Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

New Radio Interview with Jacques d'Amboise


Recommended Posts

Tune in to Triptone Radio [www.triptone.com] Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 11am [EST]for an interview with Jacques d'Amboise. Triptone Radio is a non commercial online radio channel celebrating art, culture and history. Find us on Facebook and Twitter: Search: Triptone Radio

Link to comment

Thanks for posting about this, 32tendu. Can you tell us when the interview took place? I'm guessing it was when d'Amboise was promoting his book, I Was a Dancer, which came out a year ago. Please let us know when there's another webcast of this interview. For those who didn't hear it this time around, here's some bits of it, mostly what I managed to scribble down as I listened and some I remember:

I stopped dancing at 50, in 1984.

Balanchine loved Pushkin but hated Cranko's Eugene Onegin - he said Cranko made a bad rearrangement of the music & didn't choreograph the music.

He was human, thank God - jealousy made him more human.

...

You can hang around great people by reading - make friends with great people. Don't let Disney tell you about everything.

Balanchine was very vague - always about the feet, never the arms... rarely. We got attuned to him - I learned where he wanted me.

Vladimir Vasiliev was the best dancer ever.

Susan (sic) Farrell came - she was talented - a little overweight, by the way - but she gave him what he needed, an instrument of dance, a goddess. She teaches now, she has a little company where she recreates - beautifully done, very elegant.

...

Clap Yo' Hands we don't do - too hard

He never worked with Darci. He told me to teach her Swan Lake. He saw her talent.

Balanchine said you cannot catch now, it's already past. After I'm gone, I don't care, it will be something else. [Characterizing Balanchine, d'Amboise repeated "I don't care" twice more.]

When I go [to watch NYCB today] I see the ghosts, [the dancers of the past in those roles]. There are some [good] dancers there, Tiler Peck, Sterling Hyltin, Maria Kowrowski, Robert Fairchild, but the master chef is not in the bakery.

The way [to dance] to watch is the way he taught, but not the same all the time, put in your own seasoning.

...

You got to read Apollo's Angels!

Dancing makes you and the audience better because you see the ideal.

It may or it may not continue. Will we lose the dream of being better?

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...