A new start after 60: I became a dancer at 68 – and will perform my first solo show at 82

Christine Thynne, pictured during rehearsals for These Mechanisms. Photograph: Amy Sinead

At 82, Christine Thynne is an emerging artist. “Risk! There’s a colossal amount of risk,” Thynne says. She is about to perform her show, These Mechanisms, over three weeks at the Edinburgh fringe. While “emerging” isn’t a word often applied to artists in their 80s, Thynne says the description is appropriate. “I wasn’t there before,” she says. “I wasn’t a solo performer.”

Thynne’s show melds aspects of her life – she trained as a physiotherapist in the 1960s – along with other passions. Among her props are planks, stepladders and water. “Things I shouldn’t be doing,” she says. “Moving scaffolding planks. Changing the shape of stepladders. Carrying water.”