I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [208]
I arrived to find him surrounded by lady friends, and a nurse. “Jacques, dear, you’ve caught me with my court. These are my ladies. They worship me. Don’t you, ladies? Oh, and this is Maurice Grosser. I know him well,” glancing coyly at Maurice as if they had just been caught necking, “and you, Jacques, don’t know him at all. But you will.… “ A statement, pregnant with mysterious import, implying that the secrets of the Addams Family awaited me.
Maurice was nondescript, of medium height, medium everything, with a sallow complexion, but he had a gentle charm. And a few days later, I found myself sitting for a portrait by Maurice.
Awed by Lincoln Kirstein, Virgil often asked me, “What does Lincoln think of my music? … Does he mention me? You think Lincoln would want me to do another work for the ballet company?”
2. Paul Cadmus, a contemporary visual artist, was Lincoln’s brother-in-law, and was hired by Lincoln to create scenery for many ballets. His sister, Fidelma Cadmus, was married to Lincoln, and they loved cats. Whatever love Fidelma and Lincoln shared was symbolized by their love for cats. Fidelma was fragile—around her, you felt she could crack and disintegrate. Paul had done a series of lifesize paintings of the Seven Deadly Sins, which were filled with brilliant colors, twisted shapes, vibrant, energetic, Gothic. They made you uncomfortable. Paintings you don’t want to sleep with. Lincoln adored them. They lined the hallway of his house.
3. Choreographer José Limón’s There Is a Time, based on verses from Ecclesiastes, was groundbreaking, still a classic in the world of modern dance, as is his Moor’s Pavane. He was very handsome and dramatic. I just remember him standing there trying to talk to me—I was trying to change costumes, he kept talking—and he had beautiful hands, and knew they were beautiful, so whenever he addressed you, he made sure his hands were between your faces—gesturing, posing, demonstrating, revolving so you could get a look at them from every angle. I liked him very much.
4. After that 1953 tour of Europe, Nora (who inspired Jerry Robbins’s fantastic ballet The Cage) and her lover, the to-be-world-famous movie director Herbert Ross (Pennies from Heaven, Turning Point), decided to quit dance. They bought a Mercedes, and were passing through the Black Forest at breakneck speed on the autobahn, when, on a whim, Nora opened a window and flung her toe shoes out. “Enough, I’m going to live! I’m not going to dance anymore, I’m going to eat! Herbert, head for Italy,” she demanded. Within a few weeks, she was the size of a horse. When she died in 1987, Herbert arranged for a spot at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles (also the site of the graves of Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and many other entertainment luminaries), and, when he died, Herbert had himself buried there—on top of her! Isaac Stern, who had previously been married to Nora, refused to speak to her for years after she and Herbert toured Europe. He was furious because they’d bought a German car. Slights real or imagined are hard to let go of—Isabel Brown told me that on her deathbed, Nora refused to let Jerry Robbins in to say goodbye—because he had named several artists during the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. Jerry was left sobbing outside her closed hospital door.
5. Years later I asked a friend, the financial genius George Soros, how to invest in currency exchange. His answer: “DON’T!”
6. Years later, I had the privilege of partnering Carla Fracci in the pas de deux from Swan Lake in a tiny space on a floor of cement. It was a television special and Carla’s first performance in the U.S.
7. Yuri went on to marry the ballerina Patricia Wilde, one of NYCB’s stars.
8. Candy, by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg (G. P. Putnam, 1964).
9. Betty introduced Carrie, and many others, to the art of tai chi. She coauthored a book on tai chi with Edward Maisel. In the years after Balanchine’s death she led a class in tai chi until she lost her appetite for living, stopped eating, was hospitalized,