Gratitude and Curiosity…and a Post Script

Posted on by - Ballet & Mystery, Dance

My Royal Academy of Dancing certificates, faded and stained, hang on the wall near my computer desk. I see them every day, but like so many things in the home environment, they fade into the background and go unnoticed. Today I focused on them with feelings of gratitude—and curiosity.

The gratitude: For my parents

With seven children and very little money, they still found a way to give me ballet training. They knew how much I loved it. I lived for dance class, twice a week as I remember, plus rehearsals. Professional-level training should be daily, but that was something well outside the family budget. As a teen, with my own income, I added classes and somehow made it to a performing artist. Ballet, and later, jazz and contemporary styles.

Dance has stayed with me for more than 60 years and now I dance daily, either taking or teaching class. No other form of exercise includes all this: full-body strengthening, flexibility, stamina, and coordination; musicality, mathematical precision, and artistry; mental acuity and memory improvement; organization and discipline. Surrounded by other dancers in the studio, you absorb their energy and gain inspiration. You walk out of there feeling happy the rest of the day. An endorphin high.

Okay, you get it. I’m grateful.

The curiosity: Who were my RAD examiners?

My RAD certificates are signed by my examiners: Ruth French and Jean Bedells. I was a teenager when I took those exams. Like most teenagers, I lived in blissful ignorance of the backgrounds and daily lives of my teachers and elders. I knew next to nothing about the RAD examiners.

All I knew was this. The studio I attended in Oakland California was an affiliate of the Royal Academy of Dancing in England, whose president, Dame Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991), was the prima ballerina in a storied partnership with Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993). In 1962, when Fonteyn considered retiring from the stage, she reluctantly agreed to dance with the Russian defector, who was 19 years her junior.

 

As it turned out, their unlikely partnership was magical and lasted for decades. Nureyev once said of Fonteyn that they danced with “one body, one soul”. Their last performance together was “Baroque Pas de Trois” in September 1988 when Fonteyn was 69 and Nureyev was 50; they danced with Carla Fracci, then 52.

Click here for a video of Fonteyn and Nureyev dancing the Swan Lake pas de deux on the Ed Sullivan show in 1965. Fonteyn was 46 years old. Gorgeous.

I digress. Back to my exams.

My training in classical ballet followed the RAD syllabus. Every two years, RAD examiners traveled from London to our studio in California. As I recall, a few students took the exam together. We wore a regulation outfit: black leotard and pink tights with a particular kind of skirt and headband. The examiner sat at the front of the studio and gave us the exercises and dance combinations using the French terms. What’s the difference between a “pas de bourrée dessus” and a “pas de bourrée dessous”? The words sound almost the same, but you’d better know which one the examiner wants you to do. Nowadays, when I teach, I call them “pas de bourrée over” and “pas de bourrée under.” So much easier.

In my recent search for information about my examiners, I couldn’t seem to find the “Royal Academy of Dancing.” Isn’t that the organization on my certificates? Mystery solved when I learned that the name changed to “Royal Academy of Dance” in 1999. Does “dancing” sound too pedestrian? Better to say “the dance,” pronounced like “the sconce.”

My elementary examiner was Ruth French (1903-1986). It was 1970, I was 16, and the lady from England seemed ancient. In fact, French was a year younger than I am now—and, of course, as you surely will say, I’m not ancient, or even very old (!)

French danced before the so-called birth of British Ballet, so she had to develop her own career. When touring, she advertised with her own publicity boards—like the one pictured above. She twice appeared in Royal Command performances and danced with Anna Pavlova in the 1920s. In a 1935 production of Swan Lake, young Margot Fonteyn and Ruth French were co-stars, Fonteyn dancing Odette (the white swan), and French dancing Odile (the black swan). French later became a respected teacher and an examiner for the RAD. In 1973, she received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award.

My intermediate level examiner was Jean Bedells (1924-2014), daughter of Phyllis Bedells (1893-1985), who was a founding member of the RAD in 1920 and helped develop its first syllabus. Jean Bedells performed with Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the precursor to the Royal Ballet.

Here is a photo of her as a teenager in 1938. A list of Bedells’ performances includes a 1942 performance of Coppélia in which she danced the part of one of Swanilda’s friends. Thirty years later, in 1972, I danced that role in the RAD company I performed with in the East Bay Area, Dancer’s Theatre.

 

Here is another photo of Bedells from a performance of “The Quest” in 1943. Not sure, but I think she’s the one in the middle.

 

In performance, 1973, when I had enough hair for a bun

I never took the RAD advanced level exam. I was training for it when I decided to switch studios. In 1973, I joined Carlos Carvajal’s Dance Spectrum in San Francisco.

This is me on stage in Carlos Carvajal’s “Iridis,” to Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin.” Beautiful music and choreography.

I’ve enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, along with everything I learned with a little extra research. Now for a….

Post Script

Here’s a bit of news about my other passion—fiction writing!

As many of you know, the sixth and final Dana Hargrove legal mystery, Power Blind, was published in January 2022. A few years ago, the first four novels were combined into two e-book double sets, making them available at a discount and free to Kindle Unlimited members. Now the third and final “Dana Hargrove Double” (novels 5 and 6) is on pre-order, to be released February 17.

Here’s the real news. During the preorder period, all three double sets are priced at just 99 cents (regularly $5.99). All six novels, for pennies. So, load up your Kindle before February 17 for rainy day reading to come!

I’ve just finished writing a new novel (very different from the Dana Hargrove series), and I’m on a hunt for a literary agent. Wish me luck!

Ciao for now.

Legal Eagles, Attorneys Writing Fiction (4): Kevin Egan

Posted on by - Book review, Legal Eagles

Midnight by Kevin Egan

I’m pleased to welcome author Kevin Egan to VBlog for this installment of Legal Eagles. I first met Kevin a few years ago at a meeting of the Mystery Writers of America, New York chapter. We soon discovered a few things we have in common. Not only are we attorneys who write crime fiction, we also have years of experience working for New York courts and judges. We know what it’s like to juggle a demanding legal career with a passion for fiction writing, squeezing the current work-in-progress into the cracks at either end of the workday and on weekends.

In our careers, we’ve both held positions as judicial law clerks. Don’t be fooled by the word “clerk.” This position is held by an attorney who works closely with a judge in a confidential capacity. While the degree of authority delegated to the law clerk varies from judge to judge, many law clerks exert considerable influence over the court’s decisions.

When Kevin explained the premise for his novel Midnight, I had to read it! The unique plot is built around the relationship between a law clerk and his judge in a setting I know very well, the courthouses in lower Manhattan. Unlike many crime novels, Midnight opens not with a murder but with the judge’s death from natural causes, which serves as the catalyst for a series of progressively serious crimes.

You won’t anticipate the many twists and turns in the domino spiral, set in motion by the slowly unfolding secrets of the characters and their conflicting motivations. Tom, the judge’s law clerk, is in debt to a loan shark and feels no serious ethical qualms in rewriting the judge’s opinions to buy his way out of trouble. Carol, the judge’s secretary, carries the financial and emotional weight of caring for her son and her mother while harboring secrets of past sexual affairs. A couple of court officers are anxiously awaiting the judge’s decision in a lawsuit that could abolish their overtime pay. Add to these characters the loan shark’s collection thug, a corrupt union boss, and a brutal mobster, and the resulting web of criminal intrigue spins out of control.

Fans of noir and legal thriller will thoroughly enjoy this compulsively readable tale of desperation and consequence. Legal details are deftly woven into the plot in a way that is easily understood without sacrificing accuracy. Midnight was a Kirkus Best Book of 2013 and is the first of three novels to feature the character Foxx, one of the court officers in the tale. You bet, I’ve put the next two novels on my “to-read” list! They are The Missing Piece (2015), and A Shattered Circle (2017), which received the coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Welcome to VBlog, Kevin! I really enjoyed Midnight. How did you come up with your idea for this novel?

A law clerk and confidential secretary—the standard judicial staff in New York state courts—are personal appointments, which gives the judge free rein to hire and fire without an agency like the EEOC stepping in. However, if a judge dies or retires mid-term, an actual law—Judiciary Law § 36—determines the employment fate of the judge’s staff. It may be an oversimplification, but in dramatic terms, if the judge dies or retires, the staff keep their jobs until the end of that calendar year. So Midnight starts with a premise—what is the worst day of the year for a judge to die? Answer: New Year’s Eve. Tom and Carol’s plan to save their jobs for another year is simple enough: remove the judge’s body from chambers, place him in his bed in his apartment, then begin to “worry” about his failure to return to work until mid-day on January 2. But the plan turns out to be anything but simple.

Do you tend to write an outline first or just take the idea and run with it?

I have published 8 novels, and 7 of them have been written in the “take the idea and run with it” method. The lone exception is Midnight. Midnight first appeared as a short story in the January 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. By that point, I was already working on expanding the premise into a novel. It was the only time I created a full outline, which I then followed with only minor deviations. The structure was rigid. It was to cover a period of four days, from December 31 to January 3. Each day presented a problem that Tom and Carol seemingly overcame by nightfall, only to have a more serious problem arise the next day.

Tell us a bit about works by K.J. Egan and Conor Daly. What went into your decision to use pseudonyms? Do you have any advice for writers on this subject?

My first book was a science fiction novel called The Perseus Breed. I started writing a sequel, but then switched to writing what would become a three-book golf mystery series. My agent insisted that I needed a pen name for the mysteries because, in her words, bookstores don’t want the same author on different shelves. And so Conor Daly was born. Having a pen name seemed problematic at the time, though I can’t recall any specifics other than a reader who persisted in writing letters to me as Conan Doyle.

Twelve years intervened between the last Conor Daly book and Where It Lies. By then, I decided to nudge my pen name closer to my real name. There also was a strategy. Since Where It Lies featured a first-person female narrator, I wanted a gender-neutral name on the cover. Using my initials filled that bill.

As for advice, I’ve come to believe that a pen name is a necessary evil. Publishers are much less patient with poor sales, and sales figures now hang onto an author like Jacob Marley’s chains. A pen name can offer a fresh start.

What’s next for you? Is another novel in the works?

I also write short stories. “The Movie Lover,” appearing in the July/August issue of AHMM will be my 26th published short story. I started this year on a short story tear, writing three in the month of January. As for novels, remember that science fiction novel I put down to become Conor Daly? I’ve returned to it.

Thank you for joining me on VBlog, Kevin!

Dear Reader, do you love legal thrillers? Pick up one of Kevin Egan’s books! Also, check out the other entries in the Legal Eagles series on VBlog to learn more about these attorneys who write crime fiction: Manuel Ramos, Allison Leotta, Allen Eskens, Adam Mitzner, Jerri Blair, Brian Clary, and of course, Yours Truly.