I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [202]
Once, and I don’t know how it happened, but in the late afternoon I stubbed my toe so badly, the toenail loosened on the big toe of my left foot and came off, leaving raw flesh. I was supposed to dance Apollo that night, so I called up Dr. Louise Krynski, a Russian-Polish friend and spouse to another doctor, Boris Krynski. Louise squeaked out in her tiny voice, “Oh, maybe Boris can help you.” At half hour, Boris showed up in my dressing room with an enormous syringe and injected a numbing drug into the toe. I put on my costume and ballet shoes, and went onstage. I don’t think Boris stayed to see the performance. I had Apollo to dance. He had a gallbladder to remove.
Shortly after Paul is carried out of the audition in A Chorus Line, the character Diana Morales answers the choreographer’s question “What would you do if you couldn’t dance anymore?” Her answer. An exquisite song “What I Did for Love.” Listening in the audience, I am visited by a stream of ghosts. Maria Tallchief with her feet so beat up from a lifetime in toe shoes, she needs a wheelchair to get around. Visiting Leon Danielian in his hospital bed, he pulled up the sheets to show me mangled dancer’s feet, the toes twisted around each other; one seemed upside down. I took off my shoes and socks, hopped in bed next to him, and we put our feet together, compared deformities, laughed, and proudly showed them to the nurses. “See ladies, what we did for love? Now vote, which are the worst?” Leon won. The ballerina Patricia Neary, Miss Extrovert herself, teaching a ballet class. “Hey, all of you, look at this!” She pulls out the set of X-rays she carries in her dance bag: “See the metal bars in my hips and bones? Well, with all that metal, I can still do fouettés, so why the hell can’t you?”—and then she knocks off half a dozen. Suzanne Farrell, coaching young dancers so elegantly, wearing her own bars of metal. Eddie Villella, because of the wear and tear on his joints, ended his career early. A few years ago, at the Kennedy Center Honors, he confessed to me, “I’ve got to do the hips again, Jack. They wear out after twenty years.” Today, I have two artificial knees. Recently, visiting Shaun O’Brien and Cris Alexander at their home in Saratoga, Cris declared, beaming, “Daisy, Shaun and I have been together longer than you and Carrie.” Older than Shaun, Cris was standing tall and erect, and next to him, bent over, was Shaun shuffling, with twisted toes like Leon’s. What we did for love.
Most heartrending was courageous and determined Merrill Ashley, her face drawn with pain, limping down the street and into the stage door to prepare to dance. A few hours later on that stage, managing to flow smoothly and beautifully. The audience never realized she was in conflict with her body, ignoring its messages, knowing only that she loved the dance so much; she wanted to stay onstage forever.
So many great dancers in my years with New York City Ballet elevated the audience with their individual artistry. The two Johns, John Prinz and John Clifford, thrilling and stimulating in everything they did, stay in my mind, as does Mimi Paul, bringing beauty to every gesture. Marnee Morris spinning all over the stage. Suki Schorer, perking up every performance. Dramatic Nichol Hlinka, small in stature, giant in talent. Whenever Heather Watts performed the ballet The Cage, I would go to the wings or out front to watch. I loved viewing Conrad Ludlow, too, and the poetry he brought to a pas de deux. Any time I see a ballet that has in it a role that Eddie Villella, Violette Verdy, or Patricia McBride danced I am haunted by the memory of how great they were. I would need another book to list the names of the dancing artists who ennobled my performing life. In the corps de ballet, among the soloists and principals, everyone found their voice, and Balanchine nurtured and cared for