I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [131]
“What did you say, Felix, my savior? Tell us what happened!” Shaun cooed. Felix glowed, now he was in the center spotlight, reenacting the finale in English. “I recommend you drop this complaint and go home,” the militiaman had advised Red Band #1. “And keep your mouth shut, for your own good. Quick, quick. Disappear.”
Out of the thousands and thousands of performances dancers do in a career, there are certain ones that stick in the mind—good and bad. For me, in dance, Raymonda closing night in Baku is one of the good ones; Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux in Leningrad and, again later, at the Carter Barron Theatre in Washington, D.C., were also standouts. Etched in my happy memories of great dramatic theater is Felix in the spotlight at the theater canteen on the last day in Baku.10
The company gathers, “GOODBYE TO BAKU!” 1962. At left, Allegra is sitting next to Eddie Bigelow. Blanchine is standing fifth from left. I am standing in the back row on the far right, next to Felix with his Hitler moustache. Eddie Villela, in a suit and tie, beaming; Arthur Mitchell smiling in his stripes. Why are we so happy? HOORAY! WE LEAVE TOMORROW! (image credit 12.7)
LEAVING THE SOVIET UNION
We couldn’t wait to leave. HOORAY! The plane left Baku on time and made it into Moscow, but as we landed, snow started. The pilot warned that the airport was shutting down. We might have to stay over in Moscow. Our wails filled the plane. Then, a rumor of hope: we were going to try to fly out, the last plane before they closed the runway. “Goodbye, Felix, goodbye! Get off the plane. Hurry!” He looked so sad—like the cartoon character Mutt in Mutt and Jeff, the tall one, slightly stooped, only Felix had a moustache. He lingered saying his goodbyes to Shaun.
As the engine started and we pulled away from the terminal, a chant rose, “Go, go, go, go!” When the plane lifted in the air and the landing gear snapped shut, we erupted in cheers and applause.
It’s not a long flight to Copenhagen, but a thousand years of contrast. The terminal at Copenhagen—divine. Colors so bright, and so much light! So many goods and luxury items, people happy, actually smiling. A few hours later, we boarded an SAS flight to New York.
How heartwarming to be home. Carrie, so relieved. Chris, cute as a button, dashed around trying to get everyone’s attention, and George stared at me and cradled the Kremlin tower I’d sent for his birthday. Over the next several days, when I wasn’t eating, I slept.
After a few days, I went to take Vladimiroff’s class. At the first sight of me, he rushed up. He didn’t ask, “How was Russia? Wasn’t the Maryinsky Theater beautiful?” or “How did you dance?” His first words were, “Did you go to studio?” “Yes,” I said. “Did you do barre at my spot?” “Yes, of course.” “Isn’t the studio beautiful? Isn’t it?” I hemmed and hawed and replied, “Well, it wasn’t that special … It was okay, actually kind of grungy.” He took a step away from me, and his head went down. Then he looked up, got a twinkle in his eye, and said, “But you didn’t look up and see it? Years ago, before I left Russia, I leaped twenty feet up and wrote my name on the ceiling before coming down. If you had looked up, you would have seen it.”
It cost several hundred bucks, but I had my suitcase full of 16 mm cassettes developed. I set up the projector and screen and eagerly gathered my family around—to discover, with numbing disbelief, that the footage up to Vienna and before Russia was fine, but every cassette taken in the Soviet Union was blank. Not one picture of Balanchine, Lincoln, the company, Shaun, the canteens, the hotel dining rooms, the paper bag, the cities, the streets, the cabbages, the theaters, museums, cathedrals, or Felix and his synagogue. All erased by the police. My price for rooming with Shaun!
And oh yes! There was a letter from Hamburg. The city planned to sue me for injury to their streetcar.
Balanchine’s Muses
No single woman in Balanchine’s life served as a supreme muse. Rather, a succession of ballerina-muses