I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [203]
Sharing the stage with Merrill Ashley, 1970 (image credit 23.4)
At the fiftieth reunion of NYCB, they posted big placards, designating decades—dancers of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s—I fit them all, and I wandered around, greeting my compatriots. Among those of the first three decades, a quarter of them had joint replacements; by far, the majority were hips. What we did for love.
My memoirs are not filled with angst. There hasn’t been horror. My son George didn’t die. My brother John did, but he was close to eighty, and I was lucky to be at his bedside with his wife, Mary, his daughter Maureen, and especially my sister, Ninette, who held his hand and sat with him, murmuring praise, “What a great brother you’ve been, John, what a good man you are,” and singing lullabies and Irish ditties, past his final exhale.
A wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art, 1962 (image credit 23.5)
I love hanging out with Ninette, a diligent transformer of NYC vacant lots into garden oases, and I got her to perform with NDI. Brother Paul and his wife, Kathleen, for many years came to New York to help out at NDI. Occasionally I pop up to visit their fiefdom in Maine, where they preside over their enormous family. Cate’s two children, Shane and Sam, are seizing life with passion and grace, and have performed with NDI New Mexico. Charlotte and her actor husband, Terrence Mann, are raising their two girls—Shelby and Josephine—and I have already wheedled the four of them to perform with NDI.
I don’t know if anyone reading these memoirs will be disappointed that there was no revelation of drugs and childhood abuse. I’ve always been happy. In Staten Island, I escaped untouched by the man in the shadows of the barn, I survived the streetcar, never was sued by the city of Hamburg, and didn’t get polio when poor Tanny did. I hugged her that night in Cologne in 1956, and flew home to my bed in New York; she flew to Copenhagen, to recline in an iron lung. Dear Tanny, bravery and humor sat with you in your wheelchair for almost fifty years. Fate could have had me sitting in its mate, but I can still walk. The Cuban missile crisis did not escalate into war, so I never had to do pliés in a Siberian gulag; and Carrie and I weren’t at the Bishops’ the night of the slaughter.
Everything was given to me, by the best and of their best.
Twentieth century born, and trying to understand the twenty-first; I have become a proselytizer for the importance of the arts and learning. But, above all, and central to everything, I was a dancer.
As Milly said to me, and I often say to Carrie, “We did a good job. Goodbye.”
Appendix: The Novena
In writing these memories, I implored several friends from the old days to set me straight on the exact structure of the Novena. Each person had a different version. I’ve reprinted one here. (Maybe you can figure it out.)
ORIGIN AND METHOD
This devotion, which the author has called the “Rosary Novena to Our Lady,” is of comparatively recent origin.
“In an apparition of Our Lady of Pompeii, which occurred in 1884 at Naples, in the house of Commander Agrelli, the heavenly Mother deigned to make known the manner in which she desires to be invoked.
“For thirteen months Fortuna Agrelli, the daughter of the Commander, had endured dreadful sufferings and torturous cramps; she had been given up by the most celebrated physicians. On February 16, 1884, the afflicted girl and her relatives commenced a Novena of Rosaries. The Queen of the Holy Rosary favored her with an apparition on March 3rd. Mary, sitting upon a high throne, surrounded by luminous figures, held the divine Child on her lap, and in her hand a Rosary. The Virgin Mother and the holy Infant were clad in gold-embroidered garments. They were accompanied by St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena. The throne was profusely decorated with flowers; the beauty of Our Lady was marvelous.
“Mary looked upon the sufferer with