Woman behind Hip Op-eration makes Queen's honour list

Woman behind Hip Op-eration makes Queen's honour list

The woman behind elderly dance crew Hip Op-eration is surprised and privileged to be a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit under the Queen's 90th Birthday Honours list.

Billie Jordan, 46, has been leading the hip-hop group from Waiheke Island for the past four years, and says "not in a million, zillion years did I expect to get a Queen's honour".

"I normally thought that the Queen's honours list was for the hoi polloi, but not for somebody normal like me that's not particularly special in any way, so it's a real surprise and just really lovely."

To celebrate, her elderly dancers are taking her out for a special dinner.

For Ms Jordan, it's not just about the dancing; it's about supporting a way of life.

"The hip-hop dance is almost like a red herring. It's really just a vehicle to help reduce the stigma of ageing.

"What I'm all about is showing the world that life begins at 90 and you can live a rich and fulfilling life right up until your very last breath."

She says people need to hold high expectations for the elderly.

"People have this very set idea of how they're supposed to behave, what's their interest, even down to what they drink and eat. People expect old people to only like drinking cups of tea and eating scones.

"But of course old people are like any other age group and they have big dreams and they have goals and we should all be treating them as equals."

Ms Jordan moved to Waiheke Island to start a new life after being injured in the Christchurch earthquake. She says she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder that was retriggered after the quake.

"I had this fear of death when I arrived on Waiheke, a lot stronger than it had been, and I noticed the elderly neighbours in my neighbourhood were also worried about dying and also couldn't see a future in front of them. I thought if we all feel like this, maybe we should all go out and dance."

She rounded up 80 people on the island willing to give it a go, and after eight months the group was performing at the Hip-Hop World Championships in Las Vegas.

"I decided to put them out of their comfort zone and be the first person since their retirement that was going to have really high expectations of them and was going to expect an almost impossible goal for them to achieve."

Since then, the group has gone on to perform in Taiwan, and will again in Japan in August. They've also, of course, made it in the Guinness Book of World Records for the oldest dance group in the world, not to mention had a feature documentary made about them.

On top of this, they won the Age Concern Dignity Champion award in 2014 -- recognising a commitment to breaking down ageism.

Ms Jordan's latest crusade is to set up a Hip-Operation dance academy internationally. She's hailed tutors aged 18 to 108 to train up instructors to run classes in their own dance academies in their own towns.

"The response has been amazing. I didn't expect it to go on for so long, and I didn't expect it to become such a popular and a well-received initiative.

"What has been amazing for me is seeing how many senior citizens are out there that are just desperate to be treated like an equal and desperate to have expectations to be put on them, and have goals and dreams to be supported in and to achieve."

Newshub.