I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [186]
The highest place on earth is Mount Everest, which is shared by the countries of Tibet and Nepal. We happened to meet a couple in Santa Fe, John and Carroll Kelly. A photographer and a social worker, respectively, they knew, worked in, and loved Nepal, and told us about a private elementary school, the Mount Kailash School in Katmandu, and its principal, Jampa Lama Wangdu. “Jampa will help you find the children you seek.” His parents were old friends of the Dalai Lama, and still lived in a village at sixteen thousand feet, except at the height of winter, when his mama comes down to Katmandu to see her Jampa.
The grand lady of Texas, Lupe Murchison, heard about our quest. “What’s it gonna cost to bring children from Nepal for your event?” she queried. “About twenty-five thousand dollars, counting everything,” I threw out. “Well, you’ve got the money, honey.” She wrote a check, and Carrie and I flew off to the Himalayas.
Always serious Divas, 1992 (image credit 19.6) Always smiling Tsering, 1992 (image credit 19.7)
Nepal, like India, is best defined as the extreme not only of altitude, but of every human condition there is—from fat to thin, from opulent to destitute. We were housed at the upper economic level, thanks to a wealthy Chicagoan, Tom Pritzker. Tom had lived in Katmandu as a hippie in the sixties, and maintained a home there, which he graciously loaned us. The house and grounds are above the Bagmatic River, and perhaps the most famous of all Hindu shrines, Pashupatinath. Tom’s Tibetan staff coddled and fed us sumptuously. “Oh, the pancakes,” Carrie sang, “so thin and heaven-sent!” to my accompaniment, “More! Could we have more?”
The American ambassador to Nepal, Julia Chang Bloch, was a dynamic powerhouse of intelligence and charm. She adopted us and our project. When I wasn’t dancing with the children at the Mount Kailash School, Carrie and I were treated to parties, hikes, and picnics by Julia. Carrie reflected, “It is nice to know that every once in a while, our government puts the right person in the right place … probably by mistake.” One trek in particular ended with a culinary extravaganza Julia held on a mountainside terrace. It’s in our memory, up there in the “Pantheon of Great Outdoor Feasts.”
Throughout our auditions at Mount Kailash, two children excelled—Divas, a boy of nine years, and Tsering, a girl not yet eight. On their entrance in Rosebud’s Song, the Mount Kailash children would announce, “We represent the peoples from the highest places on earth, and have come to dance for you.”
Jampa revealed that he had been a dancer in his early days and demonstrated simple movements from Tibetan folk dances—heavy and clomping. Over the next several days, we formulated the choreography for the two children, and Jampa handed me tapes of Tibetan music for our New York musicians to use as inspiration. The quality of Jampa and the Mount Kailash School was so impressive that Carrie and I decided to underwrite a portion of tuition for two girls to attend school for the next decade.
Next, from Nepal to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth. As the Dead Sea lies thirteen hundred feet below sea level, there could be no argument it was the lowest. Israel and Jordan share that deep valley, and at Israel’s Ein Gedi kibbutz, on the edge of that sea of salt, we danced for days. Carrie and I took a day off to float around in the waters of the Dead Sea. Impossible to swim underwater. I closed my eyes tight to keep the salt from stinging, took a lungful of air, and managed to force myself under for a second, then relaxed, and was immediately shoved back up to the surface,