I was a dancer, p.46
I Was a Dancer, page 46
The foggy look upon his face is
Of death expressive, not of hurt.
Once, slowly down some sloping mountain,
Aglow as though sun’s frozen fountain,
A lonely snowball fell and rolled.
Lincoln and Lew
1. This city built by Tsar Peter the Great juggled the names Petrograd, St. Petersburg, and Leningrad.
2. Danilova and Balanchine never actually married, but they lived together in what may be considered a common-law marriage.
3. Lydia Ivanova, a promising ballerina, was included among the original members of the group. Before the group received permission to depart, she drowned in a mysterious accident. Ivanova was rumored to be mistress to a high party official, Danilova told me: “He did not want her to leave, so he had her, as you say in your country, rubbed out.”
4. At the Royal Opera House, empty between matinee and evening, a fellow corps de ballet dancer, Kaye Sargent, and I would slip into the Royal Box to neck passionately, panting in regal style. She subsequently married the head electrician at the opera, Bill McGee, and moved to London for good. In later years, we would get together with several dancers from the Royal Ballet and laugh, gossiping over the conditions we overcame on ballet tours. The worst I remember was the Liceu in Barcelona—the one toilet in all of Europe, it seemed, that did have a bowl sporting a wooden rim, only the rim was encrusted with dried feces (other toilets were just holes in the ground). Shaun O’Brien, a fellow dancer, solved our Liceu problem by saving local newspapers and cutting out covers for the rim. (“The problem, Daisy,” Shaun called me endearingly, “is the newsprint rubs off and tattoos your buns.”) Dancers from the Royal Ballet described their tours in the deserts of the Middle East, where they danced on raised wooden platforms built for the occasion—with the orchestra abutting the stage, ensconced in fold-up chairs, at ground level. “If you needed to go to the loo, you had to go under the stage, squat and do your duty, staring at the orchestra members playing while over your head, the sounds of the dancers’ feet reverberated.” And ubiquitous flies. Kaye’s friend Anne, an ex-member of the corps, recounted, “I do think the worst horror was putting on your makeup. The flies were so thick, they covered the mirror. You would whisk them away with your hand, or blow with your breath to open up a clear space on the mirror, and by the time you’d put on your lipstick, the mirror was full of flies again.” I imagine that Ballet Caravan’s tour had tales to equal or outdo these.
5. Over the years, I got to know and care a great deal for Lew and Willam. Carrie, my wife, danced with and for Willam when he was director of San Francisco Ballet. Willam then formed the ballet company at the University of Utah, which evolved into Ballet West. I was a regular guest with both groups, and headed Ballet West’s first European tour. Bill always importuned me to come codirect Ballet West with him, and then take it over. He was such a creative force, constantly planning new ballets, never playing it safe, teaching every class. When in his nineties, I heard he had been moved to a nursing home, so I called him. “My time has gone!” he yelled into the phone. “It’s too late for me! I can’t move! I can’t demonstrate a dance step! I can’t teach a class! Time has passed me by.” Then, in a subdued voice, “I always loved you, Jacques, from the first time I saw you dance.” It touches such an emotional chord in me. Ironic, too, that the two brothers, unbeknownst to each other, spoke almost identical words—“My time has gone.” Lew, speaking of the end of his career as a dancer in the early fifties; Bill, speaking of the end of his career as a ballet master.
6. Rhymes of a PFC, 1964; Rhymes and More Rhymes of a PFC, 1966, first printed edition for the public. Both have the “Vaudeville” poem and one called “Patton,” in which the general takes a leak.
Inspecting cots of amputees, unshaken obviously,
Approves the stitch above the wrist,
the slice below the knee;
Hides in th’enlisted men’s latrine so he can quietly
Have one good hearty cry.
This soldier has to take a leak, finds someone sobbing there.
To my horror it’s an officer; his stars make this quite clear.
I gasp: “Oh, sir, are you all right?” Patton grumbles: “Fair.
Something’s in my eye.”
Carolyn George
1. Virgil, famous for his collaboration with Gertrude Stein on the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, was to become a good friend. He introduced me to the artist Maurice Grosser. Partners in the past, they had split but remained loving friends. “Jacques, it’s Virgil Thomson here. Could you come over for lunch? I have someone I want you to meet. Maurice Grosser. He wants to paint a portrait of you. I’m at the Chelsea Hotel on Twenty-third Street.” I answered, “Sure, I know the place. George Kleinsinger lives there. He composed the music for a Broadway show I was in, Shinbone Alley.” Virgil continued in his fey and pouty St. Louis, Missouri, voice, “Oh, George. He’s got so many tropical plants in his apartment, it’s a rain forest … he keeps a python for a pet! I don’t know how he can play his piano with a snake wrapped around the piano legs and its head on the pedals,” then coyly, “or further up.”
Virgil was ovoid and infirm, stuck in his chair like a decadent cardinal glued onto a throne. Hairless, with fat little jowls and round eyes that seemed to have no eyelashes, he stared without blinking, and his rosebud cupid’s mouth would open and close like a little fish. An ancient baby, who summoned maternal instincts—you wanted to stroke and cuddle him. Pricilla Rey, a dear friend of Virgil’s and of mine, laughingly remarked, “All those women around him, their milk flowed in his presence.”
Virgil was clever with a biting wit that somehow avoided nastiness; it was barbed, but without pain.
I arrived to find him surrounded by lady friends, and a nurse. “Jacques, dear, you’ve caught me with my court. These are my ladies. They worship me. Don’t you, ladies? Oh, and this is Maurice Grosser. I know him well,” glancing coyly at Maurice as if they had just been caught necking, “and you, Jacques, don’t know him at all. But you will.… “ A statement, pregnant with mysterious import, implying that the secrets of the Addams Family awaited me.
Maurice was nondescript, of medium height, medium everything, with a sallow complexion, but he had a gentle charm. And a few days later, I found myself sitting for a portrait by Maurice.
Awed by Lincoln Kirstein, Virgil often asked me, “What does Lincoln think of my music? … Does he mention me? You think Lincoln would want me to do another work for the ballet company?”
2. Paul Cadmus, a contemporary visual artist, was Lincoln’s brother-in-law, and was hired by Lincoln to create scenery for many ballets. His sister, Fidelma Cadmus, was married to Lincoln, and they loved cats. Whatever love Fidelma and Lincoln shared was symbolized by their love for cats. Fidelma was fragile—around her, you felt she could crack and disintegrate. Paul had done a series of lifesize paintings of the Seven Deadly Sins, which were filled with brilliant colors, twisted shapes, vibrant, energetic, Gothic. They made you uncomfortable. Paintings you don’t want to sleep with. Lincoln adored them. They lined the hallway of his house.
3. Choreographer José Limón’s There Is a Time, based on verses from Ecclesiastes, was groundbreaking, still a classic in the world of modern dance, as is his Moor’s Pavane. He was very handsome and dramatic. I just remember him standing there trying to talk to me—I was trying to change costumes, he kept talking—and he had beautiful hands, and knew they were beautiful, so whenever he addressed you, he made sure his hands were between your faces—gesturing, posing, demonstrating, revolving so you could get a look at them from every angle. I liked him very much.
4. After that 1953 tour of Europe, Nora (who inspired Jerry Robbins’s fantastic ballet The Cage) and her lover, the to-be-world-famous movie director Herbert Ross (Pennies from Heaven, Turning Point), decided to quit dance. They bought a Mercedes, and were passing through the Black Forest at breakneck speed on the autobahn, when, on a whim, Nora opened a window and flung her toe shoes out. “Enough, I’m going to live! I’m not going to dance anymore, I’m going to eat! Herbert, head for Italy,” she demanded. Within a few weeks, she was the size of a horse. When she died in 1987, Herbert arranged for a spot at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles (also the site of the graves of Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and many other entertainment luminaries), and, when he died, Herbert had himself buried there—on top of her! Isaac Stern, who had previously been married to Nora, refused to speak to her for years after she and Herbert toured Europe. He was furious because they’d bought a German car. Slights real or imagined are hard to let go of—Isabel Brown told me that on her deathbed, Nora refused to let Jerry Robbins in to say goodbye—because he had named several artists during the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. Jerry was left sobbing outside her closed hospital door.
5. Years later I asked a friend, the financial genius George Soros, how to invest in currency exchange. His answer: “DON’T!”
6. Years later, I had the privilege of partnering Carla Fracci in the pas de deux from Swan Lake in a tiny space on a floor of cement. It was a television special and Carla’s first performance in the U.S.
7. Yuri went on to marry the ballerina Patricia Wilde, one of NYCB’s stars.
8. Candy, by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg (G. P. Putnam, 1964).
9. Betty introduced Carrie, and many others, to the art of tai chi. She coauthored a book on tai chi with Edward Maisel. In the years after Balanchine’s death she led a class in tai chi until she lost her appetite for living, stopped eating, was hospitalized, and died.
10. Later to be Catwoman in the 1960s television show Batman.
11. They call it “huit” (eight, in French) because the four changes are multiplied by two since there are two feet.
12. Phil showed up to visit New York in June 2004. He came to watch National Dance Institute’s Saturday children’s class, and I introduced him to the dancing star Donlin Foreman, saying, “This is my buddy Phil. We’ve known each other from ancient times. He’s eighty years old and in a hell of a lot better shape than me. Feel those pecs.” “How do you do it?” asked Donlin. “Three times a night!” Phil proclaimed. Phil’s falling through the glass door feat was topped only by an incident I didn’t witness, but heard about. I was living on 163rd and St. Nicholas Avenue, and must have been ten or eleven years old. An old couple lived in my building. The old man, Albert, got out of bed one morning. Stiff and tired, he was having trouble getting his leg into his pants. He got one in, and then, as he was trying to get the other in, he lost his balance and started hopping to catch up, all the while conversing with his wife, who was sitting in bed. He hopped himself right out the window, fell four floors, and died.
13. In later years, whenever I choreographed a ballet, Balanchine would send me a case of Mouton Rothschild along with a note: “For your ballet.”
14. We loved to eat, Tanny and I; dancing kept us slim, so the sky’s the limit on the cuisine. Tanny even did a cookbook where different ballet friends gave their favorite recipes. I gave her a stack and most of them ended up in her book. The number of mine she included is second only to Balanchine’s.
15. With a few exceptions, all who have used the Order of the Garter have been ballet stars or well-known performers: Pat Johnston and F. N. Bibbins (June 13, 1951); Joan Vickers and Stanley Davis (December 18, 1952); Sally Streets and Alex Nichols, parents of NYCB ballerina Kyra Nichols (October 1955); Carolyn George and Jacques d’Amboise (January 1, 1956); Edith Brozek and Frank McMann (May 26, 1957); Sally Bailey and John Flynn (June 22, 1957); Marilyn George and Dan Sheffield (July 22, 1957); Jillana and Ben Janney (May 27, 1960); Vida Brown and Stanley Olinick (June 26, 1964); Wintress Perkins and Warren Wetzel (February 17, 1968); Kyra Nichols and Daniel Duell (September 3, 1978); Kay Mazzo and Albert Bellas (December 21, 1978); Marcia Rubine and John Masten (July 22, 1979); Marjorie Spohn and Alexander Hyatt (September 13, 1981); Diane Lyons and Eli Boatwright Jr. (April 14, 1990); Catherine d’Amboise and Peter Brill (April 20, 1991); Charlotte d’Amboise and Terrence Mann (January 20, 1996); Kathleen Donlin and John Badalament (July 29, 2000). After Kelly Crandall and Christopher d’Amboise married in August 2008, the pink garter went to Kay Gayner for her marriage to Frank Wood, September 26, 2009, and the garter is presently awaiting its next limb.
A Honeymoon in Haiti
1. Katherine Dunham, a titan in the world of modern dance, was renowned for bringing traditional Haitian dance forms to America and incorporating these forms into contemporary dance idiom. She and Balanchine met in 1940, while she and her troupe appeared in the musical Cabin in the Sky, directed by Balanchine. She died in 2006, at the age of ninety-six, destitute. Friends were paying her apartment costs.
2. François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, was elected President of Haiti in 1956. By 1964, he had installed himself as President for Life. That life left him in 1971 and left his power to Baby Doc, his son, Jean-Claude.
3. The polio vaccine had just come out before we left for tour, and many of us had been immunized. Some, including Tanny, opted not to have the vaccination then. Shortly after Copenhagen, Ann Crowell, one of the dancers in the corps de ballet, complained of a pulled muscle in her shoulder blade, which didn’t seem to get better. Years later, a doctor told her she had had polio, and the muscle in her shoulder had died. Rumor had it that the consul general’s wife in Cologne contracted polio after the party they had given the company. Who knows how many others could have gotten it, had we not been immunized or lucky.
4. Maria Tallchief first brought Dr. Jordan to Balanchine. I think Maria had been injured and went to Lenox Hill Hospital for treatment, and that’s how she met him.
When I knew Jordan, he said, “Maria Tallchief brought me to the world of ballet. After dealing with broken bones and withered bodies all my life, what a wonderful thing it is to see the ballet, to see what these joints can do, how they can be transformed into the most beautiful of art, gravity-less. It fills my dreams and inspires me never to give up on my patients. The human body is extraordinary.”
Jordan continued in his soft voice, “In the early fifties, I went to a cocktail party and, standing around in conversation, met a Frenchman. We were both reminiscing about World War I, “Oh yes, I was in the squadron, so and so …” “Oh, yes!” the Frenchman said. “A fighter pilot.” “I was one too, but against the Luftwaffe.” Jordan modestly told him, “I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good pilot. For I got shot down over France early on, crashed in a farmer’s field.” It seemed his French opponent landed, arranged for an ambulance to take care of him, and then took off again. Jordan spent the rest of the war mending his multitude of broken bones. The experience inspired him to seek a profession in orthopedics. He later inquired and learned the name of the Frenchman who had shot him down but never saw him. Now, speaking to this Frenchman, Jordan asked, “Did you ever know a pilot named so-and-so?” The man replied, “You’re looking at him!”
Dr. Gould, I met through Dr. Jordan. Wilbur James Gould was an ear, nose, and throat specialist and would become a close friend to my family, as did the surgeon Dr. Liebler, who handled my first knee operation.
Dr. Gould told me, “Jordan is a saint. In New York City when you start to cross the Triboro Bridge to Queens from Manhattan right around the tolls there is an enormous beige stone building to your right. It’s the hospital for the criminally insane. Every time I pass that building I think of him. Each week Jordan maybe had a day or sometimes half a day off. He donated that time making the rounds, treating the inmates incarcerated there.”
Apollo
1. Christopher d’Amboise, Leap Year (Doubleday, 1982).
2. According to Bernard Taper, in his Balanchine (p. 10), a pianist friend of Balanchine’s had seen a performance of Apollo at City Center and had been so impressed that he went backstage to congratulate the dancers, and found Balanchine rehearsing first Patricia Wilde, then me. “Balanchine turned to d’Amboise, and the visitor could see them going over various sequences together—facing each other, like one man looking in a mirror, while both of them danced. Occasionally, they would stop for a few words of comment. D’Amboise would nod vigorously. Balanchine would smile agreement at something d’Amboise said, and then they would spring into action again, face to face, about three feet apart. Time passed as they continued to work, and the backstage visitor watched them wonderingly. Dancers began to gather onstage for the next ballet, which was to be Agon. Bells could be heard ringing, announcing the imminent curtain. Stagehands hurried to their places. Totally preoccupied, Balanchine and d’Amboise ignored it all. When the pianist finally left, without having a chance to congratulate anyone, they were still at it. They were gone from the stage, though, when the curtain went up on Agon. At the very last second, perhaps, the stage manager had taken each of them by an arm and led them off. The visitor, back in his seat, could not help wondering if they might not still be working away in the wings.”
3. Decades later, I received a letter from Captain Hench’s daughters. Apparently, he was recently deceased, and had saved, among his effects, stacks of newspaper clippings about our family.
“Miracle” George
1. Sister Maeve is the finest principal, teacher, and most loving human being I know. A Druid … wearing the insignia of the Sister of Charity, she represents the best in Christianity and the true message of the “Prince of Peace”: “Love your neighbor.” Best of all is her Irish sense of humor, which leavens and pops up accompanied by a raucous laugh.
Quentin Keynes
1. In 2003, at the age of eighty-one, Quentin died of spinal cancer. For over fifty years, he brought high school students, on their summer breaks, to Africa, believing the experience would change them from adolescents to men. Many of them did follow that change during those summers. His library of books and manuscripts brought in well over six million dollars at auction.
