I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [147]
It was Lincoln who worried about the theater, the board, the company, and the succession. Balanchine never made arrangements for anything in the future—his apartment, the contents of his closets, his friends, his ballets, anything. He said, “After me, I don’t care. I want my cake now to eat.” So if there is a New York City Ballet today, it is because of Lincoln Kirstein. But without Balanchine, who would want to come?
Without Balanchine, what would have happened to Lincoln’s vision of a uniquely American ballet? We have a little idea through the early companies Lincoln birthed—Ballet Caravan, the American Ballet—where he functioned with more artistic control. Whenever he tried to do something that Balanchine wasn’t involved in, it fell apart. Because Lincoln was unpredictable, the edifice trembled under his control. Poor Lincoln was an instigator, not a leader … and that awareness was corrosive.
Lincoln worked hard at inventing an image for himself, and an important component of that image was the costume—a navy blue suit, black socks, black shoes, white shirt, thin black or navy blue tie, in winter a Navy pea coat. This uniform—routine, unchanging—was a crutch in his attempt to establish an order, a sense of control in his erratic and frightening mood swings. A manic-depressive and God knows what else. Winds in him had met, conversed, argued, and generated a tornado. Medication, probably lithium, allowed him to function. If his crutch broke, a routine was missed, or a medication forgotten, everyone would know, because he would appear in Army fatigues and combat boots.
Onstage at the New York State Theater, a half hour before an NYCB performance in the late 1970s: Balanchine, alone in his usual place in the first wing on stage right, had propped himself on a stool, tired and pensive. Nearby, I was warming up. The only other person in sight, Ronnie Bates, was preparing for the show. Lincoln appeared, in his camouflage outfit, and he headed straight for Balanchine. There was no doubt that trouble was brewing. Imagining Lincoln was about to strike Balanchine, I prepared to throw myself between them. I saw Ronnie slowly starting to edge toward Lincoln, probably hoping to grab him if the need arose. With saliva spraying out of his mouth, Lincoln bellowed at Balanchine, “YOU’RE FIRED!” I think even dust motes in the theater’s atmosphere froze. Slowly, Balanchine leaned back until he was bent like a bow and, tilting his chin upward so he could look down his nose at Lincoln, slowly uttered one word, “Ohhhh.” Lincoln fled out the door.
Balanchine sought me out. “I told Lincoln, ‘Maybe not be around theater so much anymore. Stay at the school, set up office there, play with little boys, make school secure, and write. You are wonderful writer. Write. That’s what you should do, keep out of theater.’ ” And then, to me, he confided, “Lincoln’s judgment is totally destroyed by his homosexuality, and he has no taste. He only sees boys onstage … However, nobody can write better about ballet than Lincoln.”
Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein by Jamie Wyeth, 1965. Jamie told me, “He was always rushing off somewhere, so I painted his back.” (image credit 14.1)
The next time I saw Lincoln was at SAB, and the military togs were gone. “George banished me from the theater,” he grunted.
Walking fast was a trademark of Lincoln’s—in a hurry, rushing from or to somewhere. Pausing, a momentary halt in his various migrations, seemed to anger him. Jamie Wyeth, the artist, captured Lincoln in a brilliant portrait. His back turned, the hawk-like profile radiating power. “I had to paint him that way,” Jamie said. “He wouldn’t be still for a portrait. So I painted him the way I remember him—barking over his shoulder, ‘I don’t have time for you now, Jamie!’ ”
Lincoln would invite me to his