I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [109]
Pop doing his dance for anyone who would watch, 1989 (image credit 11.5)
Quentin Keynes
At the dress rehearsal of Freddie Ashton’s Picnic at Tintagel (February 1952), a tall Englishman came backstage. “Hello, Jacques d’Amboise? I’m Quentin Keynes.” In clipped manner and commanding speech, he explained, “I’m a friend of Freddie’s, just passing through. Do you mind if I film your rehearsal?” He pointed to a handheld 16 mm camera. “It works with cartridges—they’re good for several minutes, then I unload and toss in another. Not ideal, as it causes gaps in the footage.” I shrugged. “Sure! Why not?” After all, he was a friend of Freddie’s and had an English accent.
Quentin Keynes in search of the dodo, Mauritius, 1952 (image credit 12.1)
I had to wear a wig, a red beard stuck on with gobs of spirit gum, and heavy makeup. Seeing what a neophyte I was, fumbling with the makeup and paraphernalia, the designer, Cecil Beaton, came to the rescue. “Like this, my dear,” he advised as he painted my face. “Don’t complain. You’re a character in a myth, so nothing is ordinary; everything is exaggerated. Your costume, the scenery, the wig, demand it.” The costume was cumbersome, but what truly made me uncomfortable was knowing I was not equal to the intricacies and physical demands of the role. Waiting to make an entrance, I watched my heart pound and pulsate through my costume, and thought, “This is my last season. I’ll be dead of a heart attack within a year.” At seventeen, the role was beyond my experience, skills as an actor, or physical strength. I’d go onstage filled with fear. Thankfully, onstage, the nervousness disappeared.
The ballet premiered the next day, and Quentin came backstage, declaring he loved it. At first, I thought, “What a creepy guy, but interesting … and persistent.” He started hanging around the theater, and informed me that his great-grandfather was Charles Darwin. His father, Sir Geoffrey Keynes, a renowned surgeon at the Royal College of Surgeons, was one of the great bibliographers and collectors of William Blake’s poems and paintings. Quentin continued recounting celestial genealogy: “You’ve heard of Lord Maynard Keynes? My uncle.” The famous economist John Maynard Keynes was among the group of British patrons that had supported young George Balanchine’s company Les Ballets 1933, and Keynes’s wife, Lydia Lopokova, was an ex-ballerina from Diaghilev’s company. Quentin grew up surrounded by artists, scholars, and celebrities, and name-dropped shamelessly. Lord This and Lady That (and the queen) spackled his stories.
“Jock-o, I’m staying at a brownstone down the street”—he was sponging off someone—“you’ve got to come over on your day off. I’ve some fantastic dance films you’ve got to see—outtakes from Dark Rapture, a marvelous film shot in Africa! Prudery, you know—the distributors feared viewers would not accept the jiggling breasts of women, and the men’s privies bouncing around. But I got them! And I’ll show you some of my latest films.”
Africa had caught Quentin’s imagination early on, and he spent a lifetime traveling through the Dark Continent—up, down, and sideways—never without a camera.
The clips from Dark Rapture were mind-boggling. Thousands of tribespeople danced on a dusty, African plain. As their multitude of voices chanted, “Ahhee bo-bo, impahh-sighyee, ahhee bo-bo,” over a thousand men—some dressed in loincloths, others naked—would vault into the air, and thunder down in unison. Simultaneously, another thousand or so would sing and stamp out a different rhythm in counterpoint. Several angles showed columns of women wearing nothing but little loincloths, five abreast, singing and dancing in endless lines, snaking paths through the men. The camera panned to reveal dozens of hollowed tree trunks (many over two hundred feet long), lined, on both sides, with hundreds of muscular men beating out complex