July 28, 2020 - The happiest of birthdays to wonderful Jacques d’Amboise, eighty-six today, a constant source of charm, enthusiasm, and communicative glee. When I took the “New York Times” job in 2007, Jacques - director of the National Dance Institute - was one of the many leading figures in dance I tried not to mix with.
I didn’t stand a chance. At the first NDI performance I attended in 2007, I snuck in furtively, and sat where I thought nobody would find me. Jacques, however, knew I was there somewhere, and despite having painful knees came charging down a flight of stairs saying “Where’s Mr England? I have to tell him about Freddie Ashton!”
And we were off, with me losing my heart immediately to this man whom Ashton had singled out at age seventeen (yes, 17!) to partner Diana Adams in the leading roles of his new ballet, “Picnic at Tintagel” (1952) before I was born and before Balanchine or anybody else had created a role for him. Over the next twelve years, I met Jacques for the occasional lunch: he would tell me about how badly Balanchine behaved to Ashton, how he, Jacques, always visited Ashton in London in subsequent years, about having been slated to dance the original cast of Robbins’s “Afternoon of a Faun” (1953) (“Jerry took so long to make a ballet, and I was a young man in a hurry - I went to Mr Balanchine to let me change the rehearsal schedule”), about the revelation of how Balanchine spoke of the role of Apollo as with no role he created for Jacques, and much more. I’m especially proud that I brought him to speak at the filmed 2018 New York Public Library seminar on “Apollo”, where, with marvellous generosity over two afternoons, he interacted with Edward Villella and Ib Andersen (two of Balanchine’s later Apollos), Suki Schorer, Kay Mazzo, Kyra Nichols, and other Balanchine alumni.
“A wild boy made civilised by art” is how Balanchine told Jacques he saw the title role of “Apollo”; Jacques - who always felt that was his own autobiography - has never ceased to be grateful to the choreographer who changed his life and introduced him to the civilising power of art.
I was privileged that, in 2016 and subsequent years, Jacques asked me to interview him for the Balanchine Foundation about four or more of his roles - Apollo, El Capitán in “Stars and Stripes”, the “Tschaikovsky pas de deux”, and “Who Cares?” A great treat for me. The photograph above is from our “Who Cares?” Interview, which I happily watched for the first time today. The “Apollo” one is yet better. All on YouTube!
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