http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
If You Say So is a deeply personal collection of true stories by Michelle Herman, who began ballet at 62 and found it life-changing. Blending themes of grief, reinvention, joy, and connection, Herman reflects on dance as both healing practice and artistic expression. Through moments like creating a socially distanced dance film during the pandemic and mourning the loss of a close friend, she explores the emotional and physical ways we carry love and loss. This memoir is a heartfelt tribute to family, friendship, art, and the unexpected beauty of late-in-life transformation.
"Michelle Herman took her first-ever ballet class at the age of 62, and it changed her life. If You Say So is a book of true stories about loss and reinvention, longing and loneliness, friendship and community, and family and home-and dance, the dedicated practice of which has led her on an unexpected new path. This is a book about grief and the way it lives in the body-and joy, and the way it lives in the body too. From the making of a pandemic-era dance film-the dancers masked, outdoors, six feet apart-to the sudden, shocking loss of a friend and fellow (sister) dancer three years later; from the challenges and delights of making art to the challenges and delights of motherhood and daughterhood, this book is a love letter to Herman's life as she enters her seventh decade, and to everyone and everything, human and nonhuman both, who's filled her life with their love." (from the publisher)