I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [59]
Dimitriev was the wheeler-dealer confidence man they depended on. They landed in Berlin with tattered clothes, a few sleazy costumes, and little money. However, in another feat of legerdemain, Dimitriev managed to arrange a paid tour of summer camps along the Rhine.
“We took any job we could, anywhere,” Balanchine recalled, but they were no longer starving. “In Germany, it was so wonderful, the food. I remember the cheapest meal—boiled potato with herring and chopped onion. And you put olive oil on top, and ate with white bread and German beer. So good. We hadn’t seen white bread since the tsar died.” Years later, in New York, we would often hang out at the Empire Coffee Shop on the corner of Sixty-third and Broadway, and Balanchine would order boiled potato, herring or anchovies, chopped onion, and Beck’s beer. “Best meal!”
Somewhere along the way, the troupe received a message from the Soviet Union demanding, “Return immediately!” The conductor and three singers returned; Balanchine, Dimitriev, and the others elected to defect.
After the tour of the Rhineland, Dimitriev set out scheming and networking, and before long, the company received an invitation from Diaghilev to audition for his Ballets Russes. Danilova, having been a soloist at the Maryinsky, was insulted to be expected to audition. Bernard Taper describes Sergei Diaghilev as “that extraordinary figure who had made a unique impact on the cultural life of Europe and who, as a personality, has been an endless source of speculation and fascination.”
Luckily, Diaghilev was impressed, and all four dancers were invited to join. Soon afterward, Balanchine became ballet master of Diaghilev’s famed and historic company. He was twenty years old. Perhaps out of loyalty and gratitude, perhaps because of a prearranged agreement, during these years Balanchine and the others contributed one fifth of their salaries to Dimitriev. Years later, Balanchine told me, “When I go to Hollywood, or do Broadway show, I send money to Dimitriev.” I asked, “Dimitriev’s been out of your life for decades, why do you keep giving him money?” to which he replied, “I would not be alive if it were not for Dimitriev!”
In 1929, Diaghilev died, and the company, full of intrigues, struggled. Right around the time Lincoln received, at Diaghilev’s funeral, his “message from God,” Balanchine accepted a position as ballet master at the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen. Soon after, the director of a theater in Monte Carlo, René Blum, gathered what was left of the scattered Diaghilev company, and formed a new company, the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Balanchine was the first choreographer he invited to join. Before long, though, Balanchine butted heads with Colonel de Basil, a wealthy entrepreneur who had elbowed his way into Blum’s company and named himself codirector. Balanchine left after one season.
A wealthy patron and fan, Edward James, helped Balanchine form his own company, Les Ballets 1933, to perform in Paris. If de Basil could do it, why couldn’t they? Lincoln Kirstein attended performances of Les Ballets 1933 in Paris and then, later, London, and it confirmed his belief in, and enthusiasm for, the work of this young choreographer. Lincoln felt Balanchine was continuing to create ballets in the spirit of Diaghilev. With few prospects for the future, after the London season Les Ballets 1933 disbanded. Lo and behold, Lincoln Kirstein appeared and made his offer.
Balanchine had a passion for American movies—westerns and musicals—so he shelved his dream of running the Paris Opéra and, with Dimitriev in tow, headed for the wide-open spaces of the New World.
There’s a photograph I saw in a newspaper of Lincoln and his friend and cosponsor Eddie Warburg meeting Balanchine and Dimitriev on their arrival in New York. It’s written on their faces, their body language, right there in that photograph—the smiling Americans, full of promise; the Russians, suspicious, afraid of being taken advantage of, and thinking, “What’s in it for me, and how can I manipulate