I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [199]
The house was packed with ex-pupils, relatives, and friends. Videos of her teaching were being shown in several rooms. In the living room, the last video taken before her death showed her triumphant. She sat proud, under a gaudy red and gold canopy, playing a portable organ while singing an old sentimental Russian song. In the lyrics, I recognized the words “Das vidanya.” “Das vidanya”—goodbye.
Seda’s training was in Russian classical ballet, but she was Armenian, and folk art was in her soul. Armenians are energetic, passionate, and colorful people. Costumes she made were everywhere, over the curtains in the windows, hanging on the backs of chairs, draped on hangers, hooked to doorjambs and picture frames. Colors that would clash in a painting swirled in harmony here, overlapping figures advancing in a polonaise. Each costume had received Seda’s exquisite attention to detail—embroidered with buttons, jewels, crystals, and sequins clustered in a variety of patterns, proclaiming rainbows and a world-class seamstress. I don’t recall a bland outfit among them. Tiaras, headpieces, feathers, and plumes graced tabletops and bookshelves. Hundreds of thousands of hours she labored, so her students could become royalty in her theatrical productions. A crown for every princess, a doublet for every prince.
I couldn’t rest my elbow anywhere. On every surface, where there wasn’t a costume, headpiece, or dance program, sat platters of food and glasses of wine. The air was warm, throbbing with a pungent feeling, accompanied by a constant ebb and flow of voices and music, punctuated by the occasional soloist. As I wandered from room to room, a high-pitched voice exclaimed, “Hey, there’s my costume on the wall.” Someone pointed at the video. “Look. That’s me in the back, the one in the yellow.” Another voice, “Oh, that dance—she had us all on toe. God, it hurt!” Food-stuffed mouths, glasses emptied and refilled. Everyone moving, talking, gesturing, a community in a slow dance embraced in good cheer. “Oh, Jacques”—someone I didn’t recognize grabbed my elbow—“I’m so glad you’re here.” I was led around. “This is Jacques d’Amboise. He used to study with Seda.” Another high-pitched voice burst in, “Hey, I remember you. How’s your sister?” Memory-drenched, I called out, “Thank you, dear Madame Seda, for first putting my feet in fifth position.”
I can trace back a direct line from those first classes with Seda and her teaching techniques through over six decades of my career and the formation and success of NDI. I have hundreds of thousands of children and teaching and performing artists who I’m connected to—a community, an extended family, a tribe, united through the DNA of dance and music.
GEORGE
A therapist once said to Carrie, “You can trust your children.” When I heard that, I blurted, “What does she mean? Of course we trust our children! How could you not?” “Just read the news,” Carrie answered. So that brings me around to our quartet.
Number one son, George, over fifty, lives in the jock capital of America, Boulder, Colorado, and manages a store when he’s not skiing, hiking, snowboarding, cooking, and wine tasting. He’s a people lover, always finding the right thing to say, the thoughtful action to help anyone who seems wounded. He’s a healer.
Balanchine flanked by father and son d’Amboise and bracketed by a quartet of pussycats (image credit 23.2)
And he loves to play. Fairy tales and myths are the ocean he swims in. Children circle, gravitate to him, and climb on him. Our grandchildren live waiting for George. Imagination, off-the-wall, and vibrating, with cuddly love, is George. Carrie and I continue to refer to him as “the Miracle.”
CHRIS
Christopher was made for the performing arts. Talent, oodles of it, and he is gifted with perfect pitch, supporting an amazing memory for sound and dialogue. As a boy, he’d watch a television show, gather the family together, and have us howling with laughter as he recreated the dialogue, complete with background music and sound effects. In