Calendar Girls: Inspiring senior dancers star in new movie at Sundance, then U.S. theaters

They’ve been shaking their booties for 16 years in Southwest Florida, delighting audiences with their colorful costumes and fun-loving dance choreography.

Now The Calendar Girls are dancing their way onto the big screen, too.

The documentary “Calendar Girls” premieres Saturday, Jan. 22, at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Then it’s expected to hit movie theaters nationwide sometime this summer.

The Calendar Girls can’t wait for everyone to see their song-and-dance team on the silver screen.

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“We’re quite thrilled,” says Katherine Shortlidge, the team’s program director and a founding member. “We’re so proud of our charity, and we think it’ll bring recognition to Southwest Florida, to older women and to Southeastern Guide Dogs for veterans (the charity they support).

“So it’s really the trifecta of anything a dance team could hope for.”

The team consists entirely of retirement-age or near-retirement-age women. They’re all between 50 and 80 years old, and most are 65-70, Shortlidge says.

That’s what attracted co-directors Maria Loohufvud and Love Martinsen. The Stockholm, Sweden, residents were visiting Cape Coral family members in 2018 when they took their kids to see tractors and fire trucks at a Touch-A-Truck event.

“Suddenly, we catch sight of a group of women all dressed in miniskirts and sequins,” the directors say in the movie’s press materials. “They climb up a truck bed and start to dance. Their tight tank tops declare ‘Calendar Girls.’ We can’t stop watching them.”

They loved the idea of a dance team made up of mostly senior-citizen women — especially when most dancers you see are much younger. It inspired them and made them start to question their own prejudices.

“Why are we surprised to see a bunch of women in their 60's dance, flirt and just have a lot of fun?" the directors say. "Is our mental picture of older people out of date?”

The directors spent two years answering those questions, traveling back and forth between Sweden and Cape Coral as they followed The Calendar Girls and tried to understand why those dancers do what they do.

They call the resulting, 83-minute documentary a “life-affirming, feel-good documentary that shakes up the outdated image of what it means to be an ‘old lady.'"

The Calendar Girls had planned to travel to Park City, Utah, for the world-premiere of the movie at Sundance, but the festival canceled its in-person events. All its films and events will be virtual now.

The dancers have already seen the movie, though: They gathered in front of a living-room TV for a little world premiere of their own.

And everyone loved it, Shortlidge says.

“We didn’t know what to expect, because they’d spent so many years  and just hundreds of hours with us,” she says. “And we didn’t know what they’d take out of all that. But we were very relieved and pleased that it was so creatively done and so positive.”

Good deeds and sizzling dance moves

The world might just now be learning about The Calendar Girls, but the dance team has been doing its thing since 2005.

They started with only 16 dancers and a handful of shows. Now they’re 36-strong and busy as ever: They performed 150 shows last year from Marco Island all the way north to Punta Gorda, dancing onstage to the sounds of Broadway, country, rock and sacred music.

They also rehearsed 150 days for those shows, Shortlidge says. “So it’s a huge commitment of time.”

It's all for a good cause, too. The group raises money for Southeastern Guide Dogs, a Florida charity that trains puppies and pairs them with soldiers with impaired vision.  

The Calendar Girls knew from the start that they wanted to support just one main charity, and they knew that charity would involve dogs, children or veterans. They landed on Southeastern Guide Dogs, which managed to cover two of those groups in one easy swoop.

“It included dogs and veterans,” Shortlidge says. “Not that we don’t adore children — although Southeastern does have guide dogs for children.”

Now, 16 years later, the entire world will know about The Calendar Girls' good deeds and their sizzling dance moves. 

Juno Films announced this month that it had acquired the North American distribution rights for “Calendar Girls.” A release date hasn’t been set for U.S. theaters.

“Maria and Love’s film is a celebration of life and the endless possibilities for joy and connection, if you are willing to put on your dancing shoes and think outside the proscribed box,” said Juno’s CEO, Elizabeth Sheldon, in a news release. “We fell in love with the Calendar Girls at first sight and are thrilled that we will be releasing the film in the upcoming year.

“It is a gem that, like the tiaras of the Calendar Girls, will sparkle brightly in the marquee lights and beyond.”

The movie world-premieres online at 1:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, Jan. 22, during Sundance. After that, it can be streamed anytime during a 24-hour window that starts at 10 a.m. Monday, Jan. 24.

Single tickets are $20, and film packages are also available. For more information, visit sundance.org or the movie’s Sundance page at bit.ly/3Gqbztb.

Learn more about The Calendar Girls dance team at calendargirlsflorida.com.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1).