May 152011
On the cusp of age 50, he decided to hang up his ballet shoes. It was 1984, Balanchine had been dead a year, and D’Amboise was waiting in the wings to perform with Farrell. “I didn’t want to go onstage — the first time since I was 8,” he recalled. “So I said, ‘Mr. B., this is for you.’ Afterwards we bowed, I went upstairs and threw my shoes in the wastebasket.”
