Myna Majors

Myna Majors

New York, hip hop dancer, anti-violence advocate

As a little girl growing up in the Bronx, Myna Majors and her friends made up their own dance routines. She is a life-long student of dance, taking classes in a variety of genres, from modern to Afro-Cuban and African. But hip hop is her favorite, and she was there when its pioneers put the Bronx on the map as its birthplace.

After graduating from the High School of Art and Design, she moved to San Diego for a change of scenery, and became a police officer. After seven years, she became homesick and returned to New York. She found a job as a coach at JHS 13 in Manhattan and formed the school’s first girl’s basketball and cheerleading teams.

Today, she is an antiviolence advocate who participates in community roundtables to discuss solutions. Myna also works as a consultant to an organization that provides services for victims of domestic violence. She leads group meditations. 

Five decades after hanging out with friends on a Bronx corner, she still puts her childhood dance moves in motion with the Timeless Torches, a unique dance squad of the WNBA New York Liberty women’s basketball team that performs during game breaks and at half time. The minimum age to audition is 40, but most members are 60 and up. Her signature move is a split.

“I did a split at a performance at Arthur Ashe stadium. The crowd went wild. I thought to myself, ‘What’s so surprising about a senior citizen doing splits anyway?’ When I tell people I’m a hip hop dancer, their eyebrows go up in disbelief. I just ask them, ‘Oh, is something wrong?’ and then I leave it just like that.”

She uses classic hip hop moves like pops and locks along with her splits. The movement keeps her young.

“You have to use it or lose it,” she says. “The dances young people are doing now are the same dances I did, just with a different name and a different twist.

“My name is Myna Majors, and I am a 67-year-old hip hop dancer.”