Interviews

Check out artistic director Claudine Naganuma’s feature in this article highlighting four alumni of the Mills College dance department!

Kimiko Guthrie, Claudine Naganuma, and SanSan Kwan in conversation…

An interview by Kimiko Guthrie with Claudine Naganuma & SanSan Kwan. Featuring a discussion between the two choreographers, and their combined works of “Threshold” which was recently performed at the Mondavi Center in October 2024. The interview explores topics of the Asian American trope of passivity, political activist Yuri Kochiyama, and the need for both anger & radical love in healing ourselves & our planet.

Since 2007, Claudine Naganuma has been conducting and recording interviews, which have become central to our artistic process. These interviews form an important layer of the soundscape in dNaga’s performances, as well as provide inspiration for the movement onstage. dNaga’s work is rooted in understanding the complex social structures that we live in. Our work tackles themes such as the incarceration of Japanese Americans, racial profiling, mental health, systemic issues facing our youth, medication, surgery and palliative care. The interview process allows us to incorporate voices of those who are onstage as well as those who are not.

Peace about Life: Dancing with Parkinson’s

In 2019, dNaga published its first book PEACE About Life: Dancing with Parkinson’s in English and Japanese. It is a collection of interviews, photographs, poetry and artwork gathered by Claudine Naganuma, edited by Kelly Meadow, and layout design by Larry Van Dyke.

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® 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.

 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…

Foreword by David Leventhal. Translated by Takako Hayakawa.

“I love the book and the stories. It humanizes the condition [Parkinson’s Disease] in a way that makes it approachable.”

—Suketu M. Khandhar, MD; Chief of Neurology, Sacramento/Roseville; Medical Director, KPNC Comprehensive Movement Disorders Program

“I wish this book had been available when I first got my Parkinson’s diagnosis. In words and pictures of a diverse group of dancers with Parkinson’s, Peace About Life captures both the anger and pain of living with the disease and the joy of dancing with it.”

—Kathleen Meagher, Lawyer and Dancer with Parkinson’s