I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [88]
I never saw her blink or close her eyes. Maybe her pupils were tiny and had rolled up. I don’t know, but her eyes were white saucers in her face. Finally, she froze, held, then collapsed to the ground and started to convulse, flopping as if she were a live fish frying in a pan of oil. Everyone ignored her and resumed dancing. Just as I began to think she might die, some attendants came, seized and carried her out.
George said, “That’s it, they’ll keep dancing now.” He explained that the spirit (or whatever it is) enters the chosen one and throws him or her around, until, finally, the person goes into a trance. “Soon others will be possessed and fall into a trance. The spirit might leapfrog to many, or maybe none—till dawn.”
We hung around another twenty minutes or so, watching the dancing and the houngan spitting his rum, and then we took off.
Seductive Haiti. The people are charming, the art, the colors, the energy, the music, the sounds, the history. We vowed to go back: “Keep in touch, George. We’ll see you next year!” We never did. Papa Doc took over.2
Before visiting, while there, and to this day, I hold Haitian people high in my admiration, and feel ashamed of the misguided policies the United States has had, and still has, toward Haitians and their island nation. Just fifteen years after Sam Adams and the Sons of Li-berty sparked the American Revolution and ousted the British, the black slaves in Haiti—on their Caribbean island off the southern coast of the young United States—kicked out their white plantation owners and the French (1791–1804). It wasn’t until 1862, when the Confederate states seceded from the union, that the U.S. gave diplomatic recognition to Haiti. We even occupied Haiti for decades with U.S. Marines.
Contraception is anathema to the Catholic Church, but the Curia reluctantly suggests an alternative, the rhythm method. “Catholic roulette,” Carrie called it. Sure enough, two months after we returned from Haiti, Carrie became pregnant.
The baby was due November 2 or 3, 1956, so when NYCB announced another European tour for the fall, Carrie realized she would have to stay behind.
I planned to leave the tour at the end of October, to be in New York in time for the birth. The tour was brutal and exhausting. Tanny, Diana Adams, and Melissa Hayden were my partners in practically every ballet in the repertoire. At the end of October, on closing night in Cologne, Germany, Tanny and I danced two ballets together (Concerto Barocco and Western Symphony). Thin, tired, and both suffering from bronchitis, we coughed in the dressing rooms, the wings, and onstage in each other’s faces, trying our best to muffle the hacking sounds—until the bows. While our heads were lowered, we could take the opportunity to let loose bellowing coughs. The American consulate gave an after-performance party, but my flight to New York City was early in the morning, so I gave Tanny a hug onstage, and said goodbye. I was never to embrace her again while she was standing.
In the morning, the company flew to their next engagement, Copenhagen, and within a few days Tanny collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, where she went into a coma and woke up in an iron lung. Polio. After Copenhagen, the company went on to Stockholm to finish the tour. Balanchine, his aplomb shredded, abandoned all responsibilities, and spent every moment tending Tanny. They would remain in Denmark for months.
Dr. Mel Kiddon giving Patricia Wilde her polio shot, with Diana Adams and Melissa Hayden waiting for theirs, 1956. Tanny LeClercq protested, “I hate shots! They make me sick. I’ll get mine when I come back.” (image credit 9.1)
When I saw Balanchine later in New York, he confessed to me, “She was in this place, iron lung, to make her breathe. She told me, ‘Stop smoking,