I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [138]
Drawing of Noah and the Flood (image credit 13.3)
And oh! How Balanchine loved having Diana and me rehearsing. He delighted in playing Adam, partnering Diana the way he wanted me to do. Then I’d replace him, as he rushed over to peek through an imaginary camera and plan the shots. I never saw him happier. All that was missing was his booming voice biblically pronouncing, “And it was Good.” Well, it wasn’t. Early on, Diana got injured? Miscarried? … Whatever. Something! The ballerina Jillana replaced her.
I was in Europe when Noah aired on national television, and received a phone call from Balanchine, stuttering with fury, “They have ruined it! Awful commercials! They stopped ballet and music to show Breck—ordinary woman with shampoo! Hair! Breck! Disaster!”
MOVEMENTS FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA
Early in 1963, Lincoln won over McNeil Lowry, a power at the Ford Foundation, and wrangled an unprecedented funding coup—millions of dollars to Balanchine’s SAB and NYCB. The overall goal was to improve the quality of the teaching of ballet. Across the country, several companies associated with Lincoln and Balanchine received funding. Teachers would be sponsored to come to New York for master classes with Balanchine. He even offered a class on choreography but, after a couple of attempts, dropped it. “You can’t teach it,” he pronounced. More successfully, he shared his pedagogy—methods he had developed to achieve facility and mastery in ballet techniques.
Creating the ballet Movements for Piano and Orchestra with Gloria Govrin and Pat Neary, 1963; Balanchine’s quip: “Second position is the natural position for woman.” (image credit 13.4)
Additionally, he picked a handful of his NYCB dancers to travel around the country to visit different dance schools; if we saw talent, we were free to invite chosen students for a scholarship at SAB. Diana especially relished escaping the pressures of New York, and enjoyed the power of granting scholarships to the aspiring. She chose many talented students, among them the teenage Roberta Sue Ficker from Cincinnati (who later caught the virus of name change, and became Suzanne Farrell).
Back in New York, Diana joined me in rehearsals for another Balanchine milestone—Stravinsky’s new piece, Movements for Piano and Orchestra. When Balanchine did a ballet for one of his muses, he didn’t want to be bothered with anyone else. He focused his full attention on the chosen one. But our company’s ballet master John Taras had insisted there be understudies, and lobbied for Suzanne Farrell, from the corps de ballet, to understudy Diana. Eventually, during rehearsals, Suzanne showed up, lurking in the back of the room, ignored by Balanchine.
Then Diana delivered another mortar round—“I’m pregnant again, and this time, my doctor insists, ‘Bed rest! Flat on your back, no exercise, or you’ll risk losing another baby!’ ”—and Balanchine quit. He stormed out of the studio, ranting to me, “She stabbed me in the back! She didn’t have to do this now! She could have waited until after the premiere to get pregnant. There are ways!”
Inconsolable, Balanchine declared, “We’ll cancel the premiere!” locked himself in his apartment, and refused to answer the phone.
“We have to do this premiere!” Taras insisted. He asked me, “Do you think the understudy can do it?” “Sure,” I said. “I’ll teach Suzanne everything we do together, and Diana can teach her the solos.” So, the next day, I rolled back the rug in Diana’s living room, and Suzanne watched intently as Diana, lying elegantly supine on the couch, demonstrated,