I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [182]
But we would meet alright
And put our worlds together—someday.
I grew so fast and soon I was tall;
I put all my dreaming aside.
Paradise vanished for pleasure,
And I never walked in the rain.
I had my life on this side of the earth
And you had your life on the other.
Sometimes I’d wake from my sleep,
And I would remember the promise.
On the other side of my world,
I knew there must be some grown-up child just like me.
We might be as different as day and night,
But we would meet alright
And put our worlds together—someday.
Suddenly now, you hold out your hand,
And in it I see my own heaven.
My world and yours are as one;
I know I never was dreaming.
Come take my hand and we’ll walk in the sun,
And we’ll dance in the raindrops together.
We live in one world at last—I am so glad that I found you.
On the other side of your world,
I am the grown-up child just like you.
We might be as different as day and night,
But we have met alright
And put our worlds together—today.
You cannot imagine the roar that rose from the audience of six thousand when, at the end of the first act, some twenty New York City police officers danced onto the stage—crowd control as the 42nd Street Construction Team started the “dig to China.” The idea sprang from Carrie. “When I was a little girl in Highland Park, Texas, I started digging a hole in my backyard, and believed that if I could keep it up, I would have a tea party in China.”
In 1985, China had barely opened to the West. At a dinner party, a fellow guest, Dr. Robert Ruben from the Einstein School of Medicine, mentioned that many Chinese students were coming to the U.S. to study Western medicine. His comments added fuel to Carrie’s idea. I mused, “Maybe we could do something with children and China …”
Our Chinese guests were housed in New York at the 92nd Street Y, gratis. The flag of China hung next to the Stars and Stripes outside the Jewish Y, even though I was told that China at that time had not recognized Israel as a nation.
Several of our staff lived at the 92nd Street Y to facilitate and assist our Chinese guests, among them Jennifer Jacobson, who was inspired to learn Chinese. She ended up teaching English in Hangzhou until the government’s violent response to the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen Square forced her out. Seventeen years after the original exchange, my daughter Charlotte and her husband, Terrence Mann, adopted a baby girl from China, and named her Josephine. “Dancing with all those Chinese children in 1986 rubbed off on me,” Charlotte explained.
In 2003, we received an official return invitation from the Chinese government. “Come to China. Bring children and artists, and work with our children and artists, in Shanghai.” The extraordinary entrepreneur Shirley Young, who had been on the NDI board during our first exchange, arranged, underwrote, and mothered our NDI team from the time we left New York in August 2003 until our return a month later. Born in Shanghai and raised in the United States, this brilliant, persuasive woman has devoted her life to engendering positive exchanges between the United States and China, particularly in the arts. “It’s been a long time coming, this invitation,” Shirley remarked. “The Chinese didn’t feel their country was ready for guests before—but they do now. And you can meet and work with Dou Dou Huang, the premier dancing star in China.” Several of the 1986 China Dig children, in 2003 chic and elegant adults, came from Beijing to join us for our performance at the Shanghai Grand Theater, as did Michelle Vosper and Miss Yu, our interpreters from the first collaboration. For several nights, we feasted together in Shanghai, and laughed about the 1986 exchange and their return trip to China.3
It seems that after their three-week stay in New York City, Deputy Mayor Bei insisted that on the way back, the Chinese delegation make a stopover in Hollywood. He wanted to visit Disneyland, and he got his wish. “We were all standing around outside the Magic Mountain ride,” Michelle chortled, “over fifty bright-eyed