I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [167]
“He wants you to come over to his office NOW!” I got the message in the middle of pliés at the barre, so I left class to meet an agitated Lincoln, waiting at SAB. “You failed me!” he roared. “Where were you?! Where are you?!!” You know the feeling you get in the principal’s office? Numb, but your fingers tingle, and you need to pee? That was me.
Switching to a pathetic high-pitched voice, he wailed, “What’s going to happen to the company, Jacques? What’s going to happen to the company?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands. Not for him, the ordinary biting of nails. He had ripped strips of skin from his cuticles; on each finger, striations of raw flesh radiated toward his knuckles like the spiky crown on the Statue of Liberty. I felt such pity for him. “It’s going to be fine, Lincoln. NYCB will go on. You and Balanchine have built a company that supports the livelihoods and careers of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and you have hundreds of thousands—no, millions—of fans. Besides, there’s SAB. Companies come and go, but SAB is a foundation. It’s solid. It’s all right, Lincoln. It’s all right.”
My reassurance didn’t work. He loomed over me and jabbed his finger at me, rhythmically punctuating every proclamation: “At last, the tyranny of one man is over! Balanchine was never my friend. Do you think he ever asked me out socially? It was always business.” Then, in a bizarre switch, he continued in a low voice, as if talking to himself, “We’re going to get rid of those titty girls in the corps de ballet! All the boys at the school will wear uniforms, with a silver lyre emblem on the breast!” Then wailing again, “Oh! What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen?”
I needed to escape. I hugged Lincoln, patting him on the back. “It’ll be fine, Lincoln, it’ll be fine. It’ll take a while, but it will all work out,” and stumbled out the door.
“The tyranny of one man is over”? The cankerous sore that never healed in the depths of Lincoln’s soul was this realization—Balanchine was not in service to him; Lincoln was in service to Balanchine. If he rebelled, Balanchine would have continued without him, unflappable, unstoppable. Lincoln had spent most of his life raising money and doing public relations for Balanchine. What frustrations over the years had accumulated, with great lakes of resentment dammed up? What a marvelous mess of a man you were, Lincoln!
I loved Balanchine, but I loved Lincoln more. Why? I think it’s because Balanchine was unassailable, with no chink in his armor. Lincoln was a wounded giant full of holes in his soul, like the character Lenny in Of Mice and Men, only Lincoln was a genius of clashing intelligences. I loved that intelligence, his energy, his wild, skewed, and opinionated statements and ideas, his monumental visions and passions. I imagined I understood his inner terror. Many find his prose hard to read; I relish it. In it, I hear him speaking and understand his mind. Whether or not I agree with him, it’s passionate writing, scathingly honest, but because I know him so well, I recognize the manipulation.
Balanchine was the central influence in my life. He defined serenity, a calm heartbeat to Lincoln’s crescendos. He rarely exhibited anger, but if he did, it was shocking. An incident that took place on the stage of City Center: I was in my first year in the corps de ballet, my sixteenth birthday yet to be reached. Some union rule had been broken, and a big shot in the stagehand union came onstage and interrupted Balanchine’s rehearsal. Balanchine avoided acknowledging him, as if he was a buzzing fly. The union chief called all work to a halt. “Everything’s stopping. Get off the stage. If you don’t, I’ll close you down. You won’t even be able to walk in the stage door.”
Balanchine became incoherent, spitting inarticulate words; fury distorted and twisted his tongue. We felt embarrassed, yet protective. No one wanted to see him this way. This