ANOTHER STORY: ADVENTURES WITH THE NYCB (Chapter 20)

         This episode centers on the trip to the Soviet Union, by the NYCB...many years ago, of course.   I remember Mr. Balanchine asking me if I would like to go on this tour, and I said...."oh yes, of course I would."  And then he said, "why is that, deeeer?"  I tried to explain that I had never been to Russia and wanted to see that country (actually I had never been to Europe at that time).   He stood there looking at me with a bemused expression on his face.  He loved to question a person with the object (I thought) of making one uncomfortable.  But actually I learned that he REALLY WAS curious about what made someone 'tick.'  I waited for him to tell me I could NOT go, when he said "well, I think you should come and play one of the performances of RUBIES."  (I will relate the details of THAT performance later.)  I was absolutely delighted to be going....it was my first year in the company and everything was new....including many of the ballets and the music.  I found out which ballets would be taken, and began practicing the scores at home, so I would know them well.  And, of course, I began to practice the score of CAPRICCIO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA, (Rubies) by Stravinsky again.  I had performed it several times in the State Theater, and had Mr. B's blessing for my efforts.  
        Since we would be traveling to several locales in Russia and performing in the largest theaters there, I began researching these cities.  The first place would be Kiev, in the Ukraine.  We would also visit Leningrad, Tblisi, and Moscow plus two cities in Poland: Lodz and Warsaw.    I also began the process of selecting clothes for this trip, as I knew it would be quite cold and only become colder, especially after 6 weeks.  We had many lectures from various people advising us on what to bring and on what NOT to bring.  (Toilet paper was strongly advised, for example).
We were allowed one small trunk, to be shared by two people.  My partner in this was going to be Jerry Zimmerman.   I decided that my clothing could be packed in the suitcases, plus one pair of shoes.  My long dresses, heavy fur coat and boots would be taken in the wardrobe crates-----this was offered to us.  Having heard about the food there, or rather...lack of it...Jerry and I decided to pack our trunk (foot locker actually) with many canned goods....such as tunafish, heavily pasteurized/ sterilized half and half, boxes of crackers, nuts, canned juices and fruits, and of course, toilet paper!  We also brought coffee from Zabar's and a coffee maker.  (Thank goodness we did, as the coffee in the Soviet Union was hideous!)  I wasn't interested in bringing wine or any kind of liquor....although many did.  I remember buying cans of tomato juice, orange juice, grapefruits and juice, dried fruits....and when I came to the checkout stand, I was asked if I were planning a trip to Russia!  The person thought he was making a joke, but when I answered..."why yes, how did you know?" he looked at me with a stunned expression.  Hmmm.  Our preparedness was very fortuitous indeed.  I never could have foreseen that I would literally LIVE on tuna fish, hard-boiled eggs I purchased in the canteens, and crackers!  As far as music scores were concerned, I brought all of those with me in my carry-on luggage.  I would be able to do without some clothing, but NOT without the music!  (That has always been my motto:  Music with me, and clothes in the suitcases.)  Plus I also brought my hot plate, hair dryer, cups and plates, utensils, and electricity converter.  Jerry and I talked every night on the phone after rehearsals, to go over our combined lists.  I don't think anyone else put as much thought into food as we did, and was I glad we had.  (While we were there, our trunk of food became the envy of many people...well, they hadn't thought enough about their choices, had they?  I remember one of the conductors (Hugo) coming to my room to ask me if he could purchase some nuts from me!  Actually he wanted to trade a bottle of scotch for a few packages of nuts!  But I didn't like scotch, and I DID like nuts, so I very politely refused the trade.  (He wanted several boxes of nuts, and there was no way I was going to do that, although I did give him one box, I think.  But I told Jerry, that was the end of that.  We weren't a store!   He agreed totally).  By the time we finished packing our trunk it was VERY HEAVY!  But no worries.....we didn't have to carry it.  (One of the perks of traveling with a ballet company was the luggage was all handled by porters, etc.  One had only to get it to the place of departure....the buses carrying us to the airport, and from that point on, you didn't have to worry about it until arrival at your destination.  I have toured with either the NYCB, Zurich Company, or Pacific Northwest Ballet since 1971....many, many years.  When traveling alone I miss the convenience and luxury of having one's luggage looked after by others.  
        I do recall the hair-raising taxi ride to the airport....for some reason we didn't go on buses, but separate cabs.  It scared me to death and I thought our lives would soon be over.  Never mind the Trans-Atlantic flight coming up!   Obviously we made it there in one piece, more or less.  To distract myself I went over the list of items we had packed in the trunk....a useless exercise, but it did occupy my mind during that horrendous ride!  We got ourselves checked in, and from this point all luggage would be handled by the airline personnel, so I decided to just relax and enjoy my Bloody Mary at the bar with the others.  The entire company and NYCB staff were on one flight, including Mr. Balanchine.  I have to say we just took over the plane, as there were so many of us.  The hapless other passengers had to put up with a few shenanigans, I'm afraid.  
        Our first port of call was KIEV in the Ukraine.  We were scheduled to be there for a week....as well as for all other cities.   I was very excited to be starting this great adventure; it was my very first tour!  Upon arrival we went through some sort of customs point, and then got on a bus.  That took forever, as I recall, so one by one the dancers got OFF THE BUS and were just milling around.  Of  course, this upset the Ukranian Officials, who came running out and told us in no uncertain terms to GET BACK ON THE BUS!  (I am sure they thought us unruly Americans.) I found the airport to be very strange looking....as if we were on another planet!  Well, in one sense we were.  Russia was a very foreign place (certainly to me).  I had my camera out and was taking some photographs, when one of the officials noticed this, and came up to me...and slapped my camera out of my hand...saying: "Nyet, Nyet".  No cameras! (in English).  I retrieved my camera (he didn't take it away from me), and put it back into my purse.  Apparently no photographs were allowed at ANY airport, or government buildings.  (Pity about that!)  
       Upon arrival at the hotel which looked quite nice actually, we all got off the bus and trudged into the hotel lobby.  They had the rooms ready (which is not always the case in European hotels) and we received our room keys in due course.  My roommate was Lynda Yourth, a solo dancer with the company.  By prearrangement, she had also brought coffee from Zabars, so we were ready.  Jerry would come to our room in the morning and have coffee with us, as he had participated in the coffee purchase.  The first thing I did was purchase much bottled water, as we had been told NOT to drink the water in that country, nor brush one's teeth with water from the tap in the bathroom sink.  So a lot of bottled water was necessary.  Several of us took a short walk outside as it was sunny, but quite chilly.  I was glad I had brought my fur coat (packed in the wardrobe containers).  But for the moment my NYCB Tour jacket sufficed.  
        We returned to the hotel and learned that dinner was being served momentarily.  Wondering what kind of food we would be served, I went into the dining room.  Hmmm.  Well, the food was nothing to write home about, but apparently this was about as good as it would get.  I remember John Taras saying to me, "better eat, Dianne.  It all goes downhill from here!" There was a rather tasteless soup with a meatball in it, which did not look very appetizing, but I managed to eat part of it.  (It was a very LARGE meatball.)  The bread and butter were very good, and the ice cream was excellent.  There was wine, (not good), and the coffee?  Well, no comment.  It was horrible!  (Thank goodness for the trunkload of food we had brought with us.)  
        I went upstairs to my room, and treated myself to a small glass of tomato juice.  Having managed to procure a bit of vodka in the dining area....added it to the juice, and voila....a BLOODY MARY!!!   Plus a few nuts to go with the after dinner drink.  Fortunately I had brought many boxes of nuts with me. 
        So we had arrived safely, eaten and now were ready to sleep.  (A note about the beds:  they were much like cots, and very hard....not comfortable at all.)  There was an orchestra rehearsal the next morning, plus ballet rehearsals somewhere.  I forgot to mention the ladies on every floor, who 'presided' over the room keys...and the rooms.  So every time you left, you gave her your room key, and then upon return, asked her for it!  This was every SINGLE time!  What a rigamarole!  But that was the way it was, and one had better follow the rules....I could see that. 
       The remainder of the week passed uneventfully, more or less.  The usual dust-ups, casting problems, etc.  (A word about the bathrooms:  not a good situation, I'm afraid.  I understood why toilet paper was SO important.  The T.P. was not useable.  It resembled waxed paper, if you can imagine!  And the bathrooms were just awful!  Something like two footprints and a hole.  Ugh....even now when I get a feeling of disgust when I recall them.  I wondered why the theaters and studios didn't have more modern facilities.....seemed very strange.) The performances all went very well...so far so good.  I didn't play with the orchestra in Kiev...my first performance would be in Moscow.  But of course, I played class and rehearsals. 
        The next stop was Leningrad, I believe....(although I could be wrong about the order).  Now this was such an historic city....and I was looking forward to our proposed tour of the Winter Palace and other places of interest.  Our hotel there was quite all right, and the beds were better.  Same little ladies on every floor of the hotel, apparently this was par for the course.  
Upon arrival at the Kirov School, we found the studios had 'raked' floors.  This was to prepare dancers to perform on the raked stages of the Maryinski Theater.  (It means that the floors are slanted....highest point in back slanting DOWN to the lowest point in front.) Many of the dancers were finding it quite challenging to do pirouettes on these floors.  (Balance is very different...and difficult to negotiate).  So there were a great deal of pirouette combinations, and practicing of turns.  I have to say that the pianos were really excellent everywhere I played.... either Steinways, Bosendorfers. or Petrovs.   That was VERY nice for a change.  Dinner (food was a huge focal point) was much the same type of food....the same veggies, salad, and some kind of 'mystery' meat!  (That was our term for it.)  I ate mostly salad and bread, plus ice cream again.  The 'mystery' meat was not appetizing at all.  
       A word about the planes that carried us from city to city within the country:  they were all small and very OLD!  (I wondered if they were left over from WW II).  Anyway, several planes were needed to transport the entire company. I remember Violette and Melissa reading Thanksgiving recipes to the people on their respective planes.  Thank goodness for those stalwart women....who were not afraid of anything...they were such a boost for all of us!  And they were funny as well....I remember laughing so hard at Milly's reading of a recipe.  It was hysterical!  The planes carried a few Russian passengers who emitted a peculiar odor....since deodorant was not a commodity that many possessed!  I remember John Taras (who was seated in front of me) getting out his bottle of cologne and spraying it around his area and mine (trying his best to be discreet about it!).  Then lunch arrived.  Hmmm.  The plate of food was about as dreadful looking as one could imagine.  There was a dried out piece of chicken, and an apple with a WORMHOLE in it!  I remember looking at that and wondering what was going on!   I wanted to eat the apple, so I removed the wormhole from the apple, and cut it up to make sure there was no worm in it. (I can just hear the guffaws here...but I WAS hungry.)  I shall never forget some of these experiences....which only made my appreciation of our American way of life more profound.   
       The best part of the Leningrad visit was the tour of the Winter Palace.  It was magnificent!  The artwork alone was worth the price of admission....and the rooms!  They were exquisite!  I was so in awe of the artisans who had handcrafted everything.  And the Maryinski Theater was absolutely gorgeous.  It was all done in blue velvet with gold trim.  (The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow used red and gold in that theater, and although we didn't perform there, we went to see it.)  These theaters are very well-known throughout the world, as being the home of the Kirov and Bolshoi Ballet Companies.   
         Our next stop was the city of Tblisi located in Georgia....the southern part of the country.  It was here that my good friend, Marilee, became very ill.  The doctors there could not figure out what was wrong with her...although she was taken to hospital twice.  (It turned out that she had contracted some type of parasite, ingested with food or water.  But that was only discovered back in America.)  On this particular day, she wanted to get up and walk around, so we ventured out.  We were walking in the city, and started to cross a busy street.  Not easy....the drivers seemed to be intent on running down any passenger in the crosswalk!  I remember the light turning red for us, so I literally dragged her across the street to avoid being hit.  Upon returning to the hotel, I called Barbara and informed her of Marilee's condition.  She should probably not have been up and about, but fortunately we made it back in one piece.  By the way, the doctor who had accompanied us on tour, was totally incompetent.  He was nearly senile, in my opinion, and I wondered WHY he had been allowed to come on this tour.  He had brought only aspirins with him, if you can believe that!  Anyway it was decided that Marilee was just too ill to continue on the tour, so she was sent back to NYC on the next available flight.  Poor girl, she was really scared.  I seem to remember that Eddie Villella was also returning to NYC on the same flight....not because he was ill, but he had concerts to which he had committed himself, and that was a condition to which the NYCB had agreed.  So he was only present for about half the tour.  I do remember the food in Tblisi....there was a great deal of cheese served at every meal, which was very salty.  Plus the usual salad, potatoes, carrots and cabbage again.  But no 'mystery meat' for once.  The big problem was the lack of suitable beverages.  I couldn't drink the wine, coffee was hideous, as well as tea, and water was suspect.  Plus the sodas there were virtually undrinkable.  Sometimes I drank vodka, which made me tipsy.  So when I returned to my room, I ate tuna fish, a hard-boiled egg, and crackers, plus juice.  That was dinner!  Breakfast was always Zabar's coffee, (w/half and half), and bread from the dining room. The aroma of brewing coffee wafting from our room attracted many interested parties to our door!  I didn't know what to do about that....sometimes I gave a cup of coffee to people, and sometimes I didn't.  Some gave me money for the coffee, although I had not asked.  
       Our last stop was Moscow....and since the US Embassy was located there, we were quite sure a decent meal would be afforded us at some point.  And indeed that was true!  I remember the evening we were served STEAK, MASHED POTATOES, GREEN BEANS, and CAESAR SALAD!!!  Wow!  Everyone was overjoyed!!  It has been a long time since we had eaten anything good or familiar, so you can imagine the joyous outbursts this repast produced. We were even served red wine!  I recall being so grateful for this I almost cried.  
       I want to mention some of the performances: I was scheduled to play RUBIES (Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra) in Moscow.  My rehearsal with the orchestra had gone quite well, even though they had never played this piece.   In fact, none of the Soviet orchestras were conversant with Stravinsky's music!  I found this mystifying....apparently his music had been banned years before.  BUT this was the NYCB, and George BALANCHINE, so the ban had been lifted.  The piano had been placed toward the back of the orchestra, and the pit was HUGE.  It was important that I be able to see Robert easily, which I could in the rehearsal.  However, as it turned out, during the performance I could NOT see him, because the bass players who were all around me kept wandering around the pit.  They had been drinking and could care less if I could see or not!  I tried to communicate with a couple of them to PLEASE not stand in front of me, but to no avail.  And because the pit was so wide, it took longer for the sound to travel, so I couldn't depend on my ear.  What an experience that was!  Actually considering the difficult circumstances I did quite well.  (Robert complimented me on my coping skills).  But I was very happy when the piece finished...as you can well imagine!
        Another memorable visit comes to mind as I write this.  We three pianists had requested a visit to the famed Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music while in Moscow.  So the day came when we were taken to this well-known music establishment to see first-hand a piano lesson, lecture, and a student recital.  I was very interested in this, as I had long thought this Music Academy was the best in the world.  It did not take long for me to be disabused of this notion.  The music taught there did not go much beyond the eras of Rachmaninoff, Prokovieff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and other Russian composers.  No contemporary music, very little Ravel, Debussy or other Impressionists.  I couldn't believe it....and asked one of the pianists there who spoke English, why there was no 20th Century Music taught (remember this was 1971).  And he told me that most contemporary music was not allowed to enter the Soviet Union!  What a shock!  Hmmm.  That was the end of my fantasy about the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music!  I was so grateful for having been born in America where one could study anything, and there were no such restrictions!  I had attended one of the best Conservatories in the world...and it was then that I realized how fortunate I was!
       On one of the 'free' days, I decided to venture out by myself  into the city.  (BAD decision, I soon learned).  I was confident that I could negotiate the subway system alone, having studied the map extensively.  What I had not realized was that I would need to understand the operator's vocal commonds, such as the name of the stops.  This I could not do, so on the return, missed my stop for the hotel.  When I realized my mistake I got off the subway, but nothing looked familiar.  (Panic set in, and I tried to ask people the name of the hotel, but no one could understand me.)  Not good!  So I started walking  but didn't know where I was going.  However, luck was with me, and I meandered onto a street that led to the hotel street.  And then I FOUND the hotel....which was a block long.  (Hard to miss...if you know the name of the street).  But that was the end of my solo excursions within the city of Moscow.  I do have to say that the subways were Very Clean and Very Beautiful...with chandeliers hanging in the corridors, if you can imagine that!
       Jerry Z. and I decided to go shopping the next day....and we found some wonderful stores which only catered to foreigners like us.  I purchased several Russian lacquer boxes, little wooden toys, and a replica of the Russian Bear!  I also found gorgeous fur hats, and bought several, including one for my brother!  I still have the boxes, toys, and hats.  And while Seattle is not usually very cold, I find occasions on which to wear those hats.  
        Most of us elected to attend the Russian circus in Moscow, which was fantastic.  If you ever have a chance to see that circus, don't miss the opportunity.  I also attended SWAN LAKE and NUTCRACKER at the Bolshoi Theater.  Nutcracker is often performed throughout the year; not just at Christmas time, as in America.  I saw some incredible dancers there, and was able to attend a master class of Vaganova which (even though I am not a dancer) I enjoyed immensely.  
       We also visited Red Square, where St. Basil's is located.  This is one of the most colorful examples of architecture there.   I elected to visit many churches and cathedrals, where much of the artwork of the great masters is displayed.  I remember riding on a bus (with Jerry, I think) and NO one was talking or smiling, even a little.  These people were the most sober individuals I had ever seen.  Almost scary.  While I was in Moscow, I met a young man who spoke very good English, and he invited me to dinner!  So I accepted the invitation, and had a wonderful evening.  He asked me if I could possibly procure an American visa for him!  I suppose people think that any American should be able to do something like that.  I told him that I wasn't involved in the government, and so wouldn't be able to do such a thing.  He told me many things about life in his country, and how he wanted so much to live in the west....where things were freer.  I didn't want to discourage him, but I wondered exactly what he thought went on in America.   The Hollywood films don't exactly give an accurate portrayal of life in the USA....I tried to tell him that...but don't know if he understood me.  I often wonder what happened to him. 
        We had two more cities to visit.....Lodz and Warsaw.  (about 75 miles apart).  Many of the buildings there were very colorful...and pretty.  I remember breakfast on the first day in Warsaw:  it was Scrambled Eggs...with toast!  And they tasted so good!  Having eaten a diet of hard-boiled eggs for so long, the scrambled eggs were just divine!  And there was Coca Cola as well as coffee!   I hadn't had a soft drink in so long, that the Coca Cola was a huge treat!  I elected to drink coke over coffee that day.  While in Warsaw Jerry, Gordon and I visited Chopin's home...and I remember playing the piano in that house....(I have a photo of myself in a fur coat doing so).  I also collected a few rocks from the garden there to bring home.  I still have those little rocks; they are in one of my Russian boxes on top of my piano here.  It is unlikely that I will ever return to Russia for a visit, although one never knows.  
       Upon returning to NYC, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, thanks to my diet of hard-boiled eggs and tuna fish for 6 weeks, I had lost 25 pounds.  Now THAT is definitely something to write home about!!!