Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq

You just THINK I don’t write about ballet dancers here; in point of fact, I’ve written about at least a dozen and a half of them, mostly due to their connections to vaudeville or silent film. But as I’ve begun to write much more about television and TV variety, more modern figures will begin to find their way to Travalanche. And so we treat of the tragic figure of Tanaquil “Tanny” Le Clercq (1929-2000).

We chanced recently to watch the 2013 PBS doc which bears the same title as this post through the agency of my wife, the resident dance specialist in our house. I was disposed to be interested anyway, not least because Tanny was very easy to look at, but also because one of the talking heads proved to be my old boss when I briefly worked at the Alliance for the Arts, Randy Bourscheidt. Sometime in his youth after his hitch at Warhol’s Factory, Randy had been Tanny’s personal assistant, and in the film he recounts one of the half dozen anecdotes he has dined out on for the past half century: the time when he accidentally let go of her wheelchair and sent her rolling out of control down the aisle of an Italian opera house. In a Charlie Chaplin movie it would be funny, but no one ever hears the story without expressing the dismay it deserves, both as an affront to the lady’s dignity and as one of the worst workplace horror stories ever.

Why was a former ballet dancer in a wheelchair, some of you may wonder? Thereby hangs an even better though sadder tale. Le Clercq was the first cradle-to-grave Balanchine dancer. The daughter of a ballerina, she was trained in Balanchine’s style, became his first principal dancer and muse, and eventually his wife. The most astounding fact is that, very early in their professional relationship, when she was only 15 years old, Le Clercq had starred in a dance in which she played a character who gets stricken with polio (played by Balanchine himself), and becomes paralyzed. In the end, children come and throw coins at her, and she becomes revitalized. A dozen years later, Le Clercq actually did contract polio and lose the use of her legs. Thus her life was literally the plot of a ballet.

Le Clercq’s period as a dancer lasted from 1945 through 1957, and there proves to be a surprising lot of film and video footage of her in action throughout that time, generously distributed throughout the movie, along with many interviews with her contemporaries and those (like Bourscheidt) who knew her later in life. It’s a thought provoking story. She was so young (27) when she was stricken that you can’t avoid asking “what if?” On the other hand…a dancer’s professional life is short anyway. She might have danced at most another dozen years or a little more barring injury or some other mishap. Which means that she was robbed of about half of her career, though likely the best half. Le Clercq naturally had a period of deep depression afterwards but she did manage to rebound. Balanchine continued to involve her in his work, and remained married to her until 1969 (which, let’s get real, was about when he probably would have dropped her anyway for a younger dancer.) She went on to teach at the Dance Theater of Harlem from 1974 to 1982.

The unkindest cut of all? Is that the sad arc of Le Clercq’s life could have been avoided. She caught polio in Denmark when City Ballet was on tour. It was known that polio was still raging there, but the Salk vaccine was available at the time, and the rest of the company had been inoculated. For whatever reason she opted to not get the shot. Her story is literally a tragedy about an anti-vaxxer.

Coincidentally I wrote about another famous polio victim just a couple of days ago: Michael Flanders of the team of Flanders and Swann. I’m slated to write about a third victim of the disease (a certain U.S. President) in a few months. Polio is in the air, it would seem. (That’s more than just a flip witticism, I’m afraid. It is literally true. There have been numerous articles over the past several months about the disease’s recent return after many decades. As if we needed more bad news! Read about that here. )