NO MAN’S A GENIUS TO HIS FIRST WIFE

Tamara Geva, who married Balanchine in Russia when they were both teenagers, said to me in 1993: “Well, I never thought of him as a genius. I thought he was very good. But maybe I don’t know what a genius is. Well, don’t forget, that Van Gogh only sold one picture for forty francs in his whole lifetime.”