“Who am I? I’m a man; an American, a father, a teacher, but most of all, I am a person who knows how the arts can change lives, because they transformed mine. I was a dancer.”

In this rich, expansive, spirited memoir, Jacques d’Amboise--one of America’s most celebrated classical dancers, and former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet for more than three decades--tells the extraordinary story of his life in dance, and of America’s most renowned and admired dance companies. He writes of his classical studies beginning at the age of eight at The School of American Ballet. At twelve he was asked to perform with Ballet Society; three years later he joined the New York City Ballet and made his European debut at London’s Covent Garden. As George Balanchine’s protégé, d’Amboise had more works choreographed on him by “the supreme Ballet Master” than any other dancer, among them Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux; Episodes; A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; Jewels; Raymonda Variations.  He writes of his boyhood—born Joseph Ahearn—in Dedham, Massachusetts; his mother (“the Boss”) moving the family to New York City’s Washington Heights; dragging her son and daughter to ballet class (paying the teacher $7.50 from hats she made and sold on street corners, and with chickens she cooked stuffed with chestnuts); his mother changing the family name from Ahearn to her maiden name, d’Amboise (“It’s aristocratic. It has the ‘d’ apostrophe. It sounds better for the ballet, and it’s a better name”). We see him growing up in a tough neighborhood; attending Catholic schools and being taught by the nuns; we see him on the streets, fighting with neighborhood gangs; taking ten classes a week at the School of American Ballet; and being taught professional class by Balanchine and other teachers of great legend. D’Amboise also writes about dancing with and courting the woman who would become his wife for fifty-three years; he tells of the four children they had; about going to Hollywood to make Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and being offered a long-term contract at MGM; and about the moment he realized his dancing career was over and he began a new life and a new dream, teaching children all over the world about the arts through the magic of dance.