Finding balance

Dance for PD®

dNaga in partnership with Danspace offer DANCE for PD®
A program of the Mark Morris Dance Group

Watch the video

About Dance for PD®

The Dance for PD® program at Danspace is led by Claudine Naganuma and is currently held via zoom. Classes are free for all who attend and offer live accompaniment. If you would like to attend, please submit this registration form.

“Having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, I was looking for ways to connect to a community and to add movement to my life. I was not disappointed. Claudine’s classes are dynamic, creative, fun and joyful. In these classes, we are dancers, not patients. I am not alone in saying that this class is the highlight of my week.”- Martha Friedberg

These classes are appropriate for anyone with PD, no matter how advanced. No dance experience is necessary. The classes combine elements of modern dance, ballet, improvisation, and dance composition that creates an enjoyable, stimulating, non-pressured artistic experience for people with PD. Dance for PD® started as a unique collaboration between the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Brooklyn Parkinson Group, a chapter of the National Parkinson Foundation. The Dance for PD® teaching method is built on one fundamental premise: professionally-trained dancers are movement experts whose knowledge is useful to persons with PD. Dancers know about stretching and strengthening muscles, and about balance and rhythm. Most importantly, dancers know how to use their thoughts, imagination, eyes, ears and touch to control their movements. While dancing, whether in chairs, at a barre, or standing, everyone in the class explores comfortable dance movements in an enjoyable, non-pressured, social environment in which live music energizes, enriches and empowers.

Weekly Class Information

While dancing, whether in chairs, at the bare, or standing, everyone in the class explores comfortable dance movements in an enjoyable, non-pressured, social environment which live music energizes, enriches, and empowers.

Class Information

Thursdays from 10:30 -11:45 am

Classes are free to participants

Teachers

Claudine Naganuma

Freesia Paclebar Huth

Yasmine Oiknine

Live musical accompaniment by Roz Aronson

To Register

Fill out this registration form. Once we receive it, we will send you a zoom link.

For more information, email info@danspace.com
or call 510-420-0920

History of Dance for Parkinson’s at Danspace

The Dance for PD® program started in Brooklyn by members of the Mark Morris Dance Group in 2001, spearheaded by Program Manager David Leventhal. The Dance for PD® program at Danspace was initiated by Claudine Naganuma in 2007 when David Leventhal taught a master Dance for PD® class at Danspace. The classes were held bi-monthly, until 2009 when the Danspace program in partnership with PD Active was able to offer weekly classes year-round.

For more information on the original and happening program in Brooklyn, visit https://danceforparkinsons.org/

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Meet the instructors

Claudine Naganuma

Managing Director of Danspace; Choreographer & Creative Director of dNaga

CLAUDINE NAGANUMA is the Managing Director of Danspace and choreographer and creative director of dNaga. She started teaching dance for Parkinson’s in 2008 and premiered “PEACE about Life; Dancing with Parkinson’s” in 2010. For more information please visit dnaga.org.

Yasmine Oiknine

Choreographer

Yasmine Oiknine was born in Casablanca, Morocco. She has toured internationally as well as performed in numerous variety TV shows, movies and music videos with such artists as David Soul and Paula Abdul, Kylie Minogue, The Village people and James Brown. She’s been teaching and choreographing for the past 20 years in France, Luxembourg and Boston.

Mary Armentrout

Teacher, choreographer, dancer, and Feldenkrais Practitioner, and the director of the Mary Armentrout Dance Theater (MADT)

Mary Armentrout is a teacher, choreographer, dancer, and Feldenkrais Practitioner, and the director of the Mary Armentrout Dance Theater (MADT). Starting to dance at age three, she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1985. Over the years she has taught movement and dance of many varieties to people from ages 4 to 60+. Her understanding of movement and the human body is informed by her decades of study of Contemporary Modern Dance, Ballet, Butoh, Aikido, Authentic Movement, Alexander Technique, and of course the Feldenkrais Method. She teaches on-going classes in the Bay Area, in festivals and intensives, and recently taught master classes at universities in Louisiana, England, and China. Mary has been studying ballet with Beth Hoge since 1987 and has been teaching at Danspace since 1996. Her eclectic background combined with a profound respect for the Corvino Approach and a creative integration of Feldenkrais principles make her classes inviting and accessible to adults who have never danced, as well as those returning after a long absence, and to dancers of all backgrounds looking to clarify the role of ballet in their practice.

Freesia Paclebar Huth

Choreographer

Freesia Paclebar Huth has been dancing in the Bay Area since she was three. A native San Franciscan, she was a competitive ice skater in her youth, performing atop the Emporium-Capwell building in their yearly rooftop ice show. She is a founding member of Patricia Reedy and Dancers, and has performed with Colette Bisher-Choate, Unbound Spirit, George Latimer, New York choreographer, David Rousseve’s Reality Company, Purple Moon Dance Project and numerous Bay Area choreographers. Freesia has studied yoga and teaches Tai Chi to adults. She is one of the original partners of Luna Kids Dance, a developmentally based dance school and education program for teachers, where she taught in the children’s program for 11 years. She has choreographed for Berkeley Repertory Theater and the California Shakespeare Festival.

Reasons to dance

From Dance for Parkinsons website (https://danceforparkinsons.org/)

  1. Dance develops flexibility and instills confidence.
  2. Dance is first and foremost a stimulating mental activity that connects mind to body.
  3. Dance breaks isolation.
  4. Dance invokes imagery in the service of graceful movement.
  5. Dance focuses attention on eyes, ears and touch as tools to assist in movement and balance.
  6. Dance increases awareness of where all parts of the body are in space.
  7. Dance tells stories.
  8. Dance sparks creativity.
  9. The basis of dance is rhythm.
  10. The essence of dance is joy.