Moving Through Life

Naomi Goldberg Haas is the founder and artistic director of Dances for a Variable Population, which received the 2024 Outstanding Dance Organization Award from the National Dance Education Organization. In a career that has spanned concert dance, theater, opera, and film, Goldberg Haas danced with the Pacific Northwest Ballet and founded the intergenerational/mixed ability dance company Los Angeles Modern Dance & Ballet. A leader in the field of creative aging, she also received the 2023 Lifetime Impact in Dance Education award from the New York State Dance Education Association. Mikhaela Mahony is a Brooklyn-based director of theater, opera, and film as well as a faculty member at the Mannes School of Music at The New School.

"Haas is the founder and artistic director of Dances for a Variable Population, a multigenerational dance company and educational organization committed to promoting creative movement among older adults of all abilities through Movement Speaks classes and Dances for Seniors programs. Haas describes this book (cowritten with Mikhaela Mahony) as blending a practical manual and autobiography with a manifesto on the broader implications of balance, flexibility, and creativity. Memoir and movement illustrate Haas's credo that the study and practice of dance is an opportunity for renewal and regrowth. She shares her story and invites readers to try the program's exercises to develop the mind-body connection she believes can energize and empower people of all ages and abilities. The personal becomes professional when she writes about her own journey as a young dancer and how important movement is, especially as someone who has battled lupus since she was 26 years old. VERDICT: An insightful and heartening account of the importance of movement."--Library Journal "Memoir and movement illustrate Haas's credo that the study and practice of dance is an opportunity for renewal and regrowth. . . . An insightful and heartening account of the importance of movement."--Library Journal