I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [137]
Monday’s our day off, and Tuesday is the premiere of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. “Mr. B, I have a suggestion. I can’t fit in the rehearsals I’ll need with Violette in time for Tchaikovsky on opening night. How about if Conrad dances it with Violette for the opening? And when Melissa gets back from her leave, I’ll dance Tchaikovsky with her.”
Balanchine allows me to skip the premiere of Tchaikovsky and devote my time to preparing Allegra for Figure. Later, having recovered, Diana returns, but rather than putting her back into the role of the Princess, Balanchine choreographs a brilliant Scotch variation especially for her, and has Karinska, the costume designer, make her the most gorgeous of costumes. “I’ll never forget how beautiful Diana looked in that costume,” Allegra commented. “Karinska could read Balanchine’s mind, and always made the most exquisite costumes for the ballerinas he loved the most.”
The whole company was in the midst of rehearsals all day and performances at night. Not two weeks into the season, a few days before the premiere of Figure, Allegra (who, the year before, had married the celebrity photographer Bert Stern) announced to Balanchine that she was pregnant and suffering the worst morning sickness! “Mr. Balanchine, I don’t think I can dance.”5 He was devastated, went home in a snit, and pouted.
Melissa arrived from Chicago like the cavalry in a Western. “Let Melissa do it,” Balanchine grudgingly acquiesced. After the shock of Diana’s miscarriage (which Balanchine saw as a betrayal), he had somehow pulled himself together to redo the pas de deux for Allegra, but with her out he gave up—done in by babies! So I was left to coach Milly in everything she would need to know to dance the Princess. It was a lot for her to learn, but Melissa loved nothing more than a challenge, even with the handicap of being Balanchine’s reluctant third choice. He left all the rehearsing of Milly to me.
I’m sure Balanchine felt the gods were against him. At dress rehearsal, the fountain in the ballet finally came into play, and it leaked. “We’ve solved the problem!” Ronnie Bates announced before the premiere. Wrong. During the grand finale, we all slipped on the water that puddled on the stage floor.
In subsequent performances, the fountain stayed, but the water valves were turned off. The ballet, like a mirage, has disappeared. Diana never danced Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux or the Princess role in Figure in the Carpet, and Balanchine, watching his ballets, could only dream of how Diana would have danced them.
On the Russian tour in 1962, the company was lucky if Diana got onstage at all. She was always injured or sick, and, in everything, Allegra replaced her. “I danced every performance in Russia except one. It was a matinee,” Allegra told me. “Balanchine let me take it off.”
Allegra was to Diana what Diana had been to Tanny—the muse waiting in the wings. But Allegra kept having babies. Why? Because, according to her, “After my first baby, Trista, was born, all I wanted to do was play with her, but there was never time, with all the rehearsals and performances. I figured the only way to get time away from dancing would be to get pregnant again. Then I would have to be home, and could play with Trista. So that’s what I did … three times!” Susannah and Bret were two and three. She once coyly commented, “I offered the audience a little suspense, because no one knew if I’d appear or not—I didn’t know, myself!”
The year 1962 brought a much-heralded dance and music event: Stravinsky composed a ballet score, Noah and