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News 12 Staff

726spotlightnj2_2025-07-26-11-08-15

We have the pacemakers here on Spotlight New Jersey this weekend, and as you see they have a special message on the back of their jerseys. Tell me all about it starting with you, Susan. Oh, well, we shout our ages from the rooftops. We are not embarrassed by the word old because we are old, and what comes with that is we're vital, we're powerful, we're sexy, we're beautiful, and so old is not a bad word to us. It's just chronological, so there's nothing. To be ashamed about, it's actually aspirational because what's the alternative right to getting old so we're here and we shout our ages from the rooftops on all of our costumes. Age ain't nothing but a number and if you don't mind, it don't matter. What does it say on the back of yours? So I'm 1960. I turned 65 this year and very proud of it, and you, Roch. Age I don't even pay attention to my age anymore. I just go out there, live and enjoy. Uh, I want people to see what we do, look at our ages behind us, get them off their butts, get them moving, and that's the most important thing. Just sitting around is no. Good. And you gotta have fun. That's what we do. We love each other and we be, be, you know, we're with each other quite often and we don't really get well except for her. I get sick of her every once in a while. I'm gonna tell you, these two have a camaraderie going on now. What's on the back of yours? 56. So I'm going to be 69 years old and what a wonderful age it is. You look good, girl. Thank you so much. What about you too, Lola Mine says 1962 and um sassy 63 Sassy 63. I love that. What kind of reaction do you all get from fans, the audience when you're out and about? They must love this. It, it varies. It, it goes from this level to this level to this level, and every one of them, no matter what level it is, thinks the world of us thinks we're doing something great, which we are, uh, they just love it. They can't believe that we can move. Like we move at our age, uh, we kind of like the, in the, that gravity defying gravity is what we're doing. We just have fun and when you're having fun, you could do anything and you said two key words having fun and loving each other. Why is that so important? It's important because the camaraderie that you have with others, the ability to speak with others and not only with your own age group, but with other age groups. They just love, um, when we dance. You know, younger, older, they're all coming up and they wanna do what we're doing. And this one right here loves to get down? What about you? Yeah, we encourage others to get up and move with us, you know, no matter what your age is and even at the parade, all the young ones come up and they have they're like, well, we want to be just like you.

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726spotlightnj3_2025-07-26-12-23-29

We are back with the pacemakers one more time here on Spotlight New Jersey. Everybody say your names one more time. Hi, I'm Susan. Hi, I'm Roger. Hi, I'm Gloria. Hi, I'm Arlene. They are really good. Where do you all rehearse? We rehearse in Midtown Manhattan right near Penn Station, but our dancers are from all over. Why does this mean so much to you, Raj? Oh my gosh, it, uh, just physically and mentally, it means the world to me. Uh, just learning new choreography, getting out there dancing, moving your body. I go to the VA, uh, I'm a disabled veteran, and every time I go in there, they keep asking me, Are you still dancing? Are you still dancing? And I actually had a doctor who wrote out a fake, uh, prescription for me. Keep on dancing. Yeah. And what about you, Suzanne? You started the whole thing. I did. I did, um, so do you want me to tell you the story of how I started it, um. So it's kind of an interesting story. I was at a public event and I was dancing at this public event and somebody took video of me and put it on the internet and unfortunately I learned what it was like to be cyber bullied. People were saying things like, go home, you're too old to dance in public, you're ugly, you know, just really mean things. And that night I said to my daughter, well, I guess my dancing days are over, and my daughter, who's a snarky New Yorker, said, Why don't you start your own old person dance team and get back at them. And I thought, you know, I was a journalist for a long time. I, you know, journalist we work by ourselves. I didn't know how to start a dance team, so I called a friend of mine and, uh, I asked her to help, and, um, we put an ad in Playbill and all these wonderful folks showed up and I was the first person to show up because I wanted to be part of this team absolutely and and Roger, I called Roger because he was an old friend of mine and he said, I'll join. I'm gonna bring my sister who's a former Rockette, so we had them on the team and. And it was, it just grew from there and then what happened was we started taking rehearsal video and I would send it around to friends and one of my friends worked at the Brooklyn Cyclones, which is the New York Mets farm team, and she said, Oh my God, you guys are amazing. I want you to perform here. And I said, You sure people want to see old people dancing? And she said, absolutely. So our first performance was July 6, 2019, and we got a standing ovation, and ever since then our dance card is full, and you must love that too, Lola. I love it and this is my 3rd season on the team and it's just made such a big difference in my life because I love performing that and we're a dance family. it's amazing to be together and you had something to say, Cloe. I do when we're dancing, people of all ages want to be with us and dance with us, and we just bring them right on up and say, come be with us, dance with us now, and it's just wonderful.

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BPt4NJPacemakersJuly 27

Don't you just love this fantastic group shot? We are looking at the pacemakers. This is the entire team. Susan put it together. When do you hold auditions to get all these dancers in one troupe? Yeah, so we hold auditions once a year, um, and we're every year we're growing and growing. We get more and more gigs. We're thrilled that we get to perform all over New Jersey and um, yeah, so it's an audition and we have one coming up and we would. Love more New Jersey folks to join our team. Our producer Adriano saw you all in Somerset. She was so impressed with your performance. You just had a gig last night. So last night we were at the New Jersey Blue Claws for their pride event. That was fantastic. Um, coming up we're gonna be in August. We're gonna be at the Somerset Patriots, and in September we're doing the South Plainfield Labor Day parade, and we have lots more in store down the line. When people watch you and see you in. Action do more and more offers come in for performances? It's sort of one of the ways I measure our success is, um, you know, audience applause, obviously that's really important to us, but also how many emails I get after we perform from people in the audience who want to join the team and it's always so overwhelming. I mean, I even get emails from 20 year olds saying, can you start a junior pacemakers dance team? We would love to be part of this. I get all age ranges. And people from all over the world when we post on social media, I hear from Japan, Australia, Argentina, people want us to come and perform, and we're ready to do it. Tell everybody your nickname. Oh, my nickname is the Chief heart murmur, and the reason the reason I chose that is because heart murmurs are, you know, it's a medical condition and you just have to pay attention to it, but you don't have to worry about it. So I just think of myself as the leader is like, pay attention to me, but don't worry. We're all in this together. We're one big happy family and your nickname. My nickname is Big Raj, uh, as you can tell by, by the height, and, um, I just love the parade when we do the parade. We start off in a formation, but my, being me, I always break off to the side with the people start doing boogie and start rapping and going crazy, getting the people up, especially the young little kids, they absolutely love it. And from the crowd itself people are saying we wanna be you we wanna be you so it's no matter where we are the people wanna be us and do what we do. It's just it's like it's catchy. You can't help it. It's just catchy and we need more of that catchy inspiration here, don't we ladies? Absolutely nickname, my nickname is Glow, and I try to glow. I bet she does. Um, we also do, um, a dancing over at basketball games besides, yes, so we get out there and we did one, we do another one that's all together that is, uh, music through the ages, music through the ages. That must be so much fun when you do that. Tell everybody your nickname. OK, my nickname is Loony Lola because I'm Looney and Lola means grandma in the Philippines and And, in addition to that, we, we, I think the most memorable, most fun one is doing, we do fun things like flash mobs and, and everybody loves that so we just have fun and be loy. Overnight Susan sent us this video of their performance with the Jersey Shore Blue Claws last night. Bravo at 9, Souzo talks about their halftime show routine called Dance Through the Decade, which Gloria mentioned. You'll also see a video with their moose.

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727spotlightnj5_2025-07-27-09-18-27

Watch these people in action. The pace, look at her, Get down, honey in your shimmery dress. Susan founded this group. Tell us about this video. Well, this is our dance through the decades. That's me as Madonna, um, where we started. 1950s with Hit the Road Jack and we go all the way through the decades. We do about 25 seconds of each dance, each song, and we end with Cardi B at the end and people love this. It's our halftime show that we do. You perform here in New Jersey. Where else you go abroad too. Oh yeah, so last year we were invited, we had a viral video that has about 60 million views and we got requests from all over the world to come to perform and the one we took up was the one to Austria. So we went to Austria and Germany last year and did our dance workshops and what we do our day discos, which is where we invite the public to come and dance with us. We teach them our actual choreography and then we spend some time. Doing a day disco in the middle of the day, alcohol free. It's a lot of fun and all ages come like from little kids all the way to people in their 90s, super, super fun. So I love it. People know how to get down and have a good time without alcohol. We don't need alcohol to have fun and dance, but we're really looking forward to our next, our second international tour to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Wow, that is so cool. We're going international. It just proves to you, Della, that. No matter what country you're in, people wanna see us do what we do, and they want to do what we do. It is crazy. It is absolutely brings joy. That's, that's our whole goal is we want to say we're old, we're here, we're loud and proud, and we're bringing the joy. Yes, my God, you have a special relative who has since gone on who blessed what you're doing because she loves this. Yeah, she, she was a. Go in with some mental illness and she just loved the idea of when I would go out and party and you know go dancing so we're very lucky that way um but if anybody would like to donate to our team, you just go on our website, pacemakers dance Team.com and there's a little donate button and it's completely tax deductible. Any donation you give us, we're very, very grateful, completely tax deductible. Do you find a lot of people want to contribute and help? Yeah, we do it right, it could be as little as $1 or you know we've gotten more than that too, but it really helps us because the other thing that we do is we bring these dance workshops to senior centers. We give back in that way. It's not just our wonderful performances around the world, but we want to give back to people our age, so we go to senior centers and get them up and moving and even if they're in chairs, we do chair choreography, so any amount would help us continue our mission.

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727spotlightnj6_2025-07-27-12-19-02

You are looking at a group shot of the pacemakers, and if you look at the back of their jerseys, Susan, they have what they that's their years of birth. We shout it, we're loud and proud. We are very proud of our ages and we are proud of being old. Old is not a bad word. There's no shame in that. We're also vital, sexy, and powerful, and you offer a lot of activities to people too with kindness clause and a contract when you join. The pacemakers, you don't have to be a professional dancer. As a matter of fact, most people on the team are not former professional dancers. We have a couple of them, but most people are just people who love to dance. In the contract, we have what's called a kindness clause where we say, look, we just want you to be supportive and lovely to everybody on the team and the public when you represent the pacemakers. That's a big part of who we are is bringing kindness to the world and to. Each other as a community and you have a choreographer who is wonderful. She's Marissa, our choreographer is extraordinary. She's young, so she's, you know, in her 30s and she totally gets our vibe and wants to be us in 30 years from now. She, she's just extraordinary. We're very, very lucky to have a fantastic choreographer. Did you all intend to fight ageism when you set out with this group? No, not really, it was nothing it was to just be able to provide excitement in the sense of look at us, we dance we move so I don't think of ageism. I think of the joy of dance, the joy of dance. I love that that is well put that's the. you want people to walk away with from all of your performances and all of the other activities that you offer. You have pool poolside, we go to we go to beach clubs and we're on the deck and we teach our real choreography to people in the pool where they could stay cool. We do panel discussions about reinvention. Anybody could call us and hire us for all of those things. We do our day disco. We do our dance workshops, and of course we. Perform so all we have a lot of things in our offerings and we're happy to bring them to anybody. And please, if you're interested in joining the team reach out through our website, pacemakers dance Team.com and you don't need to be a professional. You just have to love dancing and be and be I'm gonna be at least 60 you all show me what you do, OK? Uh-huh, yeah, there we go. The team out there that you all should know, the guys and the girls put on a heck of a show. We're older than most, but we pay it no mind because when we hit the field, we're looking mighty fine. Where's the pace. The pacemakers We're busting a move, shaking it to the groove because we're at the pace. The pacemakers. Everyone is what can be because when we hit the field, the fans are on their feet. Dance is our thing. We want the people to know. We are pacemakers and we're ready to go.

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News 12’s Della Crews spoke to members about their mission.

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