I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [128]
The dean of critics at the New York Times, John Martin, wrote for decades about the world of dance. In his early criticism, he was neither a fan of Lincoln and his dream nor a balletomane in support of Balanchine. However, as time passed and Ballet Society evolved into NYCB, he gradually converted. In 1962, John Martin arranged to accompany us on this historic return of Balanchine to Russia with his NYCB.
For years, in stupid arrogance, I had avoided contact with John or any other critics. If they watched company class or rehearsal, I would ignore them, and elude them if they sought an interview. Over the last decade, I had been the frequent subject of John Martin’s reviews, devastating at times, “Dancing like a bull in a china shop,” or adulatory, “The most interesting choreographer on the program.”
And here I was in Russia, sharing zakuski with John Martin. I was courteous but aloof. We made genuine contact on only two occasions on the whole trip, and I was somewhat uncomfortable as, I felt, was he. The first was on the company bus, where we conversed for over an hour, and I recall thinking afterward, “I like this guy.” The second was an after-performance party in Balanchine’s honor in Tbilisi, where we both got sotted. Georgian parties are like that; your host fills your glass and offers a toast, “To mothers!” If you don’t drain your glass, they complain, “What’s the matter? Don’t you love your mother?” Then comes, “To women, to love, to dance! To art, to friendship! To Georgia! To America!” until the ceilings swirl, legs turn rubbery, and silly smiles plaster faces. Paranoid, I’d think, “Why don’t they get drunk? They’re emptying their glasses, too! Maybe it’s not vodka they’re drinking, it’s water.” Supporting each other, John and I staggered out of that party, holding on to each other and inching down the hill, and it seemed we had a thousand or so kilometers of laughter down the slope to our hotel—old bonhommes.
Later that year, he wrote an article for the Times calling me the first classical male ballet dancer America had produced, and identifying me as the definitive Apollo. Still, old habits ruled, and I ignored him, until he retired from the Times.
Within a week of his retirement, I was on the phone. “John! Let’s have a cup of coffee together.” I’d operated under the assumption that an artist must have an adversarial relationship with critics. How childish, and now I needed to express regret for failing to acknowledge his importance in my life. Dance journalists attend performances, not just yours, but those of thousands of other artists, matinee and evenings—for years. John was so sweet at our breakfast, mumbling shyly, “You cannot imagine how many times I would try to capture in writing the effect of what I’d seen in a performance. I’d have only thirty or forty minutes to make a deadline. And in the morning, I’d wake up to read what I’d written, and cry out, ‘No! That’s not what I meant to say! I didn’t capture it.’ ” He told me that most choreographers hounded him before, during, and after the premieres of their works. Jerry Robbins would be at his throat, whether the review was positive or negative. Balanchine, he told me, was the exception; he kept himself removed. But Lincoln made up for it, endlessly cajoling, but more often, intimidating.
A friendship formed at that breakfast, and for years after I visited him in Saratoga, where he had retired to share a home with the choreographer Zachary Solov.
In John Martin’s writing, you recognize a superb usage of the English language that is rarely encountered today. So much dance criticism is dumbed-down dross, and petty power gossip, where the reviewer advises the management as well as the reader which corps de ballet