Hi, my name is Tanaquil Elizabeth and I was named after Tanaquil Elizabeth Le Clercq. She was my second cousin on my mother's side. I would love to hear more about my second cousin and I have been research on her. She was paralyzed by strictly polio in 1956 I believe. I know she was married to George Balachine, choregrapher of New York City Ballet on New Year's Eve. I was told she passed away on New Year's Eve 2000. She gave me a book long time ago when I was a kid but I never get to meet her in person. And I still have it, her book will pass along to my granddaughter when she get older. If you happens to know about my cousin, please let me know.

Thank you,
Tanny

Welcome to BalletTalk, Tanny.

You can use the board's search feature to find posts on various BalletTalk threads. Some are here.

Another search, where I deliberately misspelled her name "Leclerq," yielded 182 hits, here.

I imagine much of this is not new to you. I hope you will feel free to correct any errors you find.

YouTube has a single clip of her dancing. She is shown with Jacques d'Amboise in the role she created in Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun. Here.

I don't know anyone who isn't deeply moved by her tragic illness.

She was also a crossword puzzle constructor for The New York Times, and I particularly remember one of her puzzles which used a symbol instead of letters in the solution. Very creative!

Tanny,

I think she was beautiful and her role in the art of ballet is significant.
Tragic, too. The photos of her prior to her illness are stunning.

Hi, I like to know, have you met her in person?

Sadly, no. Only in photographs.

Thank you so much for giving me all the information on my beautiful second cousin, Tanaquil Le Clercq. I wish I have her photos, all I got was a book called "Mourka" with George Balachine in it. I didn't know she does crossword puzzle constructor for the New York Times, do you have it? I would like to have a copy of it. I really like to get some more information from people who knew Tanaquil very well. Please do write me. Thank you so much. Your best regards, Tanaquil.

So, you have photographs of her, can I have copies?

Tanny, if you look up Le Clercq on Google/Images, you'll find quite a few wonderful photos.

Similarly, a Google text search of her name should turn up a surprising amount of material and leads to other sources. Skhe is referred to constantly in material about Balanchine, the New York City Ballet in her day, and memoirs of the period.

You can also try Ballet Talk's "Search" option. There's a button at the top of this page. Click it. Then click "More Search Options," which will take to another page. The choice "All Forums" should be highlighted. Type in "clercq" and see what turns up. I found four long pages of posts going back to 2001.

Good luck in your searching.

Hi Tanny! My husband recently purchased for me Tanaquil Le Clercq's The Ballet Cook Book. This book is long out of print and was on my "wished for but highly unlikely" acquire list. He found it Amazon.com for $25. The book was owned by a public library.
If you get a chance I highly recommend this book! Besides the many interesting recipes from various ballet stars is Tanny's
witty, sparkling writing inbetween. She also includes several photos of herself as a young child.

I spoke with Tanny at NYCB many times, also during performances at the Met when the Kirov visited. My best friend got Tanny (and her friend) tickets to see The Lion King, a b'way show she said she wanted very much to see. Heard that she loved it.

At NYCB this season, there is a most beautiful picture of Tanny in Nutcracker, the Dewdrop role. I saw it while I was at the theater last night. She certainly was gorgeous and very photogenic.

No. It was from the 1970s or '80s. I ran a search on Amazon.com (results here) and within them was one of Le Clercq's puzzles, here. If you sign in, you can go to the puzzle on pg. 62.

While I am here, let me add that this board has a strict policy forbidding trading of videos. While trading photos is not explicitly banned, if they are items of value, the same principle would apply. I can only second bart's suggestion that you run an image search on your cousin's name.

A good place to start in your search about your cousin is to read the new biography of Jerome Robbins, "Somewhere." Robbins and LeClercq had a long relationship and their correspondence is maybe the best thing about "Somewhere." LeClercq comes across as sharp-tongued, witty, a very strong personality.

Thank you Bart.

Hi, I am glad your husband got your wish for Tanaquil's cook book. I knew she wrote cookbook but I'm glad you mentioned the title. I want to thank you very much and I will look for it, again "Thank you". Tanaquil

Wow, I will look for the new biography of Jerome Robbins, "Somewhere". Thank you so much, Canbelto. Tanaquil

Hello sz, I am so glad to know you had spoken with my second cousin, Tanny and thrilled my heart to hear. How long have you known her? Are they still showing the picture of Tanny in theater in N.Y.C.? Actually, I am from Mobile, AL and I am hard of hearing (almost deaf) all my life. I would love to hear more about her the whole times you were with her. Please keep in touch. Thank you. Your best regards, Tanaquil

Okay, thank you, Carbro.

Dear sz, I am back here now. I just spoke with my son on the phone and he asked me a lot of questions about Tanaquil. I told him about the ballet talk, he really wants his daughter to get involve with ballet and the lord of the dance. I am thinking about taking them to NYC this coming summer if he have a big break on first week of July, we would like to tour the NYC Ballet to learn about our cousin. Is there a possible for you to meet us and talk with us about how wonderful Tanaquil was. We would love to hear from you. You can email me anytime. Thank you, Tanaquil

Here's a non-balletic, possible connection to Tanaquil L. that I found lately while researching an artist/poet of interest to me.

In the October, 1925 issue of the poetry magazine, Measure, are several by a Jacques LeClercq, who, in a footnote, is said also to have written under the name, Paul Tanaquil. The web says her father, Jacques, was "an intellectual," and I wonder if the poet was her dad. What do you think?

L.V.

Hello Lorenzo, I am surprise you have an issue of October 1925 poetry magazine. Yes, Jacques LeClercq was her real father. I would love to read his poetry, if you have time. Please keep in touch. Thank you.

I know her dad was named "Jacques," but can we be certain it's the same guy? The date makes that feasible, but I don't know anything conclusive; do you?
UNFORTUNATELY, I had the volumes via interlibrary loan and sent them back the other day! However, the I.L.L. librarian that found them for me is a good email chum, and I'm sure she can rustle up that issue again. If they come electronically, would it be outside the scope of ballettalk to post his poems here? If that's not acceptable, I could send them to whatever email or postal address you like. We're not talking about a lot of bytes. I'll make the loan request as soon as I quit here.

L.V.

Tanny, and anyone else who might not have seen it, the documentary Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, recently shown on PBS, has some wonderful footage of Tanaquil. It is coming out on DVD, and can be ordered through Amazon. (There is a link in the Robbins thread under The Heads Up forum.)

No, I think many readers (self included) would welcome a link on this thread to Mr. LeClercq's poem(s).

Thanks, Lorenzo.

I emailed my librarian friend, but I believe it's Spring vacation at that university. She's VERY capable, though, and it's just a matter of time until I post them here.
Best wishes,

L.V.

Jaques Le Clerc was I know, a well known translator of famous poems by French, German and Greek poets.

But himself a poet,
I did not know,
But in recall,
It must be so.

Dear friends,

My wonderful librarian found a Paul Tanaquil poem, but it was different from the one I remembered, so she’s retrieving that one, too, and I’ll post it when it comes.

I’d hoped to include the pdf images of the mag cover, title page, etc., but I don’t see how to do that here, so I’m just typing the text. This was on p. 10 of The Measure, A Journal of Poetry, number 47, January, 1925.

“Over a Dead Poet

There was in him no factual trace of sin,
Here was a child, a subtly wayward one at that,
Lacking all sense of appropriate discipline,
Loving color and contour, despising the dull, the flat.

If he were forced at times to be cruelly clever,
He wrapped his sword-point in lint lest blood fall on the ground,
He was both too strong and too weak completely to sever
Evil from good, he was too versatile to be profound.

He never wore dirty collars by choice nor adopted loud socks,
He loathed the arid sham, the melancholy middle-class tie,
Here was no daring aphorism, no disturbing paradox,
R.I.P. Life did rather well in letting him die.
Paul Tanaquil”


In the Contributors section, there is this;

“ ‘Paul Tanaquil’ has recently returned from Europe to teach in the department of Romance Languages at Columbia University.”

The fact that the journal put the name in quotes shows that it recognized this as a nom de plume.

Hope this is interesting, Tanny and others.

Happy weekend,

L.V.

Jacques George Clemenceau Le Clercq, American Poet and Translator(1898 – 19720) wrote poetry under the name of Paul Tanaquil.

If you check out Amazon there are two books of poems of his available and if you don’t mind downloading a whole book of poems, you can at
http://www.archive.org/stream/attitudes00l...dlrich_djvu.txt

Here is the other Le Clercq poem from Measure, October, 1925, p.6.

HENRY
In his compositions he sought
The bizarre. How very banal
His present decomposition!

ROBERT
He insulted God
Nor ever forgave God
For forgiving him. God!

CLAUDIA
She was no poetess,
But Sappho alone
Could aptly mourn
Claudia’s passing.

EUGENE
Dead? Nonsense!
He sailed to Paradise
To study mystic technic
From the Holy Ghost.

GORDON
Tread softly: here is the bigamist!
Ghosts of three fat women
Haunt his dreams.

PHILIP
Eminently methodic,
Dependable, regular –
Suddenly your heart stopped,
But your watch went tic-tic …

VIOLET
She loved to dance,
She hated to dance
With me. Let her dance
Now.

Jacques Le Clercq
(“Paul Tanaquil”)


In the Contributors section is this. “Paul Tanaquil, as most of us know well, is one of the more interesting of the young poets, who can write either with lyrical music or with satiric brevity. What most of us did not know, however, is that “Paul Tanaquil” was a pen name for Jacques Le Clercq.”

A friend recently sent me this link. It's not well organized -- you'd be hard pressed to create a halfway accurate timeline from the essay -- and I wonder about some of the facts, but I'm just passing it on, as some of the nuggets, for whatever they're worth, are interesting.

carbro, anyone who can write about Le Clercq (as has Barry Katz):

"…..a long-limbed grace, …musicality, and a certain comic, witty streak that lept off the stage to engage audiences…" has written something right and true.

I remember her as such in Metamorphoses.

This seems to me a very well done piece, which deftly combines the facts of Tanny's life with insights into her personality. Thanks for posting it, carbro.

I happen to really like that article, but then again, Barry is a friend - in fact we met over a discussion of her old home.

Thanks for the link, carbro. Definitely worth reading, although I agree with you that it could be better organized.

Thank you for posting the link Carbro. It really made me smile. The last paragraph in particular is really lovely.