I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [149]
Lincoln and Balanchine came together like two elements in an alchemical reaction, and together, their visions and energies (Lincoln’s of a uniquely American, male-dancer-driven ballet inspired by Lew, and Balanchine’s of distilled and refined choreography in service to women and the art of ballet) transmuted to make a third body, joined entities, NYCB and SAB, that, for a time, bore the marks of both parents. Their presence remains, diluted today, fading, too.
A MYSTIC CONNECTION
Each could not achieve alone what they accomplished together. Lincoln parlayed this treasure he had—George’s artistry—into getting his vision realized. Balanchine parlayed Lincoln’s drive and genius into founding a school to develop his dancers, a company to use to create his ballets, an orchestra of high quality with first-class conductors to play the music he chose, and a theater to present his ballets—that’s all he cared about. Without Balanchine, Lincoln would have done what he always did—build up, lose interest; support an artist, then turn on him; create something to be proud of, then discard it with distaste. He never did achieve his place as tsar of all the arts in America. He did, however, find a place to channel his energies, as a promoter and facilitator for Balanchine.
Without Lincoln’s entrepreneurship, Balanchine, unconcerned with legacy or anything that might survive him, might never have found a permanent home. “Me. Here. Now.” Balanchine undoubtedly would have found other venues to refine and explore his choreography, but here in NYC he had his own school, ballet company, orchestra, and theater. Plus—Lincoln Kirstein, the buffer, the fund-raiser and public relations man, press agent and marketer extraordinaire.
Balanchine admired Shakespeare, especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and was fond of quoting Bottom: “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was” (act 4, scene 1). Then Balanchine would expound about how there are things going on at different levels and we’re unaware of them—there are other planes, dreams, invisible worlds, and, maybe, other universes. “We need different kind of access, beyond mind, to imagine these other worlds.”2
“We see here, and we think this is what is. But we see only tiny little bit. There are other places. Maybe there’s here,” Balanchine would gesture the shape of a box, “but there is inside, and we don’t see inside. But we know there is an inside. Maybe there is inside an inside, like Russian nesting doll … We are little, and know very little.”
He’d continue, expounding on geometry—dimensions—and a hodgepodge of the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, the Armenian mystic. “His follower, Ouspensky, was better,” Balanchine claimed. “Everything is now, you see—past, present, future—over and over again—is now. Now, now, now, now, now. Even now is not what you think.” I was lost and confused, but I think what he meant was that no matter how fast you could grasp, the present is continually becoming the past. Later, on attempting to read Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, I would get even more confused, and put aside their books, thinking, “What a lot of mystic hodgepodge.”
Lincoln claimed to be a follower of Gurdjieff. Was it because of Balanchine? Gurdjieff had taught in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and had a school in Tbilisi; maybe Balanchine