I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [151]
Balanchine was hospitalized in November of 1982, having fallen and broken his wrist and several ribs. He never left the hospital, gradually deteriorating until, some six months later, he succumbed to the monster that ate away his brain.
Symptoms had cropped up earlier, but appeared unrelated, and I had shuttled him from doctor to doctor, searching for a diagnosis. Almost two years before, on June 20, 1981, Balanchine, worried, confessed to me that he was getting tired and dizzy at odd times. A month later, in Saratoga, after a performance of the pas de deux from Meditations, he was ecstatic, heaping praises on Suzanne Farrell and me. When he turned to walk away, I noticed, “He walks like an old guy, staggering, his legs spread and his equilibrium off.”
On September 18, 1981, SAB’s beloved Felia Dubrovska died. Her funeral at the Russian Orthodox church was punctuated with lots of kneelings, standings, and kneelings. Mr. B and I could hardly manage the ups and downs. Eventually, we resorted to clinging to each other for support. Laughing, Balanchine whispered, “I have an excuse, I’m older.”
Aging was on both our minds. After her funeral, I regaled Balanchine with a description of the last time I’d seen Dubrovska. She’d summoned me for tea at her apartment, I think it was in the Ansonia Hotel on Seventy-third Street and Broadway or nearby. As we sipped our brew, Felia rhapsodized about her career, her performances, and what a great artist her husband, Vladimiroff, was. “Pierre loved you,” she nodded at me. “You were always his favorite American dancer.” With that, she coyly presented me with a box. I opened it to find two oblong circles of foam, backed with adhesive. “Put them on every chance you get, especially at night,” she confided. “They keep you from creasing your forehead as you sleep, and you’ll look younger longer. I have used them for years.”
Balanchine sniffed. “Maybe face-lift would work better.”
Watching Merrill Ashley and Sean Lavery in Swan Lake one evening, Mr. B and I stood shoulder to shoulder in the wings. Their dancing was so lovely; I was entranced. Balanchine, instead of watching, jabbered urgently into my ear. “I go soon to Switzerland … a spa … for vitality and health!
“The Swiss,” he claimed, “have the best medicine. You can’t get these injections anywhere else. They make them … from horses and bulls, to give you strength.”
Robert D. Wickham, one of Balanchine’s doctors, commented,
Mr. Balanchine was very much concerned about staying as youthful as possible. That preoccupation is common in many men as they age. He once told me that in the past he had obtained “rejuvenation” injections in Switzerland. It is quite possible that he got Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease by way of these injections. Such injections have been available in European health spas and clinics for many years. They oftentimes contain extracts of animal glands such as testicular tissue.
The Saturday boys’ class I started in the mid-1960s to introduce George and Chris to ballet, I had let drop. In the fall of 1975, I started teaching classes in several public schools in New York City. Bunches of screaming little panthers garnered from the fourth and fifth grades in elementary schools would meet and we would dance. Carrie discovered our bank account was markedly depleted, as I was paying the musicians and travel costs from our savings. “You could set up a nonprofit organization,” she said. “It would help you raise money to hire staff and artists and it will become an institution of its own and not be fly-by-night.”
To Lincoln Kirstein I went. “Lincoln, I’ve been teaching young boys dance.” (I knew that would grab him.) “Not ballet, but introducing them to the arts through dance. I do the classes in their schools—hallways, corners of gyms, lunchrooms, even on rooftops. Lincoln, I need a lawyer for a nonprofit company. How do you do it?” He was shocked, had never thought of me forming a company, an institute, something outside of New York City Ballet. He had his plans for me. “Well, you have to get a lawyer. Maybe I can find one