I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [177]
I think most people talk to themselves. And out loud. At least at some point in their lives. And I know in most cultures we commune with the ancestors. I do it all the time. I talk to the Boss a lot. And at most performances, while waiting to make an entrance, I’d say, “This is for you, Vladimiroff.” Or, “Oboukhoff, I never had a chance to watch you do Swan Lake, but watch the one I am about to do. It’s for you.” Do I believe there is communication? No. Yes. It focuses and enriches the ritual that is, night after night, the art of performance, and it pays the necessary recognition to our teachers.
In February of 1984, with Balanchine not yet gone a year, I found myself waiting for my final entrance in his ballet Davidsbündlertänze, overwhelmed with the realization that, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to go onstage. From that eight-year-old dancing Puck to the man now approaching fifty, I had relished every performance, the rehearsals, the millions of tendus, the varied artists and great ballerinas I’d shared the stage with, and, best of all, the constant striving to make each performance better than its predecessor. I thought, “It’s over!” and then out loud, “Boss, it’s been great. Thank you, Seda. Thank you, my teachers.” There was only that final pas de deux left, with my ballerina, Suzanne, our dance ending with a slow lift, floating her off the stage, into the dark shadows of the wings. So I went on to dance, whispering to the stage, “Okay, Mr. B, here we go, the last of the wine.”
The last of the wine, 1984 (image credit 19.2)
A few years back, the executive producer for Video Artists International, Ernie Gilbert, contacted me for an interview. He had tracked down several television shows from the 1950s and ’60s, where I partnered, among others, Tanaquil LeClercq, Diana Adams, Melissa Hayden, and Lupe Serrano. In those days, we danced on floors of cement in tiny television studios, and the broadcast was live. If you fell, millions of viewers went “ouch” for you. No chance to fix goofs. Today, when I watch myself dancing on those clips, it’s as if it’s somebody else. As when gazing at your baby pictures, you think, “I was cute then. What’s happened to me?”
Each performance had always been an opening night as well as a closing night—I tried to treat every moment on the stage as if it was my first, as well as last. To be onstage now was a gift; to dance tomorrow was a hope. Melissa summed it best when a fan inquired, “Miss Hayden, what’s your favorite ballet to dance?” “Honey,” she answered, “tonight, if I dance on the stage, that’s my favorite ballet.” Balanchine would say, “Why are you holding back? Give everything now. What are you saving it for, when you’re too old?” That night I answered, “Yes. I’m too old. I’ve nothing left to give.”
That season was “Goodbye, NYCB.” I would still derive joy from doing a ballet barre, but only as exercise. By then, I had already dabbled with several careers, playing around in academia as dean of dance at SUNY Purchase and visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara, and my NDI, in its eighth year, was exploding with possibilities. Now I could throw myself 100 percent into NDI, seeding programs in other cities, developing international exchanges, and stretching staff and purse strings, continuing to invent extravaganzas of dance and theater, while cajoling and garnering every acquaintance, celebrity, superstar, and musician I met to participate.
Through NDI, I found a chance to play the game of dance on a much grander stage, and this second chapter brought something more fulfilling than my career as an individual performer. Today, when I see the quality of NDI teachers at work all over the country, I think, “Look what came from holding that child’s hand and teaching him how to lift his leg