I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [164]
Balanchine’s health was steadily declining, and the word “succession” implied his death, something I didn’t have the ability to imagine. I’d try, asking myself, “Jacques, what’s going to happen with Balanchine gone?” and a black curtain would descend, impeding any thought in that direction. What did Balanchine expect of me? I decided to ask.
“Mr. B, what do you think I want to do?” He replied, “Make movies and Broadway shows. Direct, choreograph, teach. You are very good at directing, putting big things together.” I realized he was thinking of NDI and our yearly extravaganzas. I ventured, “Do you want me to be part of NYCB?” Blinking, he answered, “Yes, of course, always, but you have to support your family and you need money.” I announced, “George is in the Air Force, Chris’s career as a dancer is soaring, the twins are eighteen and launched on their careers,1 and Carrie is passionately pursuing her art as a photographer. Tell me what you need.”
Balanchine rambled, seemed to change the subject. “Lincoln is a homosexual, always for boys, and will destroy everything. He is in love with Joe Duell.2 Only I care about women, and woman is ballet. Like you have wonderful racehorses, you must treat them well and serve them. Taras, Jerry are not ballet … Jerry is Broadway.3 I am disappointed in Ronnie Bates. He cannot see [how to light ballets], and I can see.4 No one is around to tell, the clothes are junk [that is, when Balanchine is no longer around, there will be no one to direct the lighting designer and costume designer on how to dress and light the dancers].”
Balanchine continued, “I say, ‘The best silk, the best costumes always.’ But I need help. I cannot do it all. I never knew you were ready now, yes, good. It has to be, in the future, someone who loves women—not a homosexual—the only two people are you and Peter.”
Balanchine rarely demanded, but if, when he was in the hospital with no hope of recovering, he had tried to persuade me to direct the company, I would have insisted, “Jerry is the one. Or, if Lincoln balks at Jerry … a troika—Tanny, Karin von Aroldingen, and Rosemary Dunleavy.”5 I wanted to be remembered: “There for Balanchine, gone when he’s gone.”
Jerry was tormented, like Lincoln. Each had qualities of brilliance, bordering on genius, and each was gifted with wit—marbled with meanness. On their shadow sides, they sometimes behaved like monsters, determined to camouflage any sign of a gentler, sunlit side. But it cropped up. Lincoln once came into my dressing room and proudly showed me a picture of himself marching amid hundreds of African Americans in Selma, Alabama, the only white protester in the picture, carrying a little black boy on his shoulder, like St. Christopher carrying Jesus. And Jerry, underwriting the medical costs for injured dancers, on the condition that the dancers never tell anyone.
Jerry in his choreography, and in his life, was a seeker. He hoped and dreamed of a better world, without prejudice, with races and cultures in harmony, somehow finding that place despite society’s rules, nationalism, fear, hate of other cultures, and divisions of religions or class. His work in the theater and dance are full of these themes. At NYCB, The Guest, Age of Anxiety, and Dances at a Gathering come to mind. And on Broadway, West Side Story was at the apex.
Despite Lincoln’s personal animosity toward Jerry, there was no doubt that, next to Balanchine, Jerry was the preeminent choreographer and man of the theater in America. It surprised me that Lincoln allowed his distaste for Jerry to jeopardize in any way the future of the company.
Balanchine never said no to Jerry Robbins, but he never said yes to anybody. Like Louis Quatorze declaring, “I am the state,” Balanchine continually declared, “After me, I don’t care. It will be different. Something else. Right now, with these people, and this music—that’s all I care.” When Peter Martins went to Balanchine’s hospital bed to