Moving to the Beat of a Midlife Funk

The best dancer was the soft-spoken Chandler, owing to his days jumping around to rock music in the 1980s. Around the house, he tinkered with moves -- spinning while cooking dinner or "popping" his arms while walking through his sunny living room.

"My dad does hip-hop," his 12-year-old daughter, Gwen, told classmates at Thomas W. Pyle Middle School in Bethesda. She remembers them asking her whether he made a lot of money. She said no. "Then I think they went back to ignoring me," Gwen said.

For his part, Killoran was thankful to just be alive.

Shortly before midnight Nov. 28, 2004, as he walked near Dupont Circle, two men stole his wallet and stabbed him five times in the chest and back. He spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and didn't return to dance lessons for three months.

Over time, Schilling, the landscaper and musician, thought performances would lend focus to the group and had started to see stage value in their act. Two things could happen: They'd remain goofy-looking, middle-aged guys dancing goofily, or they'd become goofy-looking, middle-aged guys dancing surprisingly decently. Either would be hysterical. He started booking them to perform at his own gigs, where he plays his eclectic music under the name Fire-Dean.

As a tuneup to one show, the four performed early one weeknight in mid-January at Grog and Tankard, a no-frills joint in Glover Park. In the crowd: four of their friends, the bartender, a guy sitting at the bar wearing a knit winter hat and the next act, a self-described jazz/hip-hop/rhythm and blues group called JOYTI (Joy. On. Your. Total. Interest.).

JOYTI is composed of three African American men who have been playing in Washington for some time. As the dancers broke into their routine, JOYTI violinist Charles Tolbert took a seat, admiring their unique marketability. "They will probably make it before we will," he said.

That very notion -- pushing the act into public view -- was especially troubling to one of the four members. From the beginning, Temchine thought they would be confined to dance class or a release party for a music video Schilling was making. Temchine wasn't even sure what they did qualified as hip-hop, preferring the term "interpretive hip-hop" instead. Doing it on stage seemed embarrassing.

"You don't think I get nervous?" Schilling asked Temchine before a performance, his tone of empathy hitting home and helping break tensions that had grown between them. "As long as I have been performing, I get just as nervous now as when I first started."

That helped put the photographer at ease enough to continue with the group.

At the Feb. 10 Jammin' Java show in Vienna, he busted out several old belly-dance moves during his solo.

In the crowd, people cheered, laughed, uncorked catcalls. Celia Grammes, 26, who had come to hear the rock band, bolted up from her chair and danced as she does at D.C. clubs. Then she fell back into her chair, rolling her head back in laughter.

Chandler's wife, Despard, the woman who had pushed him to go make new friends, was there. On stage, Chandler broke out a solo, pantomiming that he was removing a cell phone from his shirt pocket, flipping it open and taking a call. A woman behind Despard told Despard to move so she could see. Despard did. She also filled her lungs with air and shouted.

"Beyonce!"