THE DANCE HIKER

By Alicia Anstead

From The Bangor Daily News
June 1, 1999

Jacques d'Amboise stared at a boulder halfway up the Hunt Trail on Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park. He squinted his eyes, tilted his head and considered the rock. Then, the renowned dancer hoisted himself up gracefully, rolled over the top of the boulder and stood up victoriously.

"Here! He said through a big, toothy smile. It just had to choreograph it."

Once a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and protege of ballet master George Balanchine, d'Amboise always has choreography on his mind. Most recently, he created a short jig called rail Dance,which he taught at the foot of Katahdin last Saturday morning when he began not only his ascent to the mile-high summit but also an altruistic seven-month trek on the Appalachian Trail.

"Doing this hike to fulfill two dreams," d'Amboise said while traversing Thoreau Spring on the plateau near the top of the mountain.

The first dream is to raise at least $1 million to begin an endowment for the education of 2,000 teachers at the National Dance Institute in New York City, a school d'Amboise founded 23 years ago to prove arts have a unique power to engage and motivate young people. More than half a million children from all socioeconomic backgrounds have participated in the programs throughout New York state and in residencies across the country.

As d'Amboise travels through the 14 states along the AT, which begins at the top of Katahdin and ends at Springer Mountain in Georgia, he hopes to gather coins from children and larger contributions from adult philanthropists. He also will be selling a dance tape on the rail Dance, with proceeds going toward this project, called Step By Step.

The second dream for d'Amboise odyssey began when he was a boy growing up in Washington Heights, a gang-ridden neighborhood on the edge of Harlem in Manhattan. At age 12, d'Aboise, whose name hadn't yet been changed from Joseph Ahearn to his French-sounding stage name, heard about a man who walked the trail, and became excited about doing it himself one day.

A career in ballet interrupted the dream. At 15, d'Amboise dropped out of school to dance under Balanchine at the New York City Ballet. Just shy of 17, he was made principal dancer. Throughout his career, he tried to hike, but each time it harmed his ballet technique. So d'Amboise waited.

"The Appalachian Trail was not going to happen in those years," he said. "It was caught in an art form that would demand everything from me. I danced until I was 50, and that is when I said to myself: Can I give myself a hiking fix now?"

After retiring in 1984, d'Amboise began hiking again. For the last decade, he has hiked more than 100 miles each year, and he has hiked alone.

"You're born alone. You're going to die alone, and for some reason, you're part of this extraordinary thing called God," said d'Amboise, who was raised Catholic but has a much more pantheistic spirituality these days. "I like to go alone because it reminds me that cities and airplanes are all imposed. They are like plastic on an organism that is alive."

Now, after a MacArthur genius Fellowship, the starring role in an Oscar-winning documentary ("He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin"), a National Medal of Arts, and countless other commendations for his dancing and teaching, d'Amboise has come back to the Appalachian Trail dream. Last year, he hiked sections of the AT in Maine and Georgia to see if he could manage the hardest challenges. Meeting with success, he publicly announced plans to hike from May to December 1999 with his oldest son, George d'Amboise, who is 42 and works in retail interior design in Colorado.

Before officially beginning, d'Amboise, who will turn 65 next month, stood at the foot of Katahdin on Saturday and taught rail Dance to more than 20 hikers, including many family members who live in Maine. His niece Rebecca Sproul, a dancer in eighth grade in Gray, helped teach the moves, which involved hopping, clapping, jumping and the box step.

Because of a lifelong connection with the state, it is popularly believed here that d'Amboise was born in Maine. It's true that his parents, an Irishman from Boston and a French-Canadian spitfire, whom family members call“Tthe Boss from Quebec, met in Lewiston, but d'Amboise, the youngest of four children, was born in Massachusetts in 1934, and grew up in Manhattan.

Throughout his childhood, he visited relatives in the Lewiston and Old Orchard areas and continues to have a close relationship with his brother Patrick D'Amboise, who moved from New York to Lewiston to raise his children in Maine many years ago.

"His is a fabulous project," said Patrick, speaking from his home on Monday. "Jacques has been an inspiration all of my life."

Last week, Jacques d'Amboise stopped in Portland and Gray to teach dance classes. Then he visited Patrick, who had intended to join his brother for some of the hike but became wheelchair-bound within the last year. Jacques's tenderness for his older brother was apparent in stories he recounted throughout the hike. Indeed, his first words while walking off the Katahdin summit were, "I want to dedicate this hike to my brother Pat."

During more than 14 hours on the Hunt Trail, d'Amboise stopped to talk to nearly every passer-by. He was cheered on in his mission and particularly encouraged by other thru-hikers who hoped to see him elsewhere along the 2,160-mile stretch. His trail name, d'Amboise told new friends, would be Step By Step, the exact approach he has used in teaching dance.

At times, d'Amboise hiked silently, listening to the wilderness sounds around him or to the stories others were telling. Sometimes he would stop to rest and tell stories with a small group gathered close by. Hikers who didn't know d'Amboise was on Katahdin that day might have thought they stumbled upon a modern version of the biblical Sermon on the Mount. He told tales of Balanchine, "A glorious, caring man who thought of me as his son," of his recent appeal in Washington on behalf of the National Endowments for the arts and humanities, of the multiple operations on his knees and feet, and of his endless awe for life.

"Everything in the cosmos, everything we sense before we existed and after us, the entire universe, that is God," said d'Amboise, just minutes after he touched the rock cairn at the top of Katahdin and performed his rail Dance there.

Human beings, said d'Amboise, are the perpetrators of passion, which often translates into the arts. If it hadn't been for the arts, d'Amboise might have joined a gang, as his brother Patrick did. He might not have found an expression for his energy, passion and intelligence.

D'Amboise doesn't get stuck on the fact that his formal education ended early. Although he delights in an honorary doctorate awarded him by Bates College in Lewiston.

"I can say hello and goodbye in 20 languages," boasted d'Amboise, who has danced worldwide. "Why? Because of an education in the arts. I think children should have the arts in their lives because it's one of the great things human beings do. I'm not trying to make professionals. I'm trying to interest children in something glorious made by human beings."

D'Amboise's next philosophical topic was games. While walking, he and son George talked about the way. "Papa Jacques," always made a game out of work for George and his three siblings. Once, said George, his father was building a terrace on the third floor of their Manhattan home. He enlisted George, who was about 7, and his friends to carry the bricks up the stairs by making a game out of it.

"He got all the bricks up in one day!" said Jacques as he headed down the mountain, as he feared because of the impact to overworked knees.

"The Step By Step hike," he said, "qualifies as a game."

"It's a contest," said d'Amboise and paused to adjust his hiking poles. "Of a physical nature with the environment. If you can think of a play instead of a chore, it's a miracle. Going down this hill, we have to think of it as being a game, or it's a horror."

The trip was, in fact, one that could have easily transformed into a horror. D'Amboise had bronchitis. He got a late start, leaving Katahdin Stream Campground at 9 a.m. and returning around 11:15 p.m. He ate little more than a candy bar and an apple, plus lots of water, while hiking. Near the summit, a dangerous thunderstorm blew in, but d'Amboise could not be persuaded to stop. George had already been to the top and reported that his hair was standing up because of electricity. D'Amboise persisted and did his dance at the top in front of a Los Angeles film crew, led by director John Avildsen (Lucky and Karate Kid,) who is making a documentary of the journey.

At 4 p.m., d'Amboise turned to George and said, "And now we begin the Appalachian Trail."

And the long walk down. D'Amboise moved slowly and carefully, listening intently to George who helped with decisions about the best steps to take.

"Remember plie?" George said to his father who was inching precariously to the foot of a boulder.

"Yes, plie!" responded the elder d'Amboise, who dropped to his feet lightly, with bent knees.

Seven hours later in the dark, d'Amboise emerged from the woods. He was accompanied by George, his nephew Patrick D'Amboise Jr. (an Outward Bound instructor who lives in New Gloucester), and Rick Ste. Croix (a millworker in Millinocket and AT Club volunteer who patiently guided the expedition).

"Jacques was pushing his limits but he was fine," said Patrick, who along with the other Lewiston D'Amboises spells his name with a capital D and pronounces it DAM-BOYZ instead of DAM-BWAHZ, the French pronunciation Jacques uses.

When Jacques sat in the car for the 22-mile ride to Roaring Brook Campground on the southeast side of the mountain, he fell asleep immediately. The next morning, he was on the AT again by 10 a.m. heading south.

The next official stop is Keene, N.H. Father and son will stop to teach rail Dance to prisoners in Vermont, to media lab researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., to cadets at the United States Naval Academy in Maryland, and to the Atlantic Falcons football team in Georgia.

In the meantime, the two trekkers will venture forth each day - sometimes carrying their own gear, sometimes carrying daypacks and having the gear transported. They will stay in lean-tos and the occasional hotel.

Beginning in September, an interactive Web site set up for the project (www.ndi4all.org) will present an arts curriculum for teachers, information about the wilderness and environment, and the d'Amboise family location along the trail. D'Amboise will make weekly reports about his adventures, and hopes his tales from the Trail will inspire children to follow both the arts and their dreams.

Along the way, the d'Amboises will share the rail Dance with anyone who cares to learn it. In turn, they’ll ask the dancers to teach the moves to two other people to the tune of a rewritten Canadian logging song d'Amboise's mother once taught him, "Hey there stranger, stepping along together. Hey there stranger, stepping along with a friend."

"I think he'll make it," said Patrick senior. "He has fabulous energy. He’s going to go on forever."

Soon, if Jacques has anything to do with it, the beginning of the song will be out of date, "Yoopa, yoopa, across the mountain, follow the trail, now cross the river. Yoopa, yoopa, another mountain: 2,000 miles to go!"


Jacques D'Amboise

OTHER BIOGRAPHIES

BALLET PASSION