By Naomi Goldberg Haas, author of Moving through Life: Essential Lessons of Dance
People ask me how I went about writing Moving Through Life: Essential Lessons in Dance. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Mikhaela Mahoney, my steadfast cowriter. Each week, Mikhaela would email me six questions about a period in my life as a dancer, choreographer, or teacher. I’d spend the week writing responses to her questions and then send them back to Mikhaela for editing. A week or so later, my answers would be returned utterly transformed. They would contain the same stories, thoughts, exercises, and even sometimes the same words, but somehow— I don’t know how exactly—they were more me than me! Now that the book is out and my story is available for readers everywhere, I thought I would ask Mikhaela about the exciting changes taking place in her life: the birth of her new baby, George Wren Mahony Dagger! In keeping with our system, but this time with roles reversed, I asked Mikhaela six questions about her new life post-pregnancy, her baby, what her body is going through, and how baby George is discovering his own body in this first year of his momentous life. Her answers reveal our purpose in writing the book in the first place: they show how important movement is in bringing creativity and joy into our lives, and how everyone, regardless of ability or bodily condition, can benefit from movement. Please enjoy reading my interview with Mikhaela!
Naomi: Has your relationship to movement evolved since working with me on the book?
Mikhaela: My relationship to movement evolved because my body evolved—I had a baby! For 9 months, my body was constantly changing (and is still changing!), and I found myself returning to the tenets laid out in the book to situate myself inside my new physical reality. As I got further along in my pregnancy, my center was ever-changing. I had to renegotiate how I moved through the world, how to find balance. I also really needed to relearn proprioception—I was constantly surprised by how much space I took up. And even though I really loved being pregnant, there were a bunch of new aches and pains that I had to navigate, which meant constantly making adjustments to my new reality. In navigating my new reality, I often returned to Naomi’s idea of meeting your body where it is today—not your idea of where your body should be.
Naomi: Are there particular exercises or themes that you are thinking about in your life postpartum?
Mikhaela: I return to the idea of the mind-body connection all the time—I have to check in with myself and my breath constantly, especially when nursing (an activity I do 7-8 times a day, for 30-45 minutes each time). When George Wren was first born, I was figuring things out on my own, and thought I was doing OK, even though I had a fair amount of lower back pain and a strange pain that seemed to come from the back of my ribcage. I thought that was just part of the deal. I thought to myself, I’ll make sure I’m stretching. Thankfully, I was unbelievably fortunate to work with a fabulous lactation consultant after my first week postpartum—working with her honestly felt like being in a movement class. She immediately identified that my positioning was the culprit of my pain—unbeknownst to me in my newborn haze, I was lifting my shoulders up to my ears every time I held my baby, and I was also sitting in such a way that I was straining my core muscles more than I needed to. She advocated for the same things that Naomi does— aligning myself toward my center, moving loosely in order to move freely, letting my head float at the top of my spinal column. I needed to remember that even as I’m lifting my baby up, my shoulders actually need to come down. My feet should be flat on the ground to give me a good base in my chair.
But the exercise I think about the most is the final exercise of the book—the exercise for gratitude. I’m so grateful to be a witness to my son’s life, I’m grateful to the many artist mothers that came before me, who inspire and encourage me—like you, Naomi.
Naomi: What has surprised you the most about your experience being pregnant or being a new mother so far?
Mikhaela: To be frank, working on this book and going through pregnancy transformed my relationship with my body. Growing up, I absorbed a lot of harmful cultural messaging around what my body should look like. I wanted to be built like the stereotypical idea of what ballerinas should look like more than anything. The fact that my body simply would never look like that was a constant disappointment at the best of times, torment at the worst. Even as I matured, I kept subconsciously returning to this feeling that my body was a failure, that it couldn’t do or look like what I wanted it to. But working on the book with Naomi, I was so compelled by this idea that movement is a way to transform the relationship of an aging or changing body from one of loss to one of gain and creation—and that felt true with my experience of pregnancy. I expected to feel insecure about the way my body was changing and has changed. But I was surprised to find that I ended up feeling more confident than I ever have. Even though certain aspects of my body will never be the same as they were before having a baby, I am aware of what I am capable of, what my body is capable of, and I’m so proud of the body I have. I really didn’t imagine that I would end up feeling so connected to my physical self, and so confident in the body that I have now, and this is due in part to the lessons I learned while working on Moving through Life.
Naomi: We talk a lot in the book about my early experiences with dance education. Do you think Wren will pursue dance, and if so, what lessons about movement do you hope he keeps with him?
Mikhaela: Wren has always been a mover, even before he was born. Our many ultrasound technicians were always stunned (and sometimes irritated) by his perpetual movement. Because I’m only slightly neurotic, I once asked my OB/GYN if there was anything strange or wrong with how much he was moving around. She said, “For me, right now, his movement is incredible: it means he’s healthy. For you, once he’s born? Good luck.” So in my mind, Wren has always been a dancer. I look forward to welcoming all kinds of dance into our home, whether it’s formal classes or just wiggling around the living room together. I hope that he always finds as much uninhibited joy in even the strangest, goofiest movements he makes. And I hope he retains his inborn knowledge that movement is communication—right now, we have no shared verbal language, because he’s only three months old. But we can communicate with each other based on physical language. And I hope that he keeps that knowledge with him—that physicality is a language to be wielded for positive and creative communication.
Naomi: Our book focuses on movement with older folks, but what have you learned about movement from the very, very young person that you live with?
Mikhaela: I love watching George Wren make discoveries about his own body. As he’s learning, he’s teaching me a lot as well—and not just strength training by picking him up all the time. He’s still very little, so he’s not locomoting in any way yet, but it’s amazing to watch how he uses his own body weight to gain strength in his neck and core muscles. Everything he does is an isometric exercise. I love watching him learn how to roll over, and how many muscles that action involves. He’s also fearless in terms of movement. It reminds me of what Naomi writes about, that any movement is good movement, even if it’s small. These micromovements he does—as long as he does them every day, repeatedly—will lead to amazing transformations.
It’s also incredible to see how movement is so inbuilt into his life. No one needs to tell him to move—he moves because it is natural to him. He doesn’t think to himself: “Better exercise today so that eventually I can hold my head up.” No, he just does it. Because to be alive is to move.
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.
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