Mozartiana is transportable. This fact has been proven in London, Copenhagen, and Paris. It is not so much that it was physically performed elsewhere or that it was received with reckless committed enthusiasm, but that the most profound and elusive moments on our long, wild, and eventful six-week tour were those that have been witnessed by New York audiences since the ballet’s creation.

Individuals, however, experienced vast changes in dancing, in emotions, in body, in health, and in joy. We lost and gained weight, drank schnapps and beer, and got drunk as we have never got drunk before. We danced better than ever as a company, though individually we had days of pain, fever, discomfort, and bad performances. New York friends and lovers were made and left in their respective countries, but each joy and despair was brought home to the arms and ears of those well-known and ever-present. We ended the tour with a sense of enormous intimacy, nearing conspiracy, amongst ourselves. We nursed, listened to, and encouraged each other, laughed at each other, partied, discoed, and shared all food, clothes, money, and knowledge with each other. And in the midst of this huge, mesmerizing soap opera was Peter Martins. He was in the wings, at the barre, in the administrative office, talking, listening, helping, and advising individuals. He was as available and approachable as any one man could be.

The purpose of our tour was to bring Balanchine back to Europe, to the places where he began. The exquisiteness of Mozartiana, Davidsbündlertänze, and Divertimento No. 15 was a relentless reminder of our mission, and not once did we fail to rise to its requirements. This tour was an endurance test, and we emerged tired, pale, coughing, and full of the pride of those who have lived and performed beyond their previous capacities. We have, like our European audiences, emerged from this six-week marathon filled with conviction and spiritual nourishment –- they from seeing the ballets and we from performing them. Right up to closing night in Paris with Divertimento No. 15, Glass Pieces, and Symphony in C, we demonstrated, like all good apostles, total devotion to our mission, though Marika Molnar, our therapist, doctor, friend, masseuse, nurse, and psychoanalyst, saw no possible explanation for our physical stamina. Through her own sniffles, she said she didn’t “know how this company does it,” and we would laugh, blow our noses, and proceed with the performance. We were heroes and heroines to the audience, but more importantly, to each other.

August 19
The flight to London was long. There were no seat assignments on the 747, and we were allocated the back two sections of the plane. In these areas, bodies were propped in odd positions on top of one another, sprawled over four seats, and sitting on the arms of the seats. Most of us promenaded, stretched, talked, laughed, and even danced a little.

August 21
We reconvened at noon for class. The backstage of Covent Garden is glorious. Under major construction during our last visit, it is now complete and smells of fresh paint, polished wood, and newly laid carpeting. The main rehearsal studio is bright, mirrored, and completely enormous –- even bigger than our Main Hall at the State Theater. In the course of our stay, many visitors watched class –- Ninette de Valois, Merle Park, and Dame Alicia Markova –- and all sat in dignified amusement before the outrageously clad display, for we hit the Dance Center and Freed’s ballet shops within hours and sported their latest styles in violent disarray.

In London our hair is turning red. We have to do it; we are so bland, so pale, and so conventional beside the London punks. We have found dyes, sprays, and glitters that promised only semi-permanency; they are semi-correct. The punks are everywhere, and they are amazing –- true artists with their heads. Mohawks, baldness, wiring, curling, peaks, cones, twisting, and phenomenal psychedelic colors bedeck their heads. We even have a dresser who is punk, and her services have already been requested for after-performance hairdos.

We opened tonight with Divertimento No. 15, Glass Pieces, and Symphony in C. We danced wonderfully, the audience was recklessly responsive, and it was glorious.

August 23
The program tonight: Mozartiana, Piano Pieces, and Symphony in Three Movements. Who said the English were polite, reserved, and restrained? The audience was wild.

As I left by the stage door, a lovely young English girl asked for an autograph and said in her crisp Queen’s English, “It was really beautiful, just beautiful.”

August 24
The reviews are in from the ten or so major English papers –- all different, all detailed, all full of praise and gratitude and warmth. The connoisseurs of the Royal Ballet are ecstatic over our fast, lean American style.

August 27
It is Robert Irving’s birthday. The performance of Agon (with a Farrell-Martins pas de deux of shattering intensity), Ballade, Concertino, and Gershwin Concerto ended with a surprise onstage tribute. John Taras said a few words of appreciation to the audience and the baffled, blushing Robert. An enormous blue and white cake was wheeled to center stage. Those of us not in Gershwin came onstage in evening clothes, and audience and dancers alike sang to and applauded our great conductor.

August 30
We received royalty tonight at Covent Garden, and they in turn received us at a magnificently elegant gathering after the performance in the Crush Bar (aptly named) of the theater. The program was Divertimento No. 15, Davidsbündlertänze and Piano Concerto No. 2, a Balanchine marathon worthy of royalty. With our men in black-tie and our women in black silk chiffon, diamonds, and furs, offstage we easily rivaled our glamour onstage. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were present, and a speech of gratitude, praise, and celebration was made before we devoured the gorgeous buffet of prawns, salmon, roast beef, ham, chicken, and matchstick-thin green beans. Cheeses and breads preceded the fresh pineapple and fresh whipped cream that lay in silver buckets that were decadent in their depth and breadth.

September 4
Closing night at Covent Garden was a moving stage experience, though we were not moving, and there was no music. We stood, all fifty-two of us, in Bizet costumes, while the audience stood applauding us for a very, very long time. This was not an ovation, but an historic tribute, Lincoln Kirstein, Jerome Robbins, John Taras, and Peter Martins (still in costume) stood just before us. A presentation was made of a 1929 program of the last performance of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at Covent Garden, in which Mr. B. played the Showman in Petroushka. Covent Garden thanked us, we thanked them, and the orchestra played The Star-Spangled Banner and God Save the Queen. The house lights slowly lit as the huge gold and red velvet curtain was lowered, and we saw clearly our beloved British audience standing in silence before us and before Balanchine. Two nations of dancers, founders, leaders, and audience stood in immobile reverence before the man who brought us all together: Mr. B.

After a one and a half hour flight, we landed on the runway at Copenhagen airport just before a large, blurred crowd of red, black, and white. It was forty-eight boys in complete Tivoli Guard costume, black boots, white trousers, red army jackets with gold double-breasted buttons, and busbies upon their tiny heads. With utmost seriousness they played The Stars and Stripes Forever and the Danish anthem. Though girls thanked them, nuzzled them, and posed with them for photos, not one broke into a smile, but proceeded with military discipline on his job –- totally adorable and totally charming.

September 6
We open at Tivoli tonight. The stage is tiny and more like a trampoline than a resilient floor, the wings are nonexistent, and we are ill with flu and fever. The odds are so against us individually that as a whole our spirits are high. Outside it rains. “Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen,” we chant.

We opened with Serenade, Duo Concertant (which received a show-stopping ovation when the curtain was first raised), Ballade, and Symphony in C. It took our greatest skill yet to exit into a wing and not fall into a four-foot pit or else crash into a cement wall.

In the two weeks at Tivoli, we shall use a quarter as many toe shoes as in the other two cities, for their hardness receives no resistance from the soft floor. At the end of Bizet there was tumultuous applause, and two little Tivoli guards marched onstage with an enormous basket of roses and wild flowers.

September 10
In today’s matinee we all crowded into the wings for Duo Concertant. Peter and Suzanne [Farrell] were strong and gentle with one another. We, ill and full of complaints, are subdued by Suzanne’s fearless joy and Peter’s self-effacing nobility. They held back nothing. Afterwards we all moved silently and tearfully to our dressing rooms to prepare for Bizet –- saddened and inspired.

September 11
There is no more pink ribbon for our shoes, and ribbon has become a much coveted item. In Serenade last night I took a flying jump downstage, slipped, and barely saved myself from landing on a player in the pit. Gershwin Concerto witnessed numerous collisions, and the house lights came on during the second movement. In Agon Maria [Calegari] was up in arabesque and then fell down flat and spread-eagled with an enormously resounding bang. Unhurt, she grinned as she turned her back to the audience, and when finally offstage, she grinned again, “What the hell happened?” As usual at Tivoli, the stage had puckered and formed large rolls of grey linoleum –- waves of disaster to us all.

September 16
This is our last day at Tivoli Amusement Park. It is also closing day for Tivoli. Outside our dressing room windows, we see the ferris wheel, the roller coaster, the plate-breaking counter, cotton candy, pommes frites, hot dogs, and happy winners carrying fuzzy stuffed animals as their trophies. Underneath the theater lies the great hall of fruit machines, where young boys and old ladies spend hour after hour exercising their skill. In the midst of the fun and games, we are dancing to Tschaikovsky, Mozart, and Stravinsky. The shrieks of terror from the Flying Carpet and shrieks of evil glee from the shooting gallery mingle with our piano music. Whilst adults and children pay eight kroner for three minutes of fear and gambling, we continue our warm-up tendus at an even pace. Tivoli’s greatest amusement requires many more kroner, a calm body, and silent vocal cords. For in the center of all this disorder and good times, we dance on the small bouncy stage of the Concert Hall. Here real chances are taken, gambling is essential, prizes are immaterial, and the show takes place, quietly and unheralded, but by the ceremony of performance and applause.

September 19
We closed at Tivoli last night with Serenade, Dances at a Gathering, and Symphony in C. While we were standing in our tutus and tights before a tremendous ovation, eight little Tivoli Guards marched onstage as on our first night here. They carried trays of fluted glasses filled with champagne. In the front row leading the ovation was Denmark’s queen, Margrethe II. Thus we proceeded for twenty minutes of applause and cheering, drinking champagne and receiving refills in public, in costume. This is a first in my memory. It was glorious to see Suzanne and Peter, champagne in hand, leading us forward time after time for the bows.

September 20
With virtually no time at all to visit our hotels, change our clothes, speak French, or view Notre Dame, we reconvened at 6:30 P.M. last night for a party.

We took an hour-long bus ride to the gorgeous Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, a small Versailles with moat, cobblestone passages, great staircases, and perfectly symmetrical formal gardens with fountains. Here we mingled with the chicest Parisian society and dined on Dom Perignon, Château la Cardonne 1980, pâtés, Poulet aux Morilles, salade, fromages, and Symphonie aux Trois Chocolates.

Halfway through the second course, Peter discovered that we were running low on the wine. He galloped swiftly about in his tuxedo, procuring full bottles for us. When he suggested to the host that some of the dancers were having to restrain themselves, he opened his private cellar for us and produced more wine and more champagne for dessert. We know now that we can trust Peter without question to care for us.

September 21
Hommage à Balanchine is the title of our festival in Paris. We opened tonight with Divertimento No. 15, Glass Pieces, and Symphony in C. Robbins’s Glass Pieces, here as in London, was a major hit, with audience and press alike applauding its cool elegance, graph paper backdrop, and wonderful music.

Again, last night, we found ourselves attending a party. Shall they never stop? We are relentlessly forced to have a good time and assume our parts with forthright vigor.

September 22
At 11:30 this morning, Peter, John, Jerry, and a few of us who chose to miss class gathered in the splendid galleries of the Hôtel de Ville –- the offices of the mayor of Paris. The city of Paris presented to them an award for the New York City Ballet. Fifty of us stood while a speech was made and translated at appropriate intervals for those of us who did not understand the French. The most warm, animated and spontaneous section of the speech was not translated; it was an impulsive gesture directed to Peter by the female representative of the mayor, praising his charismatic and noble presence upon the stage at the Théâtre du Châtelet.

The Comtesse de Brantes was then presented with an award, for it is she who made our Paris visit possible with her perseverance, insistence, and patience. Madame la Comtesse gave a short, warm, and very emotional thanks in English. She denied that she was solely responsible and said that the award was to be shared by her Parisian friends to whom she had come saying “You must help bring my family, the New York City Ballet, to Paris.” We thanked her for bringing us to Paris, and Paris thanked her for bringing us to them.

John made a spontaneous speech in French in which he thanked Paris for her hospitality and said that from such support we will derive the inspiration to continue our work. The group then proceeded to toast the celebration with champagne –- of course -- though it was only just after noon.

September 25
Suzanne danced a melting Mozartiana during yesterday’s matinee. In the Preghiera, she was not praying, but was prayer itself, and in the ensuing pas de deux and finale, she was joy itself. Ib [Andersen] was noble, inhuman, unrestrained energy itself. Mozartiana has been danced in all three of our European cities, and in each, new little girls were trained –- English, Danish, and now French. With little coiffed hairdos and shiny satin slippers, each set has held the quality of its national training, while being loosened, quickened, and extended under David Richardson’s careful coaching.

September 29
Davidsbündlertänze was booed last night in an unprecedented, unexpected display of audience participation. Perhaps they could not bear its gorgeous sadness, but the other half of the audience bravoed and cheered so that a contest began in the audience. It had been a touching, wild, and desperate performance by Karin [von Aroldingen], Adam [Lüders] , Suzanne, Jacques [d’Amboise], Peter, Heather [Watts], Ib, and Stephanie [Saland] (who has been adored throughout Europe).

October 2
We closed in Paris tonight with Divertimento No. 15, Glass Pieces, and Symphony in C. I stood with the audience in the front of the house and joined them in cheering and applauding our company, which up until this last night overcame injury, illness, and physical obstacles to soar again and again to the music of Bizet.

Since the first week of London there has been one cry that has never ceased: “Where is a laundry? Is there a laundry?” The comment that followed a reply of upheld palms and shrugged shoulders was “I don’t have time anyway.” Six weeks on the road –- jeans and sweatshirts can last, but tights, leotards, and leg warmers have a finite lifespan before they require soap and water. It is about two hours. We demanded washing facilities more often than vitamin C and more often than massages, even more often than food. Anyone daring to enter the dressing room with a bag of clean clothes was accosted as to where he or she had been, how long it took (usually a whole day), and how many thingies that machines required. Not one hour of one day was the hotel sink empty of soaking tights and leotards. Those husbands, friends, and roommates who did not complain of brushing their teeth, shaving, and washing their hands in the tub or bidet deserve medals.

Between the performances of Mozartiana and our tights in the sink lies the entire course of our tour. The sublime requires the ridiculous. I’ve little doubt that Ib and Suzanne’s hotel basins were employed as were the rest of ours. One cannot perform ballets of spiritual beauty with dirty tights.

Three nights before closing in Paris and returning home for a week of rest, the disco floor at Regine’s (the hottest Parisian club) was teeming with wildly discoing NYCB dancers until well after 3:00 A.M. Regine’s regular clientele looked on amazed at the style, speed, and energy we put forth. But did they realize that such an extracurricular celebration was a celebration of triumph? We have endured beyond our own former limits, and we were dancing at Regine’s. Dancing remains our best expression and our most joyous enterprise. We are the underweight survivors of our original mission. We have shown Balanchine once again to Europe, and without word or explanation we have shown London, Copenhagen, and Paris that New York is where great dancing comes from.