New Year's Day

I love ballet and New Year’s Day seemed perfect day for watching a new DVD that I bought, so that’s what I did.  I’m always a bit retrospective on the first day of a new year anyway, so it fit my mood. 

I grew up dancing, which is understandable since my mother was a dancer and ran a ballet school for much of my youth.   Watching the ballet always take me back to those star-struck days when we’d go to the theater to see the New York City Ballet or, on one spectacular occasion, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.  It was the equivalent of a Taylor Swift concert today, except we all sat down and applauded politely.   Anyway, as befitting a 13-year old who was besotted with all things dancing, my idols were dancers, my friends were dancers and practically everything we did revolved around the ballet.

 I don’t recall exactly how it came about but my best friend Margie and I were allowed to work as ushers at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles for a New York City Ballet performance, probably around 1956.  Of course we knew the dancers and ballets by heart so it was nothing new to us but the best part was that it allowed us backstage access.  I hounded one of the principal dancers, Jacques d’Amboise, so unmercifully that he finally signed my program “To Carol, Love Jacques” just to get rid of me.  Margie fixated on Tanaquil LeClercq until the poor creature relented and gave her an old pair of her toe shoes.

For anyone curious, the dancers in the blip are Patrick Bissell and Martine Van Hamel, both extraordinarily talented dancers, exceptional actually.    The ballet is the pas de deux from Sylvia by George Balanchine filmed in 1984 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Nearly 70 now, Ms. Van Hamel teaches and occasionally performs character roles with the American Ballet Theater.   Patrick Bissell died in 1988, a tragic loss to the world of ballet.

And so I don’t end up on a down note, one of these blips I’ll amuse you with the story of how my mother roped me into doing a tap dance with her to “Bicycle Built For Two” for my aunt’s annual Woman’s club dinner in 1958.