I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [172]
Late that evening, I met with Gail Papp at the Public Theater to discuss a project, but it was impossible to talk, so Gail and I opened a bottle of champagne, and drank toast after toast to Balanchine.
Balanchine’s Burial
Tuesday, May 3, 1983. Balanchine’s funeral commenced at nine a.m. The church, located on Ninety-third Street between Madison and Park avenues, has a mouthful of a name: Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign, Synod of Bishops, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. At Russian Orthodox rites, there are no pews or padded kneeling pillows, so STANDING ROOM ONLY means more than a packed house. By eight a.m., the church was already full, but my family and I squeezed ourselves in, got a candle each, lit them, and by nine o’clock were immovable. A few people fainted standing, unable to fall. Packed together and unaccustomed to standing in place, we undulated in a slow dance, shifting our weight from foot to foot—hot, tense, bereaved, seeking comfort. As I looked up, I’d swear the figures in the icons layered up the walls were rocking too. Hundreds gathered outside the church, blocking the doors.
In the sanctuary, the environment of loss was thick and darker than a shadow’s shadow. On my left, almost crushed by the mass of people, was Tusia, the mouse-like Russian seamstress, four feet tall, weighing about fifty pounds. She had been a devoted serf her whole life to the great costume designer Madame Karinska.1 As a pagan sorceress or goddess has a familiar to do her bidding (the black cat to a witch, Jiminy Cricket to Pinocchio), so Karinska had her Tusia.
Occasionally, my gaze would meet other pairs of tearful eyes, pause a moment, then sadly move on. Familiar friends nearby received a hug and then a silent separation: Allegra Kent, Merrill Ashley, Kay Mazzo, Tanaquil LeClercq. Across the way stood Alexandra Danilova, the legendary ballerina assoluta (in the ballet world, there is no crown higher). Danilova was known for her gorgeous legs and, at seventy-something years old, she was still teaching. At that time, I was taking her class regularly and admired how beautifully those still-elegant legs demonstrated a battement tendu.
She headed a cluster of balletomanes—a White Russian mafia—seamstresses from Karinska’s costume shop, teachers and administrative staff from the School of American Ballet, and other Russian friends and cronies, all paying homage to the man who epitomized and carried forward pre-Soviet culture through the art of ballet.
Balanchine had preserved vestiges of another time and culture, and to Danilova and all the Russians, he represented St. Petersburg and the Maryinsky Theater before it became Leningrad and the Kirov. As many present-day Cubans loathe Castro, so the White Russians loathed anything Soviet. Balanchine choked with anger when, at the UN in October 1960, Nikita Khrushchev spoke vehemently about how the Communists would someday crush capitalism. Khrushchev took off his shoe and slammed it into the desk before him repeatedly, and said, “We will bury you!” Though you rarely saw Balanchine lose his cool, he was still choking the next day, complaining, “They’re not translating it truthfully! Khrushchev is cursing and using foul language, spewing vulgarities of the most common Russian of the street! Peasant pig talk!”
Over a multitude of heads, I spotted Frances Schreuder, the underwriter of Balanchine’s ballet Davidsbündlertänze, her back to the wall, her face expressionless. Her son had been convicted of murdering his grandfather, and she was accused of conspiring and instigating the murder.