I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [60]
Fortunately for Lincoln (and perhaps ballet in America), Balanchine suffered a relapse of tuberculosis and had to be hospitalized before he and Dimitriev could return. By the time he was released from the hospital, Lincoln and Eddie Warburg had found an alternate space for the school in New York City—three grungy, dimly lit studios at Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue. Balanchine and Dimitriev agreed to stay. My sister, Ninette, in later years remembered, “The elevator was slow, but the wallpaper in the lobby was impressive.”
Lincoln garnered seed money. There was never enough. Begging from friends and relatives was to be Lincoln’s lot in life. The majority of funds in the operating pot came from Eddie Warburg, supplemented by some of Lincoln’s own, mostly his parents’. And they managed to prepare, furnish, and open the School of American Ballet at Fifty-ninth Street. Balanchine wanted his company. The school was the crucible for his dancers. As soon as he could, he was at work preparing ballets, using the best of the school’s students, augmented by a handful of the few professional dancers available. Meanwhile, Lincoln labored frantically, seeking venues for performances. Eventually, a company evolved, the American Ballet, directed by Balanchine. It didn’t last long, their monies quickly spent. When the empty pot resonated, “No more, no more!” Eddie Warburg echoed, “Enough, Lincoln. No more.” By the middle of 1938, the American Ballet had fallen apart.
Balanchine packed up and left to further explore the worlds of Broadway and Hollywood. Lincoln formed another company, Ballet Caravan, and installed Lew Christensen as ballet master and dancing star and himself as director. They mustered a group of young dancers, many of whom later became stars in their own right: Todd Bolender, Eugene Loring, and Michael Kidd were foremost among them. During my years with the New York City Ballet, Betty Cage was the company manager, and told me that her mentor and predecessor, Frances Hawkins, had saved Ballet Caravan, this child of Lincoln, through bookings, wise diplomacy, and calling on myriad personal contacts so the fledgling company could perform. They found work anywhere possible, and survived, performing in school halls, college athletic department gyms, community centers, movies and vaudeville theaters. Eventually, Lincoln’s childhood pal Nelson Rockefeller arranged a Latin American tour funded by the U.S. State Department. In the summer of 1941, Ballet Caravan went off to dance under a panoply starring the Southern Cross.
TOURING SOUTH AMERICA WITH BALLET CARAVAN
Lew told me, “You have no idea how tough a tour can be.” They’d be riding a bus along precipitous roads, wending their way through the Andes, with three-thousand-foot drops on one side and sheer cliffs on the other. Then, without warning or, seemingly, logic, the bus driver would stop in the middle of the road, climb down, and stretch out on the warm hood of the bus to sleep. The dancers would look at each other, shake their heads, and, abandoned to fend for themselves, sit or go pee on the side of the road, until the driver woke up and took the wheel again.4
During a confessional four-hour lunch in the early 1960s, Lincoln told me that in dealing with Nelson’s machinations in South America, he came to understand the use of power. “You can move people around like chess pieces!” Lincoln said. “Nelson and I were like brothers. His mother was another mother to me.” Lincoln shifted in his seat. “After the Ballet Caravan tour, I went back to South America, this time as a spy for Nelson, to report on the quality of the U.S. State Department offices, and to scope out artists and buy works for him.” Arousing the enmity of the State Department bureaucrats, Lincoln was arrested in São Paolo. “I was stupid enough to send information