Neryssa

Thanks for the additional information, Helene! I wanted to mention that the Jacques d'Amboise autobiography, I Was A Dancer, contains details of the final days of Balanchine, and the funeral and reception, and Tanny figures into all of this, but there's a lot of text, and it is very emotional reading. (d'Amboise also works into the narrative the deaths of other acquaintances, and he clearly relates these various occurances together in his mind.) So it is a harrowing segment of the book. Not surprisingly, Le Clercq isn't at her best at the graveside. My advice is to READ THE BOOK, as it is definitely worthwhile for all the 'insider' information on life at NYCB during its golden era. I've read it and thought it quite worthwhile although I wonder if d'Amboise exaggerates the tone and manner of Le Clercq. She is depicted as rather cranky during Balanchine's illness and death but it is understandable. How did she bequeath the rights to Balanchine's ballets - anybody? I've read somewhere that she had several heirs. And what is happening with the Nancy Buirski & Ric Burns' documentary about her? IMDB says it is still in preproduction. Wow, it could be another year before it is released.

That's true about d'Amboise's writing style which loses something in the translation from his animated story-telling. What he and you write about Diana Adams' increasing stage fright and not really liking to dance rings true. She always struck me as a dancer who was a bit tense even in her movie cameos - the one with Danny Kaye in Knock on Wood but I could be imagining things there (I've only seen her on film so it's not fair of me to judge her entire career). Of course that tenseness was perfection in Agon. Robert Garis wrote in Following Balanchine: "...This time there was a new inflection [regarding Balanchine's choreography] because in Agon I saw for the first time something autobiographical in his choreography. This came fully clear to me only a year later, when the partnering in another new ballet, Episodes, reminded me forcibly of the partnering in the pas de deux in Agon. I was seeing a new kind of collaboration between men and women: an intensely careful, watchful, tender, and grave working together to achieve tense and perilous extensions and balances. From one point of view the Agon pas de deux was just another Balanchine revision of classical pas de deux, but to me it seemed to stem from and reflect, though not quite to imitate, his work with Le Clercq in physical therapy--not that the dance mimics the movements of physical therapy but that in both cases the man and woman seem required by some urgent necessity to move quietly, cautiously, with all the skill and courage they can muster, and in a mood of held-breath crisis. My sense of this connection still holds, though I've been leery about expressing so autobiographical reading of a classical pas de deux, since the dance is, of course, a major and central Balanchine ballet invention, with many other aspects to it. I can hardly remember with whom I've shared my reading, and I never received enthusiastic agreement--I do recall being heard out patiently. But it marks an important juncture in my following of Balanchine's career, because it is the first connection I ever made between Balanchine's private life and his art... But from then on my following of Balanchine's career developed this approach extensively, and later it was fully warranted by the autobiographical elements in some of the ballets he made for Farrell--Mediation, Don Quixote, and Robert Schuman's Davidbündlertänze."

Thank you for posting this. It shows how Balanchine really was there (200%) for Le Clercq. Was she really so brusque as d'amboise depicts in his memoir? Anyway, somehow I could never imagine Balanchine and Diana Adams as married. To read d'amboise's version, Balanchine would have married Adams instead of Le Clercq had Adams been available. I find this difficult to believe unless he found her more malleable. Not that I was there. The way Balanchine exercised with Tanny after the polio sounds like Robert Garis's theory that Agon was partially based on Le Clercq and Balanchine trying to solve a choreographic problem.

What a wonderful photo, pherank. Thank you for posting it.

I added the ending and re-uploaded the video:

Here is the color film version: I wonder what Massine thought about his own somewhat diminished legacy towards the end of his life?

Opps! My apologies. Allegra Kent reports an exchange with Tallchief in her book which might sum up the matter. Kent is coping with Bert issues and Tallchief tells her, "Husbands come and go. Your dancing is what's important." (From memory.) I like that quote too, dirac - and that's exactly how I remember it. However, the Greatest Muse debate (in my faulty and biased opinion) should be shelved because Balanchine was not the same man or choreographer in 1947 that he was in 1952/1957/1964/1972, etc. I like re-reading I Remember Balanchine because everybody had a different opinion. And had Diana Adams and Allegra Kent been nuptially available to Balanchine, who knows? In fact, if Balanchine had not endured Le Clercq's tragic illness (had she not contracted polio), I don't think the obsession with Farrell would have been so intense. I know it's more complicated than that but there were so many variables involved: his age, the new theater, etc. The media and people tend to focus on Farrell so I'm glad for the books that have been published recently by Barbara Bocher and Jacques D'Amboise which remind us just how obsessed Balanchine was with Le Clercq and Adams. Please forgive my rambling. N.

Thank you for mentioning it. I read it at the grocery store the other day. I was underwhelmed but I always have high expectations regarding any mention of Le Clercq. I could see where Homans was trying to go with it. Perhaps tying in the artistic presentation and public perception of catastrophic illness (the mythology of Le Clercq's polio being related in whispers by students at the School of American Ballet; the romantic depiction of death by Ravel and Balanchine in La Valse). All that we imagine in a morbid, romantic sense vs. the excruciating reality of taking care of someone... For example, Homans described her late husband's death from ALS (I think) very well. But it wasn't fair of her to imply that Balanchine immediately dumped Le Clercq after she contracted polio. How I wish writers paid more attention to such important details. I'm still wincing from the obituaries of Maria Tallchief.

I've seen the one of LeClercq and Tallchief before but in black-and-white. It is always amazing to see such photos in color. Thank you for posting them. And the poster, excuse me, the photographic print, is available at allposters.com (there is an enlarged online image to look at as well): http://www.allposter...s_i3780404_.htm Wow, thanks for the link. They also have some nice photo prints of Tanaquil LeClercq and Arthur Mitchell in Western Symphony. Who knew? P.S. Thank you for the link to the New Yorker profile - although I could have done without Croce's take on Tallchief's romantic life.

Me too. People need to be reminded of this more often.

...Balanchine's is a different case from Ashton's in that so many people who worked with him have written or talked about him, but there are still many gaps to be filled and of course some that can never be filled - we never did hear enough from Diana Adams, for example..... Thanks for the news, Ray. Taper's book is indispensable, but it began as a magazine profile and shows it. A good point about Diana Adams. I would say that what we do not know (not just personal things) could fills several volumes.

I've seen the one of LeClercq and Tallchief before but in black-and-white. It is always amazing to see such photos in color. Thank you for posting them.

I liked this too. I went to a powwow today (mostly Navajo) and I was quite grateful to be there. I love this photo of Tallchief: http://www.gettyimag...-photo/50317781

They did mention her on CBS and even showed a clip from Swan Lake. I am sad that the other networks did not mention her. I am surprised PBS did not even cite her death but instead did a profile on Jonathan Winters who was also born in 1925.

Thank you for this link but does photo no. 16 look like Tallchief? Anyway, I was shaken by the news of her death even though she lived a long and productive life. Another great Balanchine muse gone...

Didn't Balanchine choreograph Le Clercq in Cinderella in the late 1940s for television? I hope Nancy Buirski and Ric Burns are able to release their documentary earlier than later this year. I have been waiting for it all my life.

How nice. Thanks for the description.

What did this handmade fanzine about Tanny look like, rg? You are so lucky to have one of them.

um, I posted that video Did they colorize it, I wonder? ... Neryssa Aha! I wondered whether that was a coincidence of names. Thank you for posting that clip, naryssa! (Yes, it does look colorized. But maybe it's just faded. Regardless, I didn't see a previous reference to it in this thread, and I wanted to be sure all of the lurkers - this thread has now been viewed over 1,000 times! - were aware of it.) Thank you, Jack. I wonder what clips of Le Clercq the producers of the upcoming documentary on Tanaquil Le Clercq: Afternoon of a Faun will end up using but that is for another thread (I've not read a thing about the documentary yet. I hope they are really making one). Anyway, I like your comments on the corps de ballet of the New York City Ballet during the 1950s. I've read more than once that they received fan mail during those wonderful days.

um, I posted that video Did they colorize it, I wonder? Anyway, it was a revelation to see Diana Adams - and Allegra Kent. I guess she was barely 19 in this film although she looks even younger. Neryssa

I hope this has not been posted before : Balanchine & the Lost Muse: Revolution & the Making of a Choreographer by Elizabeth Kendall is listed on Amazon (Release date: July 2013) Description: Here is the first dual biography of the early lives of two key figures in Russian ballet: famed choreographer George Balanchine and his close childhood friend and extraordinary ballerina Liidia (Lidochka) Ivanova. Tracing the lives and friendship of these two dancers from years just before the 1917 Russian Revolution to Balanchine's escape from Russia in 1924, Elizabeth Kendall's Balanchine & the Lost Muse sheds new light on a crucial flash point in the history of ballet. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Kendall weaves a fascinating tale about this decisive period in the life of the man who would become the most influential choreographer in modern ballet. Abandoned by his mother at the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy in 1913 at the age of nine, Balanchine spent his formative years studying dance in Russia's tumultuous capital city. It was there, as he struggled to support himself while studying and performing, that Balanchine met Ivanova. A talented and bold dancer who grew close to the Bolshevik elite in her adolescent years, Ivanova was a source of great inspiration to Balanchine--both during their youth together, and later in his life, after her mysterious death just days before they had planned to leave Russia together in 1924. Kendall shows that although Balanchine would have a great number of muses, many of them lovers, the dark beauty of his dear friend Lidochka would inspire much of his work for years to come. Part biography and part cultural history, Balanchine & the Lost Muse presents a sweeping account of the heyday of modern ballet and the culture behind the unmoored ideals, futuristic visions, and human decadence that characterized the Russian Revolution.

I know I would pay to have a copy of this ballet on DVD. Shouldn't most of this footage be digitized and restored too?! btw, can anybody name some of the corps members from the NYC Ballet footage? I thought I saw Joy Feldman Ludlow in the 1st movement and Ruth Sobotka in the third movement.

Thank you, Lisa - so sorry. I couldn't find the other thread on Ballet Films, Videos, etc.

How unfortunate regarding the date - don't we wish! The third movement is familiar to most but I didn't know that Diana Adams danced in "Allegro" and Melissa Hayden danced in "Adagio" - somehow I don't find Hayden as believable as the others in Western garb but I need to watch it again when I have the time.

OMG, I have never seen the entire clip! How wonderful. http://www.ina.fr/vi...ymphony.fr.html From the article: http://dance.broadwa...s-1956-20130115 Neryssa