I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [205]
Those who propagate my Rosary shall obtain through me aid in all their necessities.
Notes
The Boss
1. Bernadette Soubirous, who died at the age of thirty-five in 1879 and was canonized in 1933, reportedly saw apparitions of Our Lady at Lourdes. In fact, she did suffer from tuberculosis of the bones.
2. There was always some truth to Boss’s cautionary tales. King Herod, the bloodthirsty Judean ruler who reputedly tried to kill the infant Jesus, died an excruciating death, probably brought on by kidney disease and finished off by gangrene. Henry VIII died of a variety of illnesses, and his body lay swelling in his bed for some days before embalming, while his court figured out the best way to break the news of his death.
3. “Go, you are sent forth” could be a good idiomatic translation of “Ite, missa est.”
4. Commonly used in Quebec, a calèche is a two-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle with a driver’s seat on the splashboard.
5. One who takes care of horses.
Washington Heights
1. In later life, he represented the United States, competing in two Olympics and then coaching five more Olympic teams, the 1984 team winning the gold. In the summer of 2008, he was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame.
2. Established by the Heye Foundation and world-class, today much of the collection is in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
SAB
1. In 2008, while I was watching the Russian dancers from the Kirov perform at City Center, a lady in the row in front of me turned around. “Excuse me,” she ventured. “I’m Irene Rosner David. I know you’re Jacques d’Amboise, but you used to be Ahearn. My dad was Dave and had the candy store on your block. He always spoke of you and your dancing, followed your career.” I begged her for a photo. Two came within a week.
2. Anatole Chujoy, The New York City Ballet (Knopf, 1953). For both background and factual information regarding Balanchine, Kirstein, and the creation of the School of American Ballet and the companies that sprang from it, I am indebted primarily to Anatole Chujoy and Bernard Taper for Chujoy’s The New York City Ballet and Taper’s Balanchine: A Biography (1984 edition), along with Debra Hickenlooper Sowell’s The Christensen Brothers: An American Dance Epic (1998)—highly readable and thoroughly enjoyable accounts. The many conversations with Lincoln, Lew, his brother Willam, and Balanchine himself, I recorded in my diaries.
3. The Spellbound Child (L’Enfant et les Sortilèges), with music by Ravel, text by Colette, and decor by Aline Bernstein; and The Four Temperaments, with music by Paul Hindemith, scenery by Kurt Seligmann. The choreography was all Balanchine.
4. The second program of Ballet Society’s first season (January 1947) included three ballets: Pastorela, with choreography by Lew Christensen, music by Paul Bowles, based on the Mexican Christmas play Los Pastores, libretto by José Martinez, scenery and costumes by Alvin Colt; Renard (The Fox), with choreography by Balanchine, music by Stravinsky, scenery and costumes by Esteban Frances, and English text by Harvey Officer; and Divertimento, choreography by Balanchine to a score by Alexei Haieff, no scenery, and simple, stripped-down costumes. It was January 1947, and I was twelve and a half years old.
5. John would later have a lifelong and successful career as ballet master and choreographer in a variety of companies, eventually returning to join NYCB and hooking his life force to Balanchine.
6. How to make a zip gun? First, carve out of hardwood a model of a pistol (a barrel with a handgrip, no trigger guard). Second, on the top of the barrel, scrape out a narrow groove that runs its length. Place a steel pipe in the groove and secure it by wrapping tape and multiple thick rubber bands around the barrel. The diameter of the pipe must be exactly the right size to fit a .22 shell, inserted with the rim resting on the edge of the pipe. Too small and the bullet falls out. Too big and you can’t slip it in the pipe. Again using thick rubber