The way dancers tell stories

We escaped the snow and headed for the city, where our friends Julia and Gene were celebrating their 70th birthdays in classic (elegant) Julia and Gene style.  She hails from the United Kingdom, he from the midwest.  She's a sprite of a thing; he tips his head, ever so slightly, to pass through doorways.  She's a sociologist and he's a statistician.  Together they remind those of us lucky enough to know them that love is not a formula.  It is what happens in the blink of an eye (they knew at once, they say of each other).  It is what endures.

At this party of friends, family, colleagues, we sat among dancers.  Jan, Lana, Scott, Tirsa, John, Inna, and Julia herself (Miss Cristina was also among us, looking lovely), to be precise.  We were privileged amateurs among impeccably attired super stars (and I do not exaggerate; Jan and Lana will soon be appearing in a major movie alongside actors such as Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper; Scott was once the nation's mambo champion).  We were also quite simply friends among friends.

What perpetually interests me about dancers is how smart they are, how diversified their interests, how capable of telling stories with far more than words. That angling of a shoulder speaks volumes, for example, as does the slight, purposeful turn of the head.  Jan raises his eyebrow, and his opinion is known.  Lana reports on science with the blue light of her eyes.  John brings mischief to his laugh; there is an emphatic grace in Inna's hands; Tirsa moves her wrist and her whole arm sparkles; Cristina is perpetually, stunningly alive; and there's that thing Scott does when he's telling a story, which is to lean in and then lean back, wait for the pulse.  Dancers hardly need words at all when they are telling their stories. 

When it was time to dance, we danced, easy with the songs that Julia and Gene had chosen on a ballroom floor laid for our feet. The rumba, the cha-cha, the salsa, the foxtrot, the bolero, the waltz, back to the foxtrot.  Those dancers know how to move, and they swept us into their graces, and later, around midnight, when we walked the streets of Philadelphia at their side (among Halloween ghouls and ghosts and vampires), I thought of how it must be to move through the world like that—so full of sway and suggestible spine. 

My husband and I woke in a room downtown this morning, headed to the Reading Market for breakfast, went up to the Art Museum and walked our favorite wing. I took a photograph, then, of this Renoir painting, because this gorgeous child is not speaking, not a word, and yet she's full of story.  Julia and Gene, thank you for giving us such a rich and memorable evening on a weekend of historic weather.  We will remember it always with fondness.

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Dance with Me: Ballroom Dancing and the Promise of Instant Intimacy/Julia Ericksen

My friend Julia Ericksen is seeing the publication of a book on which she has worked for years.  We ballroom dance together, Julia and I, and she was one of the very first people I came to know at DanceSport Academy in Ardmore.  Julia is a professor at Temple University teaching courses on human sexuality, body, and gender.  She's a sprite, a darling and opinionated Brit whose other interests and life journeys have resulted in the publication of Kiss and Tell (Harvard University Press) and Taking Charge of Breast Cancer (University of California Press).  Often, when Julia and I talked, she would tell me about her travels to dance venues all around the world, where she competed (but of course) and at the same time interviewed top dancers and avid amateurs on this art form, or is it a sport? Or a fashion show? Or an odd and spectacular form of yearning?  Or something Beth does when her sentences stick, which is to say, on a very frequent basis?

I don't personally have answers to those questions (or I do have answers, but they change too often to be reliable).  But Julia does, and she's put them all into a book called Dance with Me: Ballroom Dancing and the Promise of Instant Intimacy (New York University Press).  The other day, Julia showed me an early copy, then flipped to a page that looks like this (above).  The caption, Julia says, goes something like this:

Figure 4.3. Learning the foxtrot is fun. Teacher John Larson with student Beth Kephart. DanceSport Academy, Ardmore, PA, July, 2010. ©2010 Jonathan S. Marion.

I never thought I'd be in a book about ballroom dance (though I did imagine writing one once, and did:  House of Dance). But I do fondly remember this rehearsal day and how John was making me laugh so that I would forget the camera. He still makes me laugh, even if (is it something about my posture? my rise? my fall?) the cameras don't come around anymore.

Huge congratulations to Dr. Julia Ericksen (and her dancing husband, Gene). 

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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.

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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.

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When I dance

it all falls away—the web of bruises that I wear on the inside, the lacerations of my own self-doubt, the stutter and stall of anxiety.  I'm just there, at the studio, working with John on the tango's speed and pop, watching Kyle and Moira weave elegantly by, throwing my arms around Miss Cristina. Dance is the hardest, most frustrating, and most happy thing that I do, and even if I slide past my stops, even if I lose the pelvic angle, even if rise where I'm to have fallen, I am moving, and therefore alive—outside the reach of harm, ignorant (for a spell) of anything unright, everything cruel.

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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.

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My Best Advice Ever (get ready)

Perhaps some of you come to this blog for writing advice (though mostly what I can offer is recommendations of books I've loved or enthusiasm for authors I love...or consolation along this hard journey).  Perhaps some of you come to see whether I'm still dancing (yes, I am—waltzing with smooth-shoes John Larson and rumba-ing with DanceSport owner and choreographer supreme Scott Lazarov), gardening (less than I should, but I've got glamorous purples out there this season), and writing (for every 2,000 words I wrestle to the page, I throw another 10,000 away; please don't let that discourage you in your own endeavors). Perhaps you even come for recipes, but I don't actually use or know that many recipes; I feel my way toward my dishes and have never once embarked on a stacked cake, as my friend Kate Moses regularly does, while writing best-selling books with her other hand.

But what I am about to offer you today is better than all of that, better than anything.  I am about to offer you some housekeeperly advice.  Are you ready?

(Get ready.)

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser totally rocks!!!

(that's it, that's the advice)

I mean, there I was, week after week, trying to get rid of the aftershock of too many hands around a doorknob, and all I ever truly needed was a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  This little item does it all, and I can look fashionable when I use it, thanks to Jan Shaeffer's recent gift of Gloveables...they're lovable (look them up, if you haven't seen them already).

So that's it.  That's what this zany-Zumba-dancing-diva-only-sometimes-half-good-writer-with-the-enviable-irises is offering today.

Take it.

Or leave it.

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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.

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Waltz

Yesterday I danced the waltz with John Larson.

He countered the rain.

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The Genius of Dance

Every single lesson, it's there: the genius of dance in the blood of the truest dancers. How I crave just a fraction of what they know about the insistence of the "and" beat, the telegraphics of thighs, the power of the pause. Wait, and listen, say the teachers of dance. Stop and feel. As if all that is required is a greater intuition, a greater willingness to stand up straight and practice the art of anticipating nothing, then doing the something that is in that moment called for.

Dancing requires the woman to be prepared for anything and to precipitate nothing at the same time. It requires her to assume a stance of beauty, even if old is what she feels that day, or awkward. It requires a woman to listen. On my best dancing days, I exist outside the claw of myself.

I know nothing. I seek all. I grow exhausted with the endless want of doing one thing well.

The next day I return to my desk, the story I am writing newly perched on the shelf of itself.

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