Keep On Dancing

Malli Plowman, 79, Cabarrus County Senior Games

Senior Games can give participants an opportunity to continue doing what they love, and that is especially true for dancer and cheerleader Malli Plowman.

Malli has been a North Carolina Senior Games participant for over 15 years. She got involved when she saw an advertisement in the paper for the Cabarrus County Senior Games SilverArts Follies. “I was a dance teacher most of my life, but I had decided that I was too old to dance anymore. I went and I saw the Follies and it just looks like so much fun and I thought, ‘I can do that!’” she recalls.

After she saw the Follies show, she went to her senior center and enrolled in a hula dance class. Once she was there, she couldn’t help but get caught up in the Senior Games excitement. She now participates in cornhole, bocce, shuffleboard, table tennis, and of course, performing arts and cheerleading. 

Malli always had a love of dance and performing, starting from the young age of 3. “My dad was in the Army Air Force and my mom made me a soldier's outfit out of an old uniform,” she says.  “My mom and dad would take me to the enlisted men's club and they would put me up on the table and I would sing ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’ and dance. Soldiers would throw their pennies and that’s how I bought beers for my mom and dad!” She continued to take dance lessons, and she even started her own dance studio when she was a senior in High School. She continued to teach dance for many years, before working for Lowe's Home Improvement as a switchboard operator, where she retired after 12 years. Malli never really retired from teaching dance, though. She now teaches a Broadway Jazz dance class at the senior center and performs with her dancers at Senior Games Follies competitions. 

Cheerleading is a newer addition to Malli’s performing repertoire. She had never been a cheerleader before Senior Games, but now in addition to participating, she is the coach, choreographer, and cheer writer for the Cabarrus County Sparks. “One of my favorite Senior Games memories is the first time our cheerleaders won gold!” she says. “It was just incredible because we were never cheerleaders and so we started out with nothing, and they worked so hard! I mean, they earned it. I love every one of them."

Malli loves Senior Games not only for the opportunities to perform and participate that it gives her, but also for the community it has given her. “I can't even count the number of friends I have from Senior Games,” she says. When she fought breast cancer last October, she says it really showed her what a great community she had around her. “It's amazing the support I got and how many women had been through the same thing. The senior center and Senior Games is like a gigantic support system.

Malli’s goal for the future is to take after her grandmother and namesake, who lived to be 100 years and 4 months old. “My grandmother had a 100th birthday party where she was up dancing with my dad. The mayor was there and he leaned over to my grandmother and said ‘This is the first hundredth birthday party I've ever been to!’ My grandmother winked at him and said ‘Me too!’.  My goal is to still be active when I'm 100!”