I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [24]
From the cabal at SAB, Boss learned of a Czechoslovakian dance teacher, Vaslav Swoboda, and the Swoboda-Yurieva school of ballet (Yurieva was his wife). Rumor had it that Swoboda had been in the corps of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. All the ballet mothers were in love with him. The Boss was smitten—“He has the demeanor of a prince noble!” My sister remembered, “He was the most beautiful man I ever saw, until I saw Lew Christensen.”
Deciding we would be better off studying with Swoboda, Boss switched us from SAB. I took to Swoboda immediately, and he to me. A handsome man with broad shoulders and gorgeous muscles, Swoboda was, indeed, grand, his carriage and use of arms and hands—épaulement—mesmerizing. Madame Yurieva, a tough taskmaster and strict disciplinarian, was not heavy with charm. I tried to keep out of her sight.
Brother Pat was roped in too, and started taking the adult beginner classes. He mopped the floors at the studio in exchange for our scholarships. Boss even coerced Pop to come in the evenings to help clean and close up the studio.
As there were no other boys my age in the children’s classes, I shared Swoboda’s dressing room, and I would play in there alone before and after ballet classes. There were high lockers that flanked a bench that ran down the center of the room. Like a monkey, I loved to climb from the bench to the top of the lockers, and up there discovered a real sword with a round, silvery hand guard. When you bent and released the blade, it would snap and whistle. One day, Swoboda surprised me, stabbing at the lockers in my underwear. He laughed and told me it was his “épée.”
I loved his classes, especially the folk dances—mazurkas and czardas—in one, we would chassé in a circle, leaning into the center and slapping our behinds. However, Swoboda seemed to lose energy before our eyes. His teaching became less rigorous; challenges vanished.
Boss realized that our technique was slipping, and decided to switch back to SAB. In a dramatic scene, she announced to the horn-rimmed glasses of Swoboda’s secretary, Viola, and to assorted mothers sitting around, “This is their last class! My children have lost their technique here, so we are leaving! I’m taking them back to SAB.”
In the dressing room after class, Swoboda shook my hand, and handed me a goodbye gift, the épée. Overwhelmed, I thanked him and thanked him, until he shushed me. “I want you to have it. I’ll never use it anymore.” Not long after we left, he died of esophageal cancer.
THE NOVENA
“Mary has promised us that if we do a Novena and request a favor from God, she will intercede with Jesus on our behalf, and what son could refuse his mother?” Sister Carmelita stared at my fourth-grade class as she imparted this momentous truth. “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, will be your advocate, a direct voice to Jesus.”
She had a lined face, and her white habit pressed the folds of her skin into pudgy wrinkles and trumpet cheeks. In my memory, she was short, so she must have been truly diminutive, because most of her students were under four feet tall. I don’t ever recall a smile, but when she was angry, she flamed a shiny pink.
At this moment, however, her expression was benign. “If you want the ear of God, the best way to reach Him is through prayer. The Dominican Order is especially dedicated to the veneration of the Mother of God. To honor Mary, we use one of the great forms of prayer, the Rosary Novena.” Her voice charged with excitement. “Today, we will learn what a Novena is and how to do it.”
A rustle of excitement rose from the class. Some forty or more boys and girls sat at their desks, divided (as was common), the girls to the right along the wall near the closets, the boys to the left, next to the