BWW Reviews: SUZANNE FARRELL, a Guest of LIVE from NYPL, Recounts Her Legendary Ballet Career

Suzanne Farrell, one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation, proved herself to be a charming and thoroughly engaging raconteur when she appeared on the evening of May 12th 2015 as a guest of LIVE from NYPL. The event at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in NYC was ably hosted by LIVE founder Paul Holdengräber and co-presented with Jennifer Homans' Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University as well as the Friends of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Archival video clips and photos of Farrell in her prime punctuated the evening with welcome reminders of why a teenager who came to NYC's School of American Ballet in 1960 from Cincinnati on a Ford Foundation scholarship went on to become George Balanchine's muse and an internationally celebrated dancer. During the LIVE Q&A session with Holdengräber, looking as lithe as ever and far younger than her years, Farrell spoke about the images with candor and wit that held the audience in her thrall for a full two hours. The visual treats included, among others, "Meditation" danced by Farrell and Jacques d'Amboise, snippets of Mr. B demonstrating while teaching class, and sections of his 1965 "Don Quixote" in which he danced the title role for the premiere opposite Farrell as his Dulcinea. The ballet, which was based on the dark "impossible dream" dramatic arc of the novel by Cervantes and choreographed to melancholy music by Nicolas Nabokov, dropped out of the repertoire after 1978. Jennifer Dunning, in a 2007 article in The New York Times, wrote that the work records "perhaps from too close a distance, the real-life relationship between Balanchine and his muse".

During the LIVE event, Farrell judiciously avoided sounding any notes of rancor even when Holdengräber steered her toward periods in her life that had involved controversy. The dance world remembers well that after she married fellow NYCB member Paul Mejia, her relationship with Mr. B was ruptured. The couple left the company and joined Maurice Béjart's "Ballet of the XXth Century" in Brussels. Yet as images of Bejart flashed on the screen and Holdengräber pressed Farrell for comments, she simply said, "That was my 'now'." Then she glided seamlessly into an anecdote about her return to NYC in 1975 when she had a meeting with Mr. B and rejoined NYCB.

Another anecdote, one that lit up her face as she told it, involved running across the plaza at Lincoln Center in her practice clothes to catch up with Igor Stravinsky after performing for him some excerpts of dances Mr. B had made to the composer's works. She called out "Mr. Stravinsky", got his attention, and then said that she had wanted to tell him that she loved dancing to his music. His response was "I could tell", a perfect compliment that elicited an appreciative "Aww!" from the audience when she shared it.

Farrell founded the Suzanne Farrell Ballet in 2000 at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. after she was famously relieved by Peter Martins in 1993 of her admittedly sporadic coaching duties at NYCB. She never alluded to that speed bump in her life, not even when an image of her being partnered by Martins during their dancing days appeared on the screen. She simply concluded her remarks by letting us know that she has fully embraced teaching. "It extends my dancing life," she said, and remarked that she strives to impart to her students the energy and the passion that were hallmarks of Mr. B's philosophy. She had previously mentioned his admonition to do "100 tendus in every direction every day" along with the fact that Mr. B's class was so difficult that many people chose not to take it. Yet she emphasized that beyond technique, he wanted style. She also said that Mr. B used to say that his dancers would become teachers, although all she wanted to do at the time was to dance. Now, though, she is clearly sincere when she says that teaching is giving her the opportunity to pass on all that she learned during her long and storied career.

A final delightfully enigmatic note: Holdengräber, as he always does before meeting with his guests, had asked Farrell to give him her biography in a mere seven words. She sent him this tantalizing answer: "Balanchine, Stravinsky, 1,2,3,4,5." Holdengräber read that aloud, to chuckles from the crowd, and then asked her to elaborate. She said politely, "Not at this time."

Most LIVE from the NYPL programs are taped. You can find video and audio recordings as well as transcripts of past events here: http://www.nypl.org/live/multimedia. This is the 10th anniversary season, so there are riches aplenty for you to mine!

Photo by Paul Kolnik

To post a comment, you must register and login.