I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [89]
Our baby was late. We expected him November 2, but he popped out November 11. Carolyn’s maiden name was George, my mother’s name was Georgette, so naming our first son George was preordained. Balanchine enjoyed the thought that George had been named for him. “Very nice name,” he declared.
I was twenty-two years old and had managed to escape being drafted for the war in Korea, because they were not yet inducting married men. When China joined the war on the side of the North Koreans, and American and coalition forces were in full retreat, the draft was expanded to include married men, but not yet those with children. George saved me.
When Balanchine returned with Tanny to New York, he sought out a friend, Dr. Henry Jordan, a renowned orthopedic and hemophilia specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital. “As soon as possible, take Tanny to the treatment center in Warm Springs, Georgia. Do as much physical therapy as possible,” Jordan advised. “Little by little, she’ll recover, no one knows how much, and then her improvement will stop.” He predicted, “She has a window of about two and a half years from the onset.” Balanchine was angry: “No, she’ll get better. I’ll make her better. She’ll dance again!” He denounced Dr. Jordan and anyone who spoke otherwise. After settling Tanny at the spa in Warm Springs, Balanchine shuttled back and forth, alternately working with the doctors on Tanny’s recovery and doing his best to run his ballet company. When he later brought her back to New York, he tended her day and night, cooking for her, cleaning, bathing and massaging her, bending and stretching her legs, lifting her and inventing his own forms of physical therapy. “I would bend legs and stretch, then take her out of bed, hold up from behind with her feet on my feet, and practice walking.”
Tanny didn’t get better.3 Almost eight years passed before Balanchine would admit to himself that Dr. Jordan was right.4
Apollo
(The Apollo of Madison Square Garden)
Any idea or dream I had of a life outside the world of dance, whether as a stagehand, doctor, or archaeologist, went out the window the season I danced the ballet Apollo.
Anyone who knew anything about ballet, or music, anxiously anticipated NYCB’s fall 1957 season. Stravinsky and Balanchine would premiere the third work in a trilogy that had started with their first collaboration some thirty years before. The first installment, Apollon Musagète, premiered with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1928. The second, Orpheus, following the idea of Grecian themes, premiered at Ballet Society in 1948. And now, the summation of the trilogy, Agon, was scheduled to premiere. This season, the trilogy would be complete, and the three ballets would be performed together for the first time.
Apollo blesses Terpsichore (Allegra Kent), the muse of music and dance, 1957 (image credit 10.1)
Balanchine said Apollo was the turning point in his life as a choreographer. It was the first time he and Stravinsky collaborated on an original score. Balanchine was twenty-three when he began choreographing Apollo for the reigning star of Diaghilev’s company, Serge Lifar. “I worked with him for a year before the premiere!” Balanchine told me.
Apollo had become legendary; every male dancer wanted to star in it. When I was twenty-three, Balanchine revived it for me. It would be the turning point in my life as a dancer. Years before, Balanchine had summed up his Apollo with one sentence: “A wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art.” Now as we rehearsed, he described a story to each step.
“You are born, already grown up. But you are baby, know nothing, and have tantrums. To calm you down, handmaidens bring you music,