I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [196]
And poor Lincoln, chewing himself up all his life. I imagined him in gloom declining, his doubts in ascendancy like a poisoning perfume. By contrast, Willam Christensen died at over ninety years old, bellowing and protesting that he couldn’t be in the forefront of the doers anymore. “My time has passed!” Lincoln handled “my time has passed” by hiding in a room, shrinking into darkness. Energy dripping away, he kept his room dark (I hear), and the mattress, his pillow, his clothes, became extensions of his depression. Eddie Bigelow was there while Lincoln’s ashes were spread on a pond near his home in Connecticut.
Months after his death, I was informed, “Lincoln left you something in his will.” A package arrived, a painting of me from the early 1940s, as an eight-year-old in Kyra Blank’s class. It was painted by Fidelma, and I know it was early September in the painting, as my hair is reddish from a summer in the sun. Standing first at the barre, I’m looking adoringly at Kyra Blank, with two stolid-faced, grim would-be ballerinas in tutus behind me. It hangs in my office, where I point it out proudly to every unfortunate who enters.
Cris Alexander and Shaun O’Brien’s contribution to the above (image credit 20.2)
Balanchine and Lincoln left the legacy of the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet—two edifices that I believe may outlive the memories of themselves. Balanchine wanted a place for himself so that he could indulge his art with music and the dancers he admired. After, he didn’t give a damn.
Lincoln wanted it to last forever. So one of them got their wish—or maybe both …
How many dancers know or care who started, for example, the ballet school of the Paris Opéra, the Maryinsky ballet school in St. Petersburg, the Bolshoi Ballet? Royal Danish? The Royal Ballet in England? Maybe Wikipedia knows.
Death of Milly
She would come into class and head for her favorite place at the barre. Uh-oh, some innocent dancer had taken it. “Hi!” Milly would blurt in a high-pitched grate. “You’re new, aren’t you? Well, welcome to the company. You’re in my spot.” Cowed, the new member of the corps (we’ll call her Harriet) would slink away to another place, only to be summoned back. “It’s okay, you can stand here, but not too near, or on the grand battements, I’ll kick you!” We all knew Harriet would soon be adopted. Milly would coach her about her toe shoes—“I like Capezios”—her makeup and hair: “Use a light base, honey, and let me fix your hair.” “Where is she? Where’s Harriet? Where’s my girl?”
Saratoga Racetrack—Milly would dance anywhere, 1973 (image credit 21.1)
When Milly finally retired and stored her toe shoes away, she took to teaching. First she had a school in Saratoga, and, later, one in NYC, eventually becoming a legendary teacher at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Anyone who has ever taken a class with her will never forget it. She brought the same integrity, generosity, and compassion to teaching that she had to dancing, plus the blunt talk.
Don Coleman, her husband, dedicated his life to supporting the woman he had married, and she managed an amazing career, while birthing and nurturing their two children, Stuart and Jennifer.
Another of the multitude who changed their names, she was born Mildred Herman. Up until fifteen years of age, she was a top-notch swimmer with dreams of serious competition. Her first ballet class awakened dreams of another stage. She came to New York, got a job dancing at Radio City Music Hall. Got herself into the corps of American Ballet Theatre. Then as a soloist in the Alicia Alonso Company, and finally as a principal in NYCB. We were partners on the stage and in the rehearsal studio for the next several decades.
August 2006. I’m walking up Columbus Avenue. Around Sixty-eighth Street, a couple of patrons eating lunch at a sidewalk café called out, “Jacques d’Amboise! Did you hear about Milly?” I stopped. “You mean Melissa Hayden?,” and prepared