I still love how the body moves,” she says. “Feeling muscle tension, identifying weaknesses, seeing how simple exercises can make such a difference.”
After a divorce in the 1980s, she started a second career teaching movement, music, anatomy, and massage while raising two teenage sons.
Her love of the outdoors comes from her mother, a musician who took Thynne and her sisters into the countryside to walk and pick blackberries. “She gave us that appreciation,” Thynne says.
Like her mother, Thynne is someone who pushes herself. “I take opportunities, I take risks. I keep trying, asking, Can I do this? And then surprising myself when I can.”
That first dance class was “won-der-ful!” she says, singing the word. “Someone was teaching me, music was playing—I could let go and just feel the joy of movement.”
She later joined Prime, Dance Base’s semi-professional company for over-60s, and secured funding for These Mechanisms, collaborating with choreographer Robbie Synge. “It’s like having another career,” she marvels.
Along the way, she’s learned “to listen, to discover my own capabilities, to express myself, to work as part of a team.” She hopes to tour the show internationally.
To stay fit, she hangs from a bar each morning for a few minutes, stretches gently, and—of course—dances constantly. “Even just walking from the fridge to the stove, I’m probably dancing,” she laughs.She gestures with her hands swirling through the air. “Isn’t that what dance is all about? You just have to let go and explore it.”
These Mechanisms isn’t strictly autobiographical, but it “tells a story of persistence, joy, and risk”—qualities that define Thynne herself. “You could do this in your 20s, or even in your 80s,” she says. “It’s about pushing the limits of the human body and the drive to create something meaningful.”
These Mechanisms runs until 20 August at DB3 as part of Dance Base’s Fringe programme, presented in collaboration with Assembly Festival.
We’d love to hear from you—has your life taken a new direction after turning 60?
