Cutrone, 69, of Hatfield, will take a bus to New York today with family and friends to learn the famed Rockettes precision dance she idolized as a child and take the audition she was denied five decades ago.

Every Thursday for the last seven years, Cutrone has danced with the Peak Tappers, a troupe of 13 older but nimble women who have helped her to rekindle the passion she gave up as a teen. She resumed dancing after she and husband Carl moved to Florida 12 years ago.

The Twilight Wish Foundation, a Fountainville, Bucks County, nonprofit that aims to fulfill seniors' dreams, enlisted Upper Merion sixth graders to raise $1,600 to send Cutrone, fellow dancers and her family to New York. They will take a backstage tour of the theater, and Cutrone will receive a three-hour dance lesson from a Rockette.

Then, the native of Queens Borough will have the audition she desired in 1955 at age 16, but her recently widowed mother forbade. She took a summer job instead, at a bakery, and three years later married. Soon she was rearing three children and working as a secretary.

Time has given her perspective.

"It's going to be interesting, because a lot of these girls are really going to get put on the list for the Rockettes," Cutrone said. "So I'll probably be the oldest and the shortest of the group. But that's OK. They'll be looking at all those beautiful girls and I'll just have fun."

Cutrone taught tap dancing as a teen and frequently watched the Rockettes shows. The father of one of her students worked at Radio City and set up the aborted audition.

Years later, when the couple moved to Florida, she "found out that you can start playing again when you're an adult," she said.

Dancing again was one thing for the captain of the Peak Tappers, but she had long dismissed her teenage fantasies of summer nights backstage at Radio City.

Debbie Amundson, the former development director at the Peak Center, a senior center in Lansdale where the Peak Dancers meet, got the ball rolling. She was so inspired by the colorful group of seniors that she contacted the Twilight Wish Foundation. Amundson was amazed not just by their energy, but that a third of them also were cancer survivors and continued to dance.

Cutrone has had serious medical issues of her own. She survived viral meningitis last year. That kept her from dancing with the Tappers, let alone walking without immense pain.

"This shows that age is all about attitude," said Amundson, who will travel with 10 of the Tappers, their long-time instructor, John Long, and Carol's husband and their son John.

A big part of Cutrone's rehabilitation was dancing. Once she could, she attended rehearsals and held on to a chair back to make it through.

Then, just seven months after being rushed to the emergency room, she triumphantly led her troupe through Skippack in the annual Fourth of July parade.

"I don't know how she did it, honest to goodness," said her husband. ". . . She was dancing with partial feeling in one foot."

Now, decades after taking the subway from Queens, to see the Rockettes so many times, she will be on stage beside them, finally.

"Doing something that you really love, and you get to do it as an adult . . . It is such fun," Cutrone said. "It is twice the pleasure when you get to do it again."