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They can’t resist the pull of the footlights

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The first-string pianist was out with cataracts.

The backup pianist was out with a hearing problem.

A lesser troupe might have thrown in the towel Tuesday afternoon, but to members of the Performance Workshop at the Las Palmas Senior Center in Hollywood, there are five words to live by.

The show must go on.

“Where’s Ernesto?” one of the seniors asked about a key actor who never misses rehearsal.

“I hope he’s all right,” said Barbara Arnold, the center’s director and coordinator of the western-themed show scheduled for Sept. 6. “I called and he didn’t answer. He’s been having heart problems.”

The Palmette dancers, quintessential pros after a dozen years together, didn’t seem fazed by any of it. Martha Santana, June Ikuma and Julia Marlowe had already laced up their black tap shoes and were patiently waiting for the bridge club to clear out of the auditorium.

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“Can you play the piano?” Marlowe asked me.

No, I said. And I can’t dance, either.

The day before, when I dropped by the center, Arnold had tried teaching me a few tap moves.

“Shuffle, hop, hold, down,” she had said, demonstrating moves she first used in a vaudeville career all the way back in the 1920s, when tap and castanet dancing were her specialties. “Now brush, ball, change.”

“Do you want to be in the show?” she asked, clearly being polite.

I have more respect for the arts than that, so I respectfully declined. But rehearsals are Tuesdays and Thursdays, if anyone’s interested, and a pianist would be greatly appreciated.

“I guess we’ll have to sing without music today,” said Burl Smith. “What’s that called?”

“A cappella,” said Michael Lyman, a regular performer and master of ceremonies for the several shows Las Palmas puts on every year.

“I’m going to sing ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds’,” said Robert Cox, who is retired from both the New York theater scene and Hollywood High, where he taught theater arts.

When I asked -- quite diplomatically, I thought -- who was the youngest member of the troupe, I got silence and blank stares until Lyman spoke.

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“We don’t discuss age,” he said, handing me a copy of a poem he wrote.

It begins:

We are the senior group

And we’re a feisty troupe.

My favorite lines:

“We’re not sad and

We’re not sassy

What we are

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Is proud and classy

We’re still here and taking classes

Not just sitting on our ...

Kenny Taylor, a late arrival who was appropriately dressed in cowboy boots, reluctantly agreed to sit in on piano when the bridge club finally cleared out.

“I’m not a piano player,” he said, though he wasn’t bad at all. He did study music at L.A. City College, he conceded.

When was that? I asked.

“Let’s see, 1948, 1949, 1950 and ’51.”

While Lyman set up the microphone on stage, backed by fake palms, artificial flowers and a U.S. flag, Arnold told me the story of how she gave up vaudeville because she got married and had five kids. But she said performing and teaching in the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, as she has for 40 years, has been no less satisfying than a life on the stage.

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“She’s still a hoofer,” said Smith, a troupe singer who had donned a cowboy hat to get into the spirit of the show.

Meanwhile, a woman named Dorothea -- “I don’t use my last name” -- said she had decided to sing “Indian Love Song” in the show because, “I thought it would be nice to bring the Indians into it.”

“Where’s Betty today?” someone asked of another performer.

“She went to the foot doctor,” Taylor said.

The rehearsal began with Lois Wood climbing up on stage to deliver an interpretation of westward expansion

“I’m not prepared,” said Wood, who takes three buses to get here from her home in Mid-Wilshire because she thinks Arnold runs the best senior center in the city. “But I’ll do my best.”

She couldn’t have done much better. She hit the Lewis and Clark highlights, touched on the history of Native Americans, and observed that western songs have a sad tone because the life of a cowboy was lonely.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” master of ceremonies Lyman intoned, “it’s my pleasure to introduce Bob Cox. He’s a big man with a big voice, and he’s going to sing ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds.’ ”

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It came together nicely, with Cox nailing the lyric and Taylor offering more-than-adequate backup on piano.

“And then I’ll come up on stage and say, ‘Hey, can I get a job?’ ” Taylor told the troupe. “And then I sing ‘I’m An Old Cow Hand.’ ”

Lyman, with shorts, droopy socks and a shirt with the name “Improv” on the pocket, followed with a fabulous rendition of “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” which left just two numbers. The finale would be a group rendition of “Happy Trails,” but Barbara Arnold and the Palmettes were up first with “Ragtime Cowboy Joe.”

“He’s a hifalutin,’ rootin,’ tootin’ son-of-a-gun from Arizona,” they sang.

They cut left, tapped right, shuffled back and scooted forward, light as fairies, ageless in Hollywood.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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