Peace About Life

It challenges you on every level, and it's always waiting around the corner with another punch... It is just so much easier to say "I love you" to people... I mean the grim joke of Parkinson's is it's the gift that keeps on taking... I think it's great to create beauty through movement... Peace About Life: Dancing with Parkinson's is a collection of uninhibited, first-hand accounts of struggling, thriving, re-defining identity, and finding peace while living with Parkinson's disease. Claudine Naganuma, artistic director of dNaga Dance Company and certified Dance for PD(R) instructor, spent years interviewing dancers living with Parkinson's disease, as well as some of their neurologists. The interviews were then taken into the studio to inspire and serve as audio for dance pieces. This book is a bilingual compilation of the interviews and poetry in English and Japanese, arranged around themes that arose during the interview process over time, such as diagnosis; coming out to friends and family; shifting identity; management of symptoms through medication; communicating with doctors; dancing; and finding peace while living with PD. Anyone who picks up this immersive book will gain insight into people's deeply personal experiences living and dancing with Parkinson's disease. Foreword by David Leventhal. Translated by Takako Hayakawa