Stilt dancing has local senior riding high

Nothing slows down Sarah Stephenson.

Sure, the 70-year-old uses a walker — to get onto her unicycle. Sometimes she relies on a pole for added balance — when she’s wearing stilts.

Perhaps you saw Stephenson — all 7-foot-3-inches of her — boogying downtown in the streets as part of the recent St. Patrick’s Day parade. Or maybe you caught her busting a move at the Fourth Avenue Street Fair. Maybe you’ve just seen her practicing on the soccer fields at Brandi Fenton Memorial Park or at the Sunday drumming circle at Himmel Park. She gets around.

Stephenson, a mostly retired massage therapist, caught the stilt-dancing bug when she watched performers in the All Souls procession three years ago.

“I thought, ‘Hmmm. That looks like fun,’” says Stephenson, who can also list Senior Olympian on her very lengthy résumé, as well as welder, TV repairwoman, vet tech, videographer, acupuncturist and sky diver.

As a kid growing up in Casper, Wyoming, Stephenson made some stilts out of 2-by-4s and wooden wedges, but those weren’t especially fun. She much prefers the handmade aluminum stilts she and a friend crafted that have bolted-on black sneakers.

In the classes and workshops she’s taken, Stephenson is the most senior student. “Most of the people who do stilting are younger, by a lot,” she says, smiling.

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Not that that bothers her at all. “I can still do these things, so I take advantage.”

She figures she’s probably the oldest in town doing the stilt schtick. She proudly notes that she’s only fallen accidentally twice. Good kneepads, Stephenson says, are key.

While perched 2 feet above the ground, she can juggle balls and play claves, wooden percussion sticks. On her stilts to-do list: mastering stairs, playing the drum and maybe solving the Rubik’s Cube while perched up high. She keeps one in the front seat of her blue Ford Focus to twirl during red lights. She’s got a chess set in the trunk, too, not for bad traffic, but for breaks from rollerblading, which she took up 10 years ago. She and a friend will glide along, stop to play chess, and then coast some more.

Next up: the unicycle.

Stephenson’s watched a few YouTube videos, but isn’t ready to lose the walker while riding the one-wheeled bike.

“Right now I’m too chicken not to have something to hold onto.”