I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [100]
Balanchine nodded, walked over to the piano, and took the score, Six Pieces for Orchestra, that he had just spent four days using for his choreography, and handed it to her. He then turned and announced to us, “You know, maybe we won’t do. Another time, maybe. Martha needs it.” Diana and I looked at each other, our mouths fell open, “Whhaat?”
The next day, Balanchine and I met for breakfast. “You have to choreograph, Jacques, you must choreograph all the time.” And I said, “What do you mean, all the time?” He said, “Not necessary to put onstage. You must just choreograph. Make up dances all the time. Give yourself impediments.” He explained, “You know, make pas de deux and have no pirouettes—no pirouettes. Or, ballerina must never, ever, be in second position. Or, like we did, pas de deux while you get dressed. And then if you do this, don’t expect to put it on the stage. It’s exercise. A person wants to write—don’t write a novel right away; first you write a thousand short stories and poems, letters, but you learn how to write. Maybe someday you have great novel. Same with music, choreography, painting—you exercise!” he urged. Then he invented a scenario for pas de deux on the spot. “For example, imagine pas de deux where you don’t see each other. You reach for each other and you always miss. And then, all of a sudden, you touch! And now, you can’t unstick. You are stuck forever.” Well, I started to laugh, and I said, “What a great idea! Why don’t you do it?” “No, it’s an exercise for you to do,” he replied.
The next day, on the bulletin board, it said, “Diana and Jacques—5 Pieces for Orchestra.” Balanchine had another Webern piece, and in less than two hours, he choreographed to it a dance similar to the one he’d described at breakfast the day before. He must have gone to bed and thought about it; then, in the morning, he found some music and posted a message for us on the bulletin board, “Come to rehearsal.”
This time, the choreography did get performed. On a dimly lit stage, a man enters upstage right, the woman, downstage left. As if balancing on a tightrope stretched diagonally between them, they move toward each other, reaching and yearning to embrace—but they miss, pass by without touching. Then abruptly they turn, face each other, and again try, in frantic lunges, but always missing by inches. Suddenly, as the woman reaches away, the man captures her hand, and within a few moments, puts his head between her legs and stands up, as all stage lights go out, except for a small spot around his face. You see her two white legs emerging from behind his head. Her legs wrap around his arms, and with his fingers extended, the effect is of a giant pair of deer’s antlers. He runs around, seeking her, and then poses, a frightened deer in headlights. The lights fade to black, then come up, to reveal their arms around each other, nonchalantly standing, serene, in a pool of light. At the antlers scene, the audience reacted in different ways. It was so inventive and unusual that there were chortles of delight and bursts of applause. Some ballet fans told me they thought Balanchine’s choreography was inspired by a shamanistic ritual.
Balanchine visualized inventions in his brain ahead of time. Using the music as a blueprint, his imagination built an entire structure before he invented a single step on his dancers. On many occasions, he described the scenery, the lighting, the order and narrative of his ballets before any sets were built, or even scenic artists hired. Vienna Waltzes, Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbündlertänze,” Union Jack, the pas de deux Meditation, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Figure in the Carpet are just some of the ballets he described