I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [155]
While rehearsing a Mendelssohn ballet, I gave the dancers a five-minute break so I could call a dear friend, Harriet LeBell. It was her birthday, September 15, 1982. She was very ill, and could barely hear me, or talk. To my amazement, a half hour after returning to rehearsal, I burst into tears. All the dancers clustered around, sweetly supportive, but I couldn’t stop sobbing. I canceled rehearsal and locked myself in the john. Ordinary, day-to-day function is the best therapy for sorrow. When I peed, I stopped crying. I wrote in my diary:
Lately, Lincoln doesn’t answer me if I address him; he just makes a dirty face. He sent me a note expressing his desire to resign from my NDI board. These days, between us, the pen replaces the tongue. Instead of talking to each other, we send notes.
September 24, 1982: In dance class, it’s difficult to concentrate—my mind is filled with thoughts on the dissolution of the environment Balanchine has created and the fragility of his aesthetic. With Balanchine absent, smoking in rehearsals is heading towards rampant. The sight of Stanley Williams teaching while puffing on his pipe as the accompanist, Lynn, chain-smoked—an ashtray on the piano stacked with butts—sent me fleeing down to the stage to find a solitary corner to do my barre. When the king is ill, the nobles take liberties at court.
The company buzzed with rumors during our early-October performances in Washington, D.C. “Balanchine was admitted to the George Washington University Hospital!” Barbara Horgan filled me in on the details: he had fallen again, hurt his shoulder, and had nausea and fever. Edith Langner, his doctor, rushed down to Washington to minister to him. They were testing for a brain tumor.
When I was back in New York and rehearsing all day on the Mendelssohn,10 Lincoln popped in to watch, with hot burning eyes and loathing on his lips. He sat for five minutes, then stalked out. Nancy Lassalle passed me in the hall, wearing the same snarl. I thought, “She’s caught Lincoln’s virus, beginning to look like him.” After class the next day, Lincoln’s dam burst. He yelled at me for being a traitor, and went on about how Balanchine was dying, and Lincoln always thought I would be the one to replace him, but instead, I was a deserter and had gone off to pursue other interests. “You’re always doing something else—your Hollywood, your movies, your Broadway, your theater stuff—instead of paying attention here.” He quivered with anger. “Lincoln,” I said, “we better just stick to writing each other, not talk.”
As Balanchine deteriorated, many around me were questioning and urging, “Where are you in the equation of succession at NYCB? What do you plan to do? Do something!”
I had been told since my late teens by Lincoln, “You’re going to run this company someday,” and it had been implied by Balanchine for most of my dancing life.
Occasionally in the mid-1960s, Lincoln would invite me to his home, where he routinely courted potential funders, wealthy patrons, and foundation heads. A couple of times Arthur Mitchell was there as well, as we were part of Lincoln’s plan. “This is McNeil Lowry. He’s the Ford Foundation,” Lincoln growled. “They’re worried—if they’re going to give millions of dollars to Balanchine’s company, what happens when he’s gone?”
A few years later, in 1972, after a performance of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, Melissa Hayden and I were taking curtain calls. I had an irritating habit of orchestrating the sequence of bows for my partner and myself. “We’ll go together now, Milly,” I’d order, “then do solos, and then go together again.” I was turning into my mother, the Boss. Ronnie Bates called, “House lights up!” ending