Submitted by WonderWmn212 t3_11du0bn in todayilearned
Another slice of history that would make a great movie!
The Salk vaccine first became available in 1955 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
Except for the whole grooming a preteen/teen then marrying her…
And children in schools were lined up to get it.
According to The Master's Muse by Varley O'Connor (albeit a novelization of Le Clercq's life), "[t]here wasn't enough vaccine in 1956. Only the youngest dancers in the company" were innoculated before they went abroad on their 10-week European tour beginning in August 1956. After Le Clerq contracted polio and was confined to an iron lung in a hospital in Copenhagen on November 1, 1956 (which made international news), the American Embassy arranged to fly in enough of the vaccine for 50 dancers and they all returned healthy to New York at the end of the tour on November 12, 1956.
Why do you say this? She was 23 when they got married. Is there evidence that he "groomed" her or are you just talking out your ass for fake internet points?
If there is evidence, ignore that last talking out your ass part...
He met her when she was 12 and was her teacher. Had authority over her all those years then married her.
Balanchine was truly one of the greatest. Seeing a performance of his work was one of the highlights of my life.
He was 37 when he began teaching her. It's not a far reach to make that assumption. Also, with the exception of his first wife, he was much older than his other 3 wives.
There is a documentary biography from 2013 called Afternoon of a Faun (no clue if this is still available), directed by Nancy Buirski.
pretty much. he was just waiting for her to get "grown" on paper before he officially started fucking her. IMO it is kind of sinister lurking around in the shadows until someone gets legal on paper or grows tits. Just date someone your own age and stop acting like people your own age aren't good enough for you.
I bet money he groomed her. The R Kelly of the 50s.
Kinda like how Priscilla Presley's parents' groomed her for Elvis and everyone thinks that it was true love?
nice! thanks!
Yes. Exactly like that.
OK, so assuming just as I thought.
So it's fair to just assume that someone did something horrible like that without a shred of evidence other than "well that's probably what he did." I hope you're never on a jury.
lol. The evidence is that he met her when she was 12.
Hope you’re never around preteens.
That's the great thing about cinema: perception is reality.
I wasn't the person you originally replied to and I gave context to why someone might think that. 3 red flags for a groomer.
Nothing creepy about that
Looks like he divorced her shortly after she got polio to try and marry another woman. Classy.
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WonderWmn212 OP t1_jaasmc1 wrote
Source:
When Le Clercq "was 15 and a prodigy in Balanchine’s school, he made a ballet called 'Resurgence' on her and some fellow students for a March of Dimes benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria. The music was Mozart’s String Quintet in G minor, and at the close of the plangent adagio, Balanchine, as the Threat of Polio, came onstage wearing a large black cape and enveloped her; she sank to the floor. In the final movement — a sunny allegro — she reappeared in a wheelchair, children tossed dimes, and she rose and danced again. What at the time was a simple exercise in entertaining a charity audience acquired in retrospect the weight of an omen or a hex. Balanchine, who was deeply mystical, was haunted by the notion that he had somehow brought on her fate."
I love Le Clercq's attitude: "[S]he was mystified when people told her they admired her courage. To hear her tell it, she had just gone on. In fact, just going on required a choice. She once told me it took her 10 years to decide not to commit suicide. 'And then,' she said, 'I was fine.' ... It was not, in truth, all downhill after the polio. Life after dancing wasn’t less or worse, just different. When in 1984 a documentary about Balanchine was broadcast on television, she saw clips of herself dancing. I asked if that was hard. She said no — by that time she’d been sitting longer than she’d been standing, and besides, the friends she had danced with were retired, so they weren’t dancing anymore, either."