Wounded Elephant, Prancing Pony

The novelist Yona Zeldis McDonough, whose The Four Temperaments is set in the torrid battlefield of ballet (her latest, Breaking the Bank, has an ATM as the agent of answered prayers), has a terrif interview up at the Paris Review Daily with Jacques D'Amboise, discussing his new memoir I Was a Dancer:



It?s so clear that you loved Balanchine, but in the book, you write that you loved Lincoln Kirstein more.

Because Lincoln was a total wreck, a mess, a giant dysfunctional genius of mad energies and passion. Everything you said, he feared he was wrong. He?d yell out, ?Good taste is my taste, buster, good taste is my taste.? At the same time, he?d think, I?m wrong, I couldn?t do it, I?ve picked the wrong artist, or I?m supporting the wrong person, I?m doing the wrong thing. He was so vulnerable. He was a wounded elephant, with all the power of an elephant, full of doubts and fears.

There?s a line in the memoir that I love: ?With Robbins, you were amplified; with Balanchine, you were transformed.?

I think it?s the single best line in my book. And I think it came from a conversation. I was talking with Kay Gaynor and other people about trying to describe what Robbins did and what Balanchine did. One was the transformation of what you already were, and the other was what you didn?t realize you were capable of being. Jerry took what you are, watched you, studied you, and then amplified it and used it. Balanchine looked, and said, ?Oh, very beautiful girl, very nice?I bet she could move faster. Maybe she could be a pony. Maybe I?ll do a ballet about ponies.?



I thought all of his ballets were about ponies!?! Such is the innocence with which I meet each day anew.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/03/wounded-elephant-prancing-pony.html

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