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By Root 1277 0

when he heard, and, as usual, gave me anything I wanted—in this case, a pianist and a studio at SAB (at the time, located at Broadway and Eighty-third Street). The first Saturday, about half a dozen boys showed up; within a few months, there were close to twenty, many not from Collegiate. Some boys took class in galoshes, and of the eighteen to twenty boys, three went on to professional careers in dance. One boy, Philip Jerry, commuted from Albany. He came in by train on Friday, stayed with a relative, attended class, and Saturday afternoon, headed back home. A producer for New York Illustrated, Bernie Morris, developed an award-winning television special about the class, called Sandlot Ballet, featuring Philip as narrator.

George d’Amboise armored for Balanchine’s prologue in Don Quixote, 1965 (image credit 13.8)

Balanchine invented a prologue for Don Quixote, because he wanted to use the boys in my Saturday class. In the prologue, the seated Don, surrounded by books, dozes and dreams. Thick fog covers the stage, and a tiny damsel enters,7 fleeing a coterie of miniature knights—armor-clad, with helmets of horns, rats, and lizard faces. In his fantasy, the Don leaps to his feet, seizes a sword, and, in vigorous battle, defends the frightened damsel. (“He hit with that sword for real!” my boys gushed. They were afraid to get close to him. “He’s dangerous!” George complained admiringly. In a later season, when Christopher joined his brother knights on the stage, he described his terror of Balanchine. “When he did the role, I’d try to hide! He would swing his sword with such vigor that sometimes it would slip out of his hand and go clattering across the stage.”) At the climax of their battle, the Don vanquishes the little knights, saves the damsel, and afterward, exhausted, collapses into his chair. A servant girl, Dulcinea (Suzanne Farrell), comes in with a basin of water to wash his feet and gently dry them with her hair.

Suzanne Farrell in Don Q, 1965 (image credit 13.9)

Balanchine as the Don, touching the membranes of your heart, was a little pudgy, and, with his one lung, huffed and wheezed his way through the difficult passages of choreography. But to see him on the stage in Don Q was one of the great moments in the history of ballet. Magnificent! Balanchine expressing the beliefs that formed him and were central to his soul.

Toward the end of the ballet, the narrative suspends for a moment and gives way to a fantastic dream sequence. It doesn’t necessarily advance the plot; rather, it contributes by raising the magic and atmosphere of the entire production. Exhausted and dejected, the Don crawls to a corner of the stage to collapse into sleep, and dreams. The stage fills with a cascade of beautiful female dancers. Amid their swirling, all action is centered around Dulcinea. In her solo, Suzanne flew all over the stage in the inspired choreography he had built on her gifts. She was so in control of time that she inhabited it, commanding and ordering the space she moved in. At the end of her dance, as if feeling the inevitability of loss, she stopped near his supine body, gasped, ran backward to center stage, and dropped to her knees with her face in her hands. I’d stand in the wings and watch her perform, and think, “What’s happened to Suzie? What’s inside her? Who’s in there transforming her?” Certain dancers become larger than just a dancer doing a role; they seem to channel a greater force. Suzanne danced possessed, as if inhabited by a goddess of dance who was using her as a vent. For me, the effect of her performance in the coda of Don Quixote will resonate forever.

Watching my daughter Charlotte dance, I realize she, too, has this gift of being larger than a woman dancing, somehow a window to the force of the art form that uses her as its medium. Other artists as well—the dancing of Maria Tallchief, of course, and the passion and drama of Melissa Hayden in all her roles. Merrill Ashley in the ballet Ballo della Regina. And the iridescent Allegra Kent didn’t even have to dance—she only had to stand onstage.