| the original state magazine
My Secret Place
By Jacques D'Amboise, as told to Devon Jackson
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I was born and raised in the Northeast. When I was 16, I drove cross-country, and when I drove through New Mexico and Arizona, I thought to myself, “I’d never want to live here. Water’s so scarce.”
Now I’ve made a complete flip. The high-desert country is one of the most beautiful in the world. It must be the changing quality of the light, too—the way it falls on the topography of the land.
I came out here shortly after I won a MacArthur grant in 1990. I figured I’d take some time off and go hiking in Colorado. My wife [Carolyn] told me she’d meet up with me in the Four Corners. We ended up meeting in Santa Fe, then decided we’d buy a house and live here during September—and I’d just relax that one month. Well, while signing the papers, the manager asked what I did. I told him about NDI [the National Dance Institute, which d’Amboise founded in 1976], and he asked if I’d set up a program in Santa Fe. I said, “Why not?” The next year we took the elementary schools of Acequia Madre and Alvord and put on a program. It was so successful that, instead of coming out here and taking a vacation, I’d come out and work with a different school each year. That’s sort of how NDI got started here in New Mexico. Now it’s a model.
Whenever I come out now, my favorite place to go is my daughter’s class at the Río Grande School in Santa Fe. Catherine teaches a preschool class at Río Grande called Pequeños. There are about 15 children in there, all five-year-olds, and she gets them all day long. I go hiking, I go to restaurants, I read, and visit my grandchildren, but I always make a point of visiting Catherine’s class. That’s my privilege: I can go anytime, I don’t have to be five, I don’t pay tuition—I can just go in there and watch these wonderful children.
You have to imagine—that room is so small. The children are all busy playing games. I lie down on the floor so I’m at their height, and it is a trip. There’s so much fun. The last time I went, they made pasta. So they read all about Marco Polo, they sang songs in Italian. Another time, she had them study Jackson Pollock, and they made their own painting and then sold it at an auction.
The first time I went was a couple years ago, after hearing my daughter chortle with delight about the adventures of her day. On that first visit she asked me to tell them a story. So I told them about where the symbol and the sound and the concept of zero came from. And then I gave them an assignment: to come up with their own symbol and sound of zero. When I went back, their invention was mind-boggling.
Children are everything, and my daughter is one of the great creative, inventive beings. She is so inventive. That’s why my secret place is my Pequeño fix. Every time I walk out, I feel hopeful. I feel well fed—by joy and by hope. I’m joy- and hope-glutted.
Dancer and choreographer Jacques d’Amboise is now busy raising money for a high-tech, globally interactive arts and culture center in New York City. For info: www.nationaldance.org