Elderly Couple Showcases Their Old-School Moves In An Unforgettable Performance

Mar 25, 2021

Are you ready to check out an amazing dance, boogie-woogie style, from a truly energetic couple? What if you knew they were an older couple who are still hitting the dance floor? Dietmar and Nellia Ehrentraut, a senior couple from Durmersheim, Germany, took to the floor at the Horn dance school located in Austria back in 2018.

For those who don’t know much about dance in Europe — don’t worry, we don’t either — the Horn family of Linz, Austria, is quite well known for beginning their own dance school back in the early 1900s. They have since been one of the more popular dancing schools in all of Austria and Europe. They teach Samba, Cha Cha Cha, Foxtrot, Viennese Waltz, Boogie and Rumba.

At the 2018 Horn event, audience members pulled out their phones to capture the Ehrentrauts' wonderful dance. And when you see it, you will know why it quickly became a viral hit all around the world!

Dietmar and Nellia, a married dancing duo who tied the knot back in 1970, have made a name for themselves in Germany after going viral online. But before they reached a mainstream audience online, they danced together professionally for over 40 years, including in many dancing competitions both in Germany and in Austria.

Their specialty dancing skills have also won them many awards thanks to their expertise in jitterbug and the lindy hop, two dances that hail from the 1940s and 1950s. In this 2018 video, which showcases these two spry seniors dancing their tails off to the boogie-woogie track “Down the Road a Piece,” you might see why this duo has spread far and wide across the internet.

The couple danced to the hit song while others gathered and watched at the Horn dance school function. Nearly everyone surrounding them seems younger, making the dance even more impressive to watch! In the video, the pair dances as if they are still 18. For the record, these two aren’t teenagers anymore in spite of their age-defying dance skills. Surprisingly, Dietmar is in his 70s while Nellia is in her late 60s.

While the video below has more than 5 million views and nearly 40,000 comments, it isn’t the couple’s original claim to fame. In fact, Dietmar and Nellia first went viral with their 2017 performance at the Boogie Woogie Veteran’s Tournament in Landshut, Germany. Dancing to the same track, Johan Blohm and The Refreshments’ cover of “Down the Road a Piece,” Dietmar and Nellia seemed to blow the audience away.

What makes the performance even more impressive is that it was improvised.

“With boogie-woogie you can improvise a lot. That's the great thing about the dance,” Dietmar explained in German to the Augsburger Allgemeine in 2017. “It has to go from the head to the feet, then something really comes out of it. We always dance wildly. We don't have a program. I couldn't remember that anyway. And when you dance, you shouldn't think anyway — no matter what music comes, it is danced out.”

Once someone uploaded the couple’s performance online, it spread like wildfire across the web, attracting fans from around the world and accumulating more than 60 million views, according to the German press.

Since then, the couple has reuploaded the viral clip to their own YouTube channel, where it has received 10 million views of its own along with an outpouring of enthusiastic support.

“South Texas says "WOW!!!" This was really neat to watch!! We should all be so young,” Michael Powell wrote in the comments.

“Not even 10 seconds into the dance and I started to tear up!” another user added. “They’re so cute and really know how to dance! This makes me so nostalgic for a time I was never alive. Ahh how beautiful. ❤️”

Suffice to say that the publicity was unexpected for Dietmar and Nellia, who both hail from a small southern German town of 12,000.

“Someone filmed us and put the video on the internet,” Dietmar explained. “We didn't know anything about it. And all of a sudden people are calling and saying what a great video this is. Most of the time there is someone with a camera, but usually filming is only done for the organizer. Now the phone rings almost every hour, hopefully it will stop soon. We're not used to that.”

Despite the couple’s rather newfound fame, both Dietmar and Nellia have been dancing for decades and are not strangers when it comes to the spotlight. For example, Dietmar said in the same interview that he and his wife have danced in front of 40,000 people at a racetrack in Hockenheim, Germany. And in the video below, there’s also quite a large audience — many of whom were likely dance enthusiasts.

Speaking to his and his wife’s dancing journey, Dietmar added that after Nellia had children at an early age, the couple decided to try boogie-woogie in Munich, a “stronghold” of dance during the ‘70s. Fast forward a couple of years, and both Dietmar and Nellia had won awards in Europe along with placing second in the boogie-woogie international rankings back in the mid-’90s.

Another one of Dietmar and Nellia’s career highlights came at the 2002 European Championships in Lyon, France, where the couple placed fifth.

“There were about 2,500 spectators,” Dietmar told the Augsburger Allgemeine. “They must have given us a standing ovation for five to six minutes. You don't forget something like that.”

In 2017, Dietmar said that the couple still trains twice a week, and the duo’s YouTube channel is proof of that. Since they went viral, the couple has uploaded dozens of new videos. In one of their most recent videos from March 2021, Dietmar and Nellia dance to the German track “Die Nacht war schön im Moonlight” in their living room with smiles on their faces.

“We are very happily married. But you have to blow into the embers every now and then to keep the fire from going out. We cultivate our relationship and have created a lot in common with dancing. It welds us together, you can let off steam together,” Nellia explained in a 2020 interview.

As for dancing in tournaments, Dietmar told the Augsburger Allgemeine that the couple is done performing in competitions. With that said, their YouTube channel remains a treasure trove for boogie-woogie fans and a testament to the Ehrentrauts' legacy.

What did you think of these two amazing dancers? Have you ever seen such a spry older couple? Let us know — and be sure to pass this on to friends, family members and fellow dance lovers!