a few upcoming events

This coming Monday, at the Pennsylvania Library Association Convention, I'll be sitting with Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb on a panel devoted to nonfiction, an event I've been looking forward to for quite awhile.

Other events at a variety of venues—Rosemont College, Montgomery County Community College, Trinity Urban Life Center, University of Pennsylvania, Downingtown High School West, Musehouse/Schuylkill Writing Center, Montgomery County Historical Center, and the National Harbor Convention Center—are upcoming, and I share them here, on the off chance that our paths might cross. Nonfiction, memoir, promotions, the Schuylkill River, the fate of young adult fiction, the Berlin Wall, the importance of libraries, and my new April 2015 novel, One Thing Stolen (Chronicle Books) will all be discussed.

In between, I'll be dancing the cha-cha for DanceSport Academy on the Bryn Mawr College campus to the song "Blurred Lines." Which is exactly how I'm feeling.

September 29, 2014, 2:00 PM 
Nonfiction Panel with Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb
PaLA Convention
Lancaster County Convention Center
Lancaster County, PA

October 11, 2014
Memoir and Creative Nonfiction Panel (1:15), with Karen Rile and Julia Chang
Marketing for Published Authors Panel (2:30), with Kelly Simmons and Donna Galanti
Push to Publish Conference
Rosemont College
Rosemont, PA
Details here.

October 14, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Montgomery County Community College West Campus
Community Room
Details here.

October 16, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Trinity Urban Life Center
Philadelphia, PA
Details here.

November 1, 2014, 4:00 PM
University of Pennsylvania Homecoming Panel
LORENE CARY (C'78), BETH KEPHART (C'82), JORDAN SONNENBLICK (C'91), and KATHY DEMARCO VAN CLEVE (C'88) — and moderated by children's book editor LIZ VAN DOREN 
Young Adult Fiction Panel
Kelly Writers House
Philadelphia, PA


November 6, 2014, All Day
Downingtown High School West
PA Forward Speak Up!
Presentations on GOING OVER and Book Club Chat
Downingtown, PA 

November 8, 2014, 10:00 AM
Musehouse Writing Retreat in the Woods
The Schuylkill Center
Philadelphia, PA

November 15, 2014
Luncheon Keynote
Montgomery County Historical Society
(private function)

November 21, 2014, 3:00 PM
NCTE Signing, ONE THING STOLEN
National Harbor Convention Center
Washington, DC

Read more...

getting real, with friends

 

Today was full of many things—an early morning with my dad, time with a manuscript, a fantastic (even raucous) baby shower crowded with such dear friends, a trip to the Schuylkill River to experience the Flow Festival, and almost (not quite) finding A.S. King in my own 30th Street Station (we missed each other by minutes; we will not miss each other again). Tonight, day's end, I am thinking of the souls who gathered, the baby who is waiting, the joy that convened. I am thinking, too, about a conversation—the kind that makes me stop and appreciate its sheer rarity.

"We need to talk about Savas," the conversation began. The speaker was a dance friend, a tech genius, someone I hadn't seen in many months. I was so startled that at first I couldn't imagine what he meant. It was Going Over, the Berlin novel, he was speaking of. It was a decision I'd made about a character, a young Turkish boy, that he was questioning. How? he asked me. Why? Should it not have been impossible to write what I wrote down?

My friend had questions, too, about Ada and Stefan, what my west Berlin graffiti girl saw, at first, in her East Berlin lover. He wanted to know about point of view, how I decided what was to be left on stage, and off. And where did the graffiti come from, he wanted to know. Were you (in a distant past) some kind of graffiti delinquent?

I kept shaking my head. I kept smiling inside. I kept reminding myself—Wait. He took the time. He read your book. He thought about it. He wondered. I thought later how unusual this was. To be asked, with real interest, about something I'd written. To be invited to talk—not about all that superficial stuff that interests me less and less, but about the story itself. It's a rare friend who makes room for this—who presses you, who listens, who may not agree with some of the choices you made, but whose interest, nonetheless, is genuine.

I have been dancing, on and off, for a few good years now. I'm no better at it than when I began. But I dance, like I do clay, for the conversations and the friends. Of this, today—among so much laughter, within such warmth—I was reminded again.

Congratulations, in the meantime, to Aideen, Mike, and Mercy, who brought us altogether. What a family you have. And many thanks to Ms. Tirsa Rivas. One of the best party-throwers in the land.

Read more...

catching up with my husband's art

Earlier today, prepping for a client photo shoot (at the offices of a very favorite client; I do love it there), my husband was asked what he is up to now, and of course there never are words to explain the work he does in the privacy of his detached shed. There's the pottery, of course. There are the 3-D printed chickens. And there is this continuation of a series Bill started a while ago. Everything in these two images was 3-D modeled, except for Scott's face and torso and Tirsa, who is just so pretty that we wanted to see her twice. Bill delivered these gifts to Scott and Tirsa yesterday, as a way to thank them for serving as photographic models about a year ago.

Read more...

reflecting on my ballroom dance "career" in today's Inquirer

In today's Philadelphia Inquirer I yearn toward dance, mourn my countless non-capabilities, and conclude, well — read on.  The story begins like this, below, and can be found in its entirety here.

How I stood, how I sat, how I walked into a room and didn't possess it - these were concerns. Also: the untamed wilderness of my hair, but we would get to that. In addition: the way I hid behind my clothes and failed their easy angles. Most troubling, perhaps: my tendency to rush, my feverish impatience with myself, my heretofore undiagnosed problem with the art of being led.

So I thought I could dance.

So I imagined the ballroom instructors leaning in to say - first rumba or perhaps the second - "You've got a knack for this."

What knack? What had I done? Why had I not realized that dancing in the dark alone to Bruce Springsteen does not qualify anyone for the cha-cha? That grace is not necessarily an elevated pointer finger? That how they do it on TV is how they do it on TV? That just because you love to dance does not a dancer make you?

So many thanks to Avery Rome for making room for the piece, and to DanceSport Academy in Ardmore—and all my teachers—for making room for me.  Thanks, too, to a certain Moira.  She knows who she is.

Read more...

My husband's art (2)

Jan

Lana and Tirsa
Lana

You know how it is when you wait and wait and wait to share a (good) secret?  That's how I always feel when I'm waiting to showcase my husband's art on my humble blog. I was able to release this image not long ago.  Today I can share more.

This work is months in the making.  It all began with a photo shoot at DanceSport Academy and features our talented, beautiful friends—Jan, Lana, Scott, Tirsa—whom Bill photographed against a green background.  Everything else in these images—the furniture, the hats, the mannequins, the cloth, that pair of legs—was fashioned with a variety of 3D software tools, about which I know nothing.

I just know that I'm amazed, all the time, by what Bill does.

Click on the image to see it in bright detail. 

Read more...

these things happened (all in one day)

1. The masterful movie star slash ballroom dancer slash teacher Jan Paulovich said my cha-cha wasn't all bad.

2. I only nearly lost one toe nail when doing a particularly tricky tango move several times in a row, poorly.

3. My kid got an A on his ballroom dance midterm at his university (yes, it is his sixth course, don't you fear).

That's enough in one day for me.

But that was yesterday.  I struggle to think of ways that I can transcend that degree of excitement today.

The day is young.  I shall go forth.

Read more...

outtakes from the Dancesport photo shoot

Still pale faced, dull eyed, and wobbly on too-tall shoes, I accompanied my husband to the dance studio this afternoon, where he assembled the green curtain, put together the lights, linked his laptop to his camera, and began shooting a series of images he'll be using for an upcoming project.  (Stay tuned for more; it's exciting.)

With my camera tethered to nothing and with the available light not so much (given that we'd blackened the key windows), I took a few shots as the action got under way.  I was the old, flu-inflicted woman surrounded by so much youth and beauty.

But look at this youth and beauty.

Here, then, some moments from the day:  Introducing (again) the magnificent Tirsa Rivas, Scott Lazarov, Jan Paulovich and Lana Roosiparg.

Read more...

in which Matthew Quick's novel brings my ballroom dance friends to the silver screen

A few years ago, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto introduced me to Matthew Quick, a novelist whose The Silver Linings Playbook had recently been optioned for film.  Many books get optioned; far fewer films get made.  Far, far fewer films have director David Russell at the helm and Bradley Cooper, Julia Stiles, and Robert De Niro cast as leads.

The story is quirky, funny, and moving.  It also features a crazy dance contest, and since the movie was being filmed locally, local dancers were invited to audition as extras.

My friend and dance teacher, Jan Paulovich (DanceSport Academy), and his partner, Lana Roosiparg, were among those who showed up for opportunity.  They had, they say, no expectations, were simply hoping to have some fun.  One month later, they were on the set with De Niro and others—not just dancing, but acting.  They had been told two days of filming would be required.  In the end, their dancing—and their charisma—changed David Russell's plans for the dance scene...and required five on-set days for Jan and Lana.

A few weeks ago, Jan asked me to write this story for a local ballroom dance publication.  It gave me the excuse to get back in touch with Matthew Quick and to ask him how it has felt to watch his novel make its way to the silver screen (it will debut this November).  Here's an extract from the story:

Raised in a blue-collar neighborhood by stern—and conservative—Protestant parents, dance was never part of (Matthew's) world; indeed, he said in a recent interview, “the thought of any man or boy dancing—especially someone I knew personally—was absurd.”

Thus, when Matthew first conjured the dance scene in his novel about a man just released from a mental hospital and desperate to reconcile with his ex-wife, he was, in his words “going for laughs.”

“Pat (Peoples) dancing was my fish out of water,” says Matthew. “Lots of jokes were instantly born. The outfits Pat and Tiffany wear during the dance competition and Tiffany's choreography are equally bizarre and over-the-top. Hilarious, in a sad, quirky, and hopefully endearing way. But as I wrote the scenes I began to see that dancing was not only healthy for Pat but therapeutic. In many ways, the ridiculous way Pat felt while dancing—expressing his emotions through movement—was akin to the way I felt when I started writing seriously and telling people that I was a fiction writer. Mostly I imagined Pat and Tiffany as emotionally vulnerable--maybe for the first time--while dancing. Art saves!”

Dance, too, I keep learning, saves. And life is full of crazy, lovely collisions.

Read more...

Dance, Superimposed

One of the most exciting DanceSport Academy presentations this past Sunday was the dance of the studio's two young stars—a wild mix of genres against the backdrop of "The Matrix" soundtrack, all choreographed by Miss Cristina and Jan Paulovich.  I photographed the two during the rehearsals Sunday morning.  Look at how quickly K. moves.  Check out the beauty of M.

Read more...

Scenes from the DanceSport Academy Showcase

We spent much of yesterday rehearsing for and then delivering the sixth DanceSport Academy Showcase, sited this year at the Villanova University Connelly Center (which is also where the Lore Kephart Distinguished Historians Series is hosted).

I happen to think it was the best show ever—full of brave souls, innovative choreography, sheer talent, electrifying youth, and the final crowning glory of two performances by Latin champion dancers Jan Paulovich and Lana Roosiparg.

It was also, for me, a chance to dance that waltz with Jan and that cha-cha with my husband—a chance, too, to be surprised by dear friends Tom, Nancy, Mark, Elizabeth, and Laura, who arrived unannounced and cheered us on.  How much that meant (and how long remembered it will be).  And afterward, of course, dinner with the Bells.  We always love our dinner with the Bells, and it's especially fun when dinner with the Bells coincides (another surprise) with a second chance to visit with Tom, Nancy, Mark, Elizabeth, and Laura.

Thank you, Scott Lazarov, John Larson, Cristina Mueller, Aideen O'Malley, Tirsa Rivas, and, of course, Jan and Lana, for seeing us through.  For asking us to do more than we think we can—for expecting it from us—and for giving us a stage upon which we can try to soar...or, at least, hear the music.

Read more...

Jan and Lana Dance the Jive (for real, ladies and gentlemen)

How often I can be found here on this blog, talking dance, yearning for it.  How many books of mine have taken a choreographic turn or stopped and lived at, say, the very House of Dance?  I've been blessed by teachers who sway me toward better—Scott Lazarov with his impeccable choreography, Jan Paulovich, who insists that I hear the music and is so artfully exact, John Larson, the King of Standard, Cristina Mueller and her Thursday wonders, Aideen O'Malley who does it all, John Vilardo, who worked me out of paralytic fear early on, and others, too.  Blessed is me.

I'm not terrific at dance, but I keep trying, and I console myself with the thought that the trying matters.  This coming Sunday I'll be trying again in a DanceSport Academy showcase—dancing the cha-cha with my husband and a waltz with Jan Paulovich.  I'm not exactly ready for either dance.  But the hours tick on, and Sunday comes.

Today, though, I share this video of Jan Paulovich and his partner, Lana Roosiparg, who dance so magnificently together.  This is what they do, these teachers, when they are free to be their ultimate dance selves.

Read more...

A weekend of dance

It has crept up on me—the DanceSport Academy Annual Showcase—a many-hour extravaganza of dance-loving people having fun.  Or, we tell ourselves that it's fun.  Or, afterward, no matter what has happened, we remember it as being fun.  I prefer those waiting-in-the-wings moments, hidden behind the curtain, watching my friends.  I yield, every time, to the camaraderie.  I try to forget that I've been too buried in corporate work to give the performances my rehearsing all.  I'll dance a Viennese waltz with my husband—tune out the nerves, listen for the song.  I'll dance that campy, broom-swinging fox trot with John Larson.  I'll take photographs in between and hope that one or two of them turns out.

The photograph above was taking during a Dancing Classrooms final.  These are children, the flower fallen from her hair.  These are kids, enjoying their now.  I'm going to be thinking about them when I take the stage.  I am going to remember that, no matter what happens beneath the spotlight, it's a lucky thing to have bend in your knees and hope tucked in your heart.

Read more...

The Sun Rain

Just now, coming home from a ballroom lesson with John (Where is the dance? I asked him; It's in the balance we create between each other, he said) I drove through sunlit rain.  Half the sky clear and the other full of gray shout. 

Like dance, I thought.

Like time.

Read more...

Metamorphosis at the Dance Studio

I'm going to tell you something: I did not look pretty today. My hair is two weeks past the cut I'd promised it (I'm getting to it, I tell it). My clothes are the ones that aren't in the laundry room (sorry, but that means they are not my favorites). My mascara is tending toward globby.

I did not look pretty today, and yet I went dancing. Oh, poor Jean, I thought, as I went up those stairs. The things that man has to put up with. My chin too low on some rumba moves, my feet not yet always firmly planted, my New Yorker sneaking up on my ronde, and my hair. Never good, but even worse when it is two weeks past a hair cut.

Whatever. I'd worked through perhaps 100 emails, five drafts of different projects, and at least a dozen calls; there just wasn't time to deal with me. And I was about to apologize for it, about to make a bunch of lame excuses, but Jean is my good friend Jean. Jean, I realized today, is the kind of friend and dance instructor who can laugh with me despite how I look and not make me feel too flat-out unattractive to dance a cha-cha or a salsa.

That's friendship.

Read more...

House of Dance: A Paperback Contest

In a few short weeks, House of Dance, my second novel for young adults, will be out as a paperback with a slightly revamped cover.

Those of you who know me a little know this: I love the freedom that dance affords me—the freedom to be my somewhat zany self, the freedom from the mind-bend of at-the-desk problem solving, the freedom of movement. House of Dance, which received a number of starred reviews and has begun to show up on state lists, takes place in a version of Dancesport Academy of Ardmore, PA, where I continue to learn to dance with the likes of Scott Lazarov, Jean Paulovich, John Larson, Aideen O'Malley, Magda Piekarz, Tim Jones, Cristina Rodrighes, and Tirsa Rivas, and among so many friends. I made this "trailer" for the the book with footage that I shot at the studio and around town.

In any case, the point is: I'm having a paperback contest. Those of you interested in receiving a signed copy of the paperback should leave, in the comment box, your definition of what dance is. Two winners will be selected from among the participants, and the two winning definitions will be featured on my blog.

Please leave your comments by March 5th.

Read more...

Posturing for Beauty

Magda, the champion dancer, talks about posture. She says, "Imagine that you have a coat, a heavy coat, and that you have filled its every pocket with stones. Now imagine that you are wearing that coat, that your shoulders bear its weight. There is no tension in your neck, no hunch around your ears, because the coat that you are wearing keeps your shoulders in their place and your arms proper in their sockets. You reach high, but always from an anchored place. Your neck is strong. Your head sits right."

She talks and I watch her move, I watch her glide across the room—this gorgeous creature. I think how easy it seems—standing straight, shoulders back, life in repose. I think of how, from the earliest days on frozen ponds and ice skating rinks, I had all the inner joy and all the speed and all the height, but I lacked posture. I lacked the courage to present myself to the world, to come out from behind myself and say, Here, at last, am I. That has carried forward. Writing, for example, is myself once removed. It is me, behind words, inside them.

Is it too late, at my age, to finally stand tall?

No. Because I want this. I want beauty.

Read more...

Be Honest

The gold heart on her ear is tilted sideways. The gold hair around her face has fallen loose. She is at the age when what she is thinking is transparent on her face, when there is no reason, in her mind, to disguise her yearning.

Last night, doing that squirrely quickstep with Jean, my back was being wrenched and my shirt was quickly drenched and my lungs were raw and scraped and bleeding, and still he wanted more. Still he was standing there with his hands on his hips, telling me to give more, hop higher, land harder, thrust wider. "Can't you leave me alone?" I asked him, only half joking. "I mean, Come on. Look at this. I'm crazy even to try it."

And he said, "I am telling you what I see, and I am telling you what I want, and I am only ever honest."

"It's brutal," I said (I gasped), my body slammed against the bar for it could no longer stand up on its own. "Your honesty."

"Why would I waste my time," he said, "being anything but? Dishonesty is inefficient."

Read more...

Stand Tall

In about two weeks I'll be standing on a stage, hopefully blinded by the lights, dancing a tango in Act One and that much-feared Broadway number in Act Two—all as part of the DanceSport showcase. It's always about now in these scenarios that I ask myself, And what, Beth, were you thinking? When I wake from a dream (I mean to say nightmare) purely certain that there's an elephant turning a pirouette on my chest.

Graceful beasts, those elephants. And so heavy.

Every time I think about getting out there with those jumps and lifts, that impossible Quickstep, that prickly tele-spin, those many cortes, I remember my final ice skating competition, when all I wanted was to be perfect. By the time I took the ice however, I was so clutched and crunched with fear that when the music started my legs were ungreased tins. The rink seemed huge and the audience vast, but most of all I was aware of my parents in the stands—deeply cognizant of their generous investment (time and money) in my ice skating career. I needed, I thought, to skate for their sakes. I needed to be lovely.

I fell on the first jump. I skated tall after that. I brought speed and height into my jumps, kick into the footwork, patience and lean to the spread eagle. I lost, in the end, to my rival, Holly Archinal. But I had skated, I had, and that's what I hope for in two weeks—to find a way past the inevitable errors and to finish tall.

Read more...

Family Life and Engagement Joy

Earlier tonight I was here, at the dance studio. There was rain outside, wet in my perpetually untamed hair, and the lights on the dance floor were dim. There was a mood—a containment, a stillness, no conversation, a quiet conversation, an insistence, a deferral, and then, through the door, came Susan.

I hadn't seen her for months. I'd thought of her often. She's a dark-haired beauty with a megawatt presence. We had sat once, months ago, and talked about weddings. The right way to do them. The wrong way to wear hats. The perils of open bars. We'd talked about love, and about getting love right.

And Susan has. For on her hand this evening was something she had not, until this past Friday, worn before—yes, of course, engagement diamonds. Susan's getting married, and because I was at the studio with my camera, out of place on a quiet night, I got to share in her joy.

This is the thing about the places to which we choose to belong—we enter into family, and family enters into us.

And you—out here—who embraced me these past few days; you know how I feel about you. I have been lucky in my book life, lucky because the right people have found me. You rank high among them.

Read more...

Return

You return to the dance studio because you must, because quitting isn't really an option, not in this life. Because if, yesterday, you felt so cluttered and tangled with the smash stuff of yourself, today you could be calm, couldn't you? Be ordinary, self-contained.

You could also be happy, or I was, for there was Jean, being his funny-smart self, and there was this song, from the soundtrack of The Mask, that we've decided to dance at a September showcase, and there were those ridiculous words (at my age), "I'm just a baby in this business of love." When you can't dance like you always wished you could, you can at least act the part, and in a Kenneth Cole T-shirt and white capris, I made as if I'd been swined with pearls, as if I were standing on a street corner at midnight, a bunch of Dick Tracy characters hanging about. I write stories, why not act them? Why not be who I am not, and feel the glory pull of that?

So there I was, mixing the fox trot with quick step with high kicks and play, and there was hardly a soul about (just Nate and Cristina, who are forgiving, just gorgeous Tirsa, and, sometimes, Scott), and I didn't care what I looked like or what I got wrong. I didn't even count the wrongs. I just swirled my imaginary pearls and danced. I was a baby in the business of love.

Read more...