I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [90]
Returning to the lute, Apollo plays, more refined now, and summons the muses of poetry, mime, and dance. He gives each the symbol or instrument of her art—the scroll of poetry, the mask of silence, and the lyre of music and dance. In sequence, each muse makes a presentation: “The First (Calliope) shows you what she’s written, but you don’t acknowledge—she has nothing new to tell you. You are a god, already know everything.”
The second (Polyhymnia) speaks when she should not, and Apollo admonishes her. The third (Terpsichore) finds favor: “Terpsichore pleases you, and you bless her and dance together. Sometimes you play with her, like dodge game. Then, you take her on your back for nice flying. Coda begins, and you dance like thunderstorm, and muses try to hold you back. They want you to practice, ride chariot of sun across sky, and bring sunlight, prophecy, music, and dance to the world. Now, life as boy is over. Papa says, ‘You are grown up. Come up to Olympus to be with family.’ The muses try to hold you back, but you make them bow to you, and leave them to ascend to your home.”
Lifar had Balanchine working out the choreography with him, one on one, for a year; I had Balanchine for a couple of weeks. He showed me all the steps, danced them himself, coached me a few times, played the ballerina and made me partner him, and then left me alone to rehearse in a ballet studio that was dirty, grimy, with one mirrored wall. His interest was in inventing the choreography for Agon.
Nicholas Kopeikine, the company pianist, helped me. A rotund man with a distinguished leonine head and fat, chubby fingers that flitted lightly over the keys like butterflies, he had known Balanchine from the early days with Diaghilev. In Russia, Kopeikine’s father’s company manufactured the brass buttons on the uniforms of the tsar’s soldiers. In rehearsal, Koyla, we called him, kept nodding at me, saying, “Good, good, you will be good.” Kolya was cultured and sophisticated, a soft tabby cat, gray-haired with wobbly jowls, his suit littered with cigarette ashes from the never-absent butt pointing from his lips. He took it upon himself to mentor and mother me, and I listened to everything he said. “All you have to do is copy how Balanchine dances it.” He would delight me with bits of his history: “I should have been girl. I had nine sisters. Mama, Papa didn’t know they really had ten girls. It’s just one had a peepee by mistake.” Then: “To cross the border out of Russia, I went with pigs in railroad car, on hands and knees wearing skin.”
I kept waiting for Balanchine to come around and see how I was doing, coach me more—but he was obsessed with Agon and rarely showed up and, when he did, had nothing to say. I couldn’t believe it. I’d finish the variation and knew it wasn’t good, but he wouldn’t say anything. At orchestra and, later, the dress rehearsal, Balanchine offered me no feedback.
Stravinsky showing Balanchine his completed score to Agon, 1957. Kolya seated at the piano, delighted. I had been rehearsing Apollo next door, and had rushed in to watch. (image credit 10.2)
Preview night came, a benefit for NYCB. After, people said I danced well, but I knew better, and was crushed, embarrassed, shamed. My performance had: No Stamina—I don’t believe that in the previous weeks I had danced through the demanding choreography without making a pause, a breather; No Style—poor musical phrasing, with my hands so full trying to do the steps, I had