Editor’s Note: As part of a regular West Side Rag series, artist Michelle Hill interviews and draws Upper West Siders. This is the 17th installment in our Portrait of a Neighbor series.

By Michelle Hill

Carol Foster’s story as told to Michelle:

The Upper West Side has been my home since 1966. I came to NYC as a very determined and extremely naive twenty year old girl from Denver, Colorado with a burning desire to dance. Yes, I know that I was too old, even in those days! With a mere $100 to my name somehow luck was on my side.

First, that previous summer in Denver I had auditioned and was accepted into a small NYC ballet company, Manhattan Festival Ballet. We performed on Monday evenings at Theatre 80 Saint Mark’s Place. We shared the theater that year with the off-Broadway musical, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”. I ushered this musical for $5 a night to help supplement my monthly salary of $600 from the ballet company. The subway was 20 cents then and so was an ice cream cone. Many times I had to choose between riding the subway and eating an ice cream cone….usually due to sheer exhaustion the subway won out. The next year the subway fare had increased to 25 cents.

​ The scholarship money that I had won placing as first runner-up in the Miss Colorado Pageant went to study with Antony Tudor, the great choreographer, who, at that time, was teaching at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mr. Tudor also taught at Juilliard and he would let me take his classes there when the Met closed down for the summer months and for free. Simply, I loved him. I never felt as alive as I did in his class.

For five years I had been a leading dancer in the Metropolitan Denver Civic Ballet. Enrique Martinez was the director of the company and was also the assistant ballet master for American Ballet Theatre. All the local dancers worked for free but the chance to work not only with Enrique but to be partnered by Gayle Young and Marcos Parades two great dancers who both became principals of ABT was truly an awesome experience.

​In NYC Marcos and Enrique lived together on 75th Street between Broadway and West End. After searching for my own apartment for three months, Marcos called me that I should see an apartment in his building. He told me to hurry over and he even gave the super one month’s deposit to hold it for me. It was a one bedroom rent controlled apartment that was tucked away in the back of the building and it was on the same floor as Marcos’s. That day I signed the lease and I am still living in this same quiet apartment after 48 years.

To be honest I thought the area was a bit tough. Needle Park was in its heyday…the yucky smell of Merit Farm Chickens was everywhere. Fairway and Zabar’s were in their infancy then. Amsterdam Avenue was to be avoided at all times. But with the completion of Lincoln Center in 1968 things were slowly changing for the Upper West Side.

​For the next year and a half I danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company. The first opera that I appeared in was ‘Carmen’ directed by the legendary Jean Louis Barrault and starring Grace Bumbry and Richard Tucker. Once during a stage rehearsal, the great Maria Callas walked, no; it was more like she stormed across the stage looking for the then manager of the Met, Rudolph Bing. It was daunting to be in the presence of such famously passionate and enormously talented artists!

​It was in early January of 1969 that Enrique Martinez knocked on my door to tell me that Lucia Chase, the founder and director of American Ballet Theatre wanted me for their next tour, which started in a week. Having already auditioned four times for the company (three out of four Miss Chase could not attend) I thought my chances were rather slim. Now the only thing standing in my way was my contract at the Met which had six months left on it.

​Dame Alicia Markova, a former ballerina with ABT, was the then director of the Met Opera ballet company, it was our only conversation we would ever have. She adamantly refused in her very British way of breaking my contract. I begged her to let me go… Asking her if she were in my shoes would she not want the same thing? To my astonishment she granted me permission to leave immediately!

​The first day of a three month bus tour there were 42 dancers. In less than six weeks that number was down to twenty-six. Some of the dancers who had broken bones had to return to NYC. Whoever was still standing danced a lot! Sometimes we were dancing ballets that we had never rehearsed….learning them from another dancer in a hotel room the night before. Being the newest member my position in the bus was over the right front wheel. The seat where there is no room for your legs! The soloists got to sleep in the overhead racks. I could tell countless stories about those amazing six years of dancing with ABT…enough to fill a few books. However, the highlight was dancing in Tudor’s ballets and the enduring friendships that have lasted more than forty years!

After leaving ABT, I threw all my artistic passion into opening a small cafe Cafe Galerie on 73rd and First Avenue. The Upper West Side rents were high (even in 1976) but paying only $400 a month was more than doable for my first business venture. The walls were filled with ballet pictures shot by Ken Duncan, Martha Swope…and me. Classical music filled the air. Red velvet curtains hid the nine tables that were graced with Lenox swans as sugar holders. One month after leaving ABT, Baryshnikov defected and the ballet boom exploded.

Thru the years I have come in contact with a lot of celebrities but when John Lennon strolled in for a coffee one day in 1978 that truly perked me up. I could not believe the next day when he came back with his wife Yoko Ono and stayed for hours. They came every day for the next three weeks. Many times, they showed up hours before the cafe was officially opened. What they loved was the privacy that the cafe gave them. John bought my newly designed T-Shirt. The name of the cafe was in the shape of a tutu with two legs on pointe extending from the tutu. He was so thin that the girls “small” fit him! He wore that t-shirt in the next day! Then they never came back. I had read that they had left for their home in Virginia. I never once asked for a photo nor an autograph.

After having hands-on experience running my own cafe, I started to run other restaurants such as Elephant and Castle, One Fifth, and for four years I managed Memphis Restaurant located at 75th and Columbus Avenue. It was very chic…didn’t even have its name on the outside. The Upper West Side was booming with restaurants and boutiques – even on Amsterdam Avenue. Our staff was awesome! There was Roma Downey checking coats, Dana Morosini on the wait staff – later on to become Dana Reeve, Leland Orser was the maitre’d. I brought some of the staff from One Fifth. Later they became partners with one of the owners. Together they opened up Citrus Bar and Grill, Josie’s and Josephina’s.

In the fall of 1986, there were 52 applications for one part time back waiter position. (Yes, it has always been tough getting a job!) A part of the interview consisted of carrying 14 plates of food up two flights of stairs. David Mogentale was an experienced back waiter having worked at Tavern on the Green for several years. Little did I know that I had found not just a charming good strong waiter but the love of my life and my future husband. We have been together for almost 29 years!

​Our life together is framed by the UWS. We love our life here. We have both survived cancer and at the present time I am doing my best to manage Parkinson’s which I’ve had for the past ten years. It certainly is a prickly disease. However, I still have a certain amount of independence due to the many conveniences that the UWS offers, such as, Fairway, Citarella, Feline Spa, Jean Louis David…where Marina has been doing my hair for years and Mimi at City Nails where I have gone for the past 25 years for all of my other grooming needs.

There are new cafes, that have recently opened up …my favorite is the Mille Feuille on 77th & Broadway. Two blocks away is the JCC where I take yoga and Pilates. And for those special occasions and where David and I had our first date, Cafe Luxembourg. A well run restaurant with great food! Then, of course, there is Lincoln Center with all that it has to offer. All my memories are here irrevocably intertwined with the Upper West Side. It is our home.