I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [123]
We opened at the Maryinsky on Halloween. I danced the closing ballet, Western Symphony. During the bows, Balanchine made a short but charming speech, but backstage he confessed to me, “These awful people, in such a beautiful theater.” A gray dullness had settled over the country, and the elegance and manners of the aristocratic audiences he remembered from his boyhood were gone. When people dressed to the nines and laughter and confidence filled the theater, Balanchine had performed at the Maryinsky, as a mouse in Nutcracker. “Everything changes. With revolution and Lenin, people were eating rats in street,” he ranted.
At this point, Balanchine’s resilience and aplomb began to break down. He’d survived the pressures and demands of three weeks in Moscow, and now found his beloved Petrograd degraded to a shell of its former self, as well as suffering the continual disappointment of Diana Adams dancing so rarely. He might watch Jillana, Melissa, Pat Neary, Violette, or other dancers performing his choreography beautifully, but it didn’t satisfy him. It was Diana he wanted to see doing his steps.
All the ballets generally received more praise in Leningrad than in Moscow. One night at dinner, I spoke at length to a man from the United States Information Services. An old-time State Department diplomat, he had stopped on his way to Estonia. Knowledgeable about ballet, a fan of Russia and especially the young ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, he spoke of communism, capitalism, and degrees of freedom. He believed Julia, the guide, was a member of the Secret Police. “I spotted her in New York City with the Soviet delegation …” He warned me, “At the dinner table, you have to be careful what you say, because the waiters report to their superiors.” They would be queried, “What was the conversation at your dinner table? Who said what?”
We were becoming more independent and subversive, many of us dodging our handlers to venture off on our own. Leningrad was less depressing than Moscow, but only by a degree. We visited beautiful cathedrals and palaces where the gorgeous icons had been replaced by hundreds of posters, leaflets, and mind-numbing propaganda proclaiming the virtues of the hammer and sickle, and always images of Lenin. Every day off was crammed with adventures. Touring the Hermitage Museum, with its stunning architecture and artwork. Watching class at the Kirov School, everyone agreed the early training is superb, world class, but as the dancers hit their teens, fourteen or fifteen years old, they lose individuality and begin working to make themselves carbon copies of the current luminary of the day. But I guess all young dancers emulate their stars. I had Eglevsky as my model.
On November 1, we moved to another theater, and the following day, Friday, I danced Raymonda Variations, Balanchine’s homage to the composer Glazounov. “He used to play rehearsal for us at Maryinsky.” The ballet had been choreographed as a showcase for Patricia Wilde and me, with two virtuoso male variations. I was slender and ready, but Robert Irving pushed the tempo, and I spent the last variation expending all my energy trying not to be late.
The next night, Violette and Eddie brought down the house in Donizetti. Balanchine tried to avoid watching during their dancing, and kept chatting to me in the wings about his plans to revive Ballet Imperial for the New York spring season. To my amazement, he mumbled, “Maybe for Allegra.” Had he finally realized Diana didn’t want to dance?
At last, I danced Apollo. It went well, and I found myself euphoric and ravenous to dance it again. Balanchine was swamped with fans and spent hours talking with admirers, but that night, at the theater buffet, he lamented, “I am choking and have to get away.