Photodisc/Thinkstock(MURRAY, Utah) — A 103-year-old Utah man who still dances every week at a senior center says he plans to keep going until he cannot dance anymore.
“Until I fall over,” Karl Tinggaard told ABC affiliate KTVX-TV when asked how long he will continue. “Until I simply can’t do it anymore.”
Tinggaard has been a fixture every Thursday night for the past decade at the Murray Heritage Center in Murray, Utah.
He is dropped off by family members every week for the 55-and-over activity center’s dance night, according to the center’s program director, Maureen Gallagher.
“When he’s on the dance floor he dances with all the women,” Gallagher told ABC News.
Even more impressive is that Tinggaard shows up his younger friends on the dance floor.
“He doesn’t shuffle,” Gallagher said. “He dances.”
Tinggaard, who could not be reached by ABC News, was born in 1914 in Denmark, he told KTVX. He outlived his longest dance partner, his wife of 55 years, and their daughter.
He also outlived two other dancer partners, so now he dances with whomever is on the dance floor Thursday nights.
“I said to myself, ‘If they die from dancing with me I might as well not have a partner,'” he told KTVX.
Tinggaard is by far the oldest dancer at the Murray Heritage Center, according to Gallagher.
“He’s an inspiration,” she said.
He credits his longevity not to dancing, but to laughter.
“For every minute you laugh you extend your life one hour,” he said. “And I’m laughing a lot.”
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