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Suzanne Farrell's "Holding on to the Air"


Guest primasmom

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Just a quick question about Farrell. Did someone on this board witnessed her Odette/Odile in that only performance of SL she was invited to dance by some company-(can't remember which one right now, and i'm away from the book)- when she left Balanchine...?

It was the National Ballet of Canada.

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Just a quick question about Farrell. Did someone on this board witnessed her Odette/Odile in that only performance of SL she was invited to dance by some company-(can't remember which one right now, and i'm away from the book)- when she left Balanchine...?

It was the National Ballet of Canada.

Thanks, dirac. I'm still curious about Farrell on this...specially her Odile...(that's why i was wondering if someone had seen it). I'll dig a bit online about it...for some review or something...

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Just a quick question about Farrell. Did someone on this board witnessed her Odette/Odile in that only performance of SL she was invited to dance by some company-(can't remember which one right now, and i'm away from the book)- when she left Balanchine...?

It was the National Ballet of Canada.

Thanks, dirac. I'm still curious about Farrell on this...specially her Odile...(that's why i was wondering if someone had seen it). I'll dig a bit online about it...for some review or something...

I am also fascinated by what this performance may have been like - I brought it up on another thread, too.

About dancers responding to the wishes of ballet masters as a reason for altering their high extensions: I've often wished I could travel back in time to see the performances Farrell gave with National Ballet of Canada after she left NYCB. What could that Swan Lake, for example, have looked like? All those careful, rigid, polite Canadian dancers surrounding this voluptuous creature with incredible freedom and reach.....Did she try and hold herself back, or did she just let go and show herself, as Balanchine once said, like a "whale in her own ocean?' I wish there was a tape somewhere.....

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Farrell wrote about this in her book. "I decided to try to fit in stylistically. But it was not possible for me suddenly to shorten my reach, lower my legs, slow down my rhythm, and generally hold back the thrust of movement that was part of my Balanchine training. I felt not only physically suffocated but emotionally confused. To consciously do 'less' when all my life I had tried to do 'more' for Balanchine seemed decidedly wrong. The ballet masters were understanding and did not insist on trying to alter my way of dancing. I was glad to have attempted the change and to reaffirm that Balanchine's was the only way...The performances were a huge and unexpected success, and I was invited back to dance several more times in Toronto at the end of November. I learned La Bayadere and their version of The Nutcracker in addition to Swan Lake, and for the first time since leaving the New York City Ballet I started feeling like a real dancer again."

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Farrell wrote about this in her book. "I decided to try to fit in stylistically. But it was not possible for me suddenly to shorten my reach, lower my legs, slow down my rhythm, and generally hold back the thrust of movement that was part of my Balanchine training. I felt not only physically suffocated but emotionally confused. To consciously do 'less' when all my life I had tried to do 'more' for Balanchine seemed decidedly wrong. The ballet masters were understanding and did not insist on trying to alter my way of dancing. I was glad to have attempted the change and to reaffirm that Balanchine's was the only way...The performances were a huge and unexpected success, and I was invited back to dance several more times in Toronto at the end of November. I learned La Bayadere and their version of The Nutcracker in addition to Swan Lake, and for the first time since leaving the New York City Ballet I started feeling like a real dancer again."

Many thanks -- I had forgotten this passage in the book. I'd still love to see what the Swan Lake actually looked like.....and the Bayadere, too. I imagine experiencing Farrell dancing these performances of "the classics" would do a lot to shatter the false distinctions between "classical" and "neoclassical" one often hears and reads about.

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I looked up reviews of this Swan Lake awhile ago (I think I posted about this on another thread). She didn't perform Odile. A different ballerina did. The role was split up. She also performed Nikiya with them. Clive Barnes went up and reviewed it for The New York Times. I believe he wrote that she approached that like a neoclassical role.

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i think you might be mistaken Dale.

my mind does play tricks but i can rather clearly recall the occasion, if not the frame-by-frame evidence, when a good friend of Farrell's was minding her apt. (and primarily her cats) and who invited me up & who showed some films, INCLUDING farrell's Odile in Canada - it was hardly a sharp film and i think it had sound but i can't swear to it, but it did crackle w/ energy and the confidence of a 'whale in her ocean' - so maybe she didn't always do Odile in NBC "Swan Lake"s but my sense is she DID dance the role there on some occasion.

i can't imagine what other film of this 'nature' i might have seen. i assume the film was already on cassette but maybe it was projected. as you might imagine the experience was quite a 'treat' and i did feel a bit overwhelmed by it all.

in addition to the moving pix i was shown any number of scrapbooks Donna Holly kept of SF including some that held some yellowed clippings of my own from SOHO WEEKLY NEWS, which i'd written about SF once she returned to NYCB after the Bejart, etc. years.

the pages of these scrapbooks included articles and photos, some of SF & Balanchine at various occasions, i recall one that included co. manager betty cage, whom my friend had not yet quite identified, and b/c she was wearing a sari-like garment on the occasion photographed, my friend said, something like: oh, i always thought that someone like the ambassadress of Pakistan! (or some such.)

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About Farrell not performing Odile in Canada -- didn't she hurt her knee dancing the Black Swan pas de deux?

Yes. Again from her book: "During the coda of the Black Swan pas de deux I was doing some fast pique turns in a circle when I heard a loud pop over the sounds of the orchestra. My right leg immediately turned to jelly and I lost all control."

What made the moment particularly terrible was that Suzanne had chosen that performance to be reconciled with her mother who'd not spoken to her since her marriage to Paul Mejia a year earlier. Suzanne remembers being carried offstage "and seeing Mother's frantic face as she watched my knee swell up like a balloon."

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Ah, I stand corrected. I went back to the original review and it says "Earlier this week, she danced in the full-length "Swan Lake" -- which was enthusiastically reviewed by the Toronto critics -- but her real test came tonight when she appeared for the first time with the National Ballet of Canada in Petipa's La Bayadere.... Miss Farrell was part brillant, part subdued. She showed flair and authority, and, of course, her musically was undiminished. But her arms, always her weakest aspect, once in a while flailed less than beguiling. To be frank: she looked like a gorgeous dancer who had slightly lost her way and should return to New York City Ballet without passing Go, without collecting $200 and most certainly without going to jail."

rg, what a treat that must have been. I loved her in Balanchine's Swan Lake.

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This is a fascinating and most enjoyable thread, given that I've read Farrell's autobiography a couple of times and just received, through the Amazon link below, SF: Elusive Muse on VHS. I watched it twice yesterday, my husband watching on the second bounce, and much of what is being discussed here we are in the process of discussing, so I know I'll have more to say about that extraordinary video, but what I will say now is how wonderful the dance footage is! I only saw Farrell in her later years and I'm not sure those years included her hip replacement (can't remember) - she was an amazing dancer in the 80's IMO, but her dancing in that film, pre-Bejart, is just incredible.

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Thank you for reviving this thread, AlbanyGirl. If you saw her in the middle-late 80s, that was when her hip injury was really starting to affect her performances, I understand. I agree the footage of Meditation, and particularly Don Quixote, is astonishing stuff. It was also touching to see Balanchine goofing off for Farrell's home movies. However, in some ways Elusive Muse gives rather short shrift to the post-Bejart years at NYCB (and not only in terms of film footage), relying mainly on the familiar Dance in America videos. Perhaps this was in part out of necessity - I remember reading that Anne Belle couldn't include any excerpts from Mozartiana, for example, because of issues over permissions. Still, the movie's narrative is heavily weighted toward the pre-Bejart years (so was Farrell's book).

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Thank you for reviving this thread, AlbanyGirl. If you saw her in the middle-late 80s, that was when her hip injury was really starting to affect her performances, I understand. I agree the footage of Meditation, and particularly Don Quixote, is astonishing stuff. It was also touching to see Balanchine goofing off for Farrell's home movies. However, in some ways Elusive Muse gives rather short shrift to the post-Bejart years at NYCB (and not only in terms of film footage), relying mainly on the familiar Dance in America videos. Perhaps this was in part out of necessity - I remember reading that Anne Belle couldn't include any excerpts from Mozartiana, for example, because of issues over permissions. Still, the movie's narrative is heavily weighted toward the pre-Bejart years (so was Farrell's book).

Hi Dirac! Thank you for your comment and I agree. I would have to guess that the time period perhaps most interesting to historians and ballet enthusiasts is pre-Bejart. Besides the dance footage, I was thrilled to just hear Suzanne speak about herself as a dancer, recount her stories and watch her coach. She became more real to me in the film. In the book, the picture I got was a shy and reserved (maybe, unapproachable), but poignant goddess. I believe she had her hip replacement in 1986, the year I lived in Europe, and I don't recall seeing her dance when I returned in 1987. This, of course, would have only been at SPAC; I didn't see NYCB performances in NYC at that time. When I saw Suzanne dance for the first times in the early 80's, I knew nothing about her personal relationship with Mr B, only that she was a spectacular dancer, and she surely did not disappoint! I was absolutely blown away by her, and the company's, art and beauty.

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Hi Dirac! Thank you for your comment and I agree. I would have to guess that the time period perhaps most interesting to historians and ballet enthusiasts is pre-Bejart. Besides the dance footage, I was thrilled to just hear Suzanne speak about herself as a dancer, recount her stories and watch her coach. She became more real to me in the film. In the book, the picture I got was a shy and reserved (maybe, unapproachable), but poignant goddess. I believe she had her hip replacement in 1986, the year I lived in Europe, and I don't recall seeing her dance when I returned in 1987. This, of course, would have only been at SPAC; I didn't see NYCB performances in NYC at that time. When I saw Suzanne dance for the first times in the early 80's, I knew nothing about her personal relationship with Mr B, only that she was a spectacular dancer, and she surely did not disappoint! I was absolutely blown away by her, and the company's, art and beauty.

KarenAG--If you saw Farrell in the *early* Eighties, you saw her almost at the level she had been at since returning to NYCB in the Seventies. Although the hip was beginning to bother her then, Balanchine made 'Walpurgisnacht' and 'Mozartiana' for her in 80 and 81, and those are two highly demanding ballerina roles. I wouldn't agree at all about pre-Bejart being more interesting to ballet enthusiasts, though; Arlene Croce, probably the best American dance critic, said in welcoming Farrell back in 75 that Farrell had a new 'sensitivity' and that before Farrell left in 69 she was a 'superdiva who distorted every role she danced except those with distortions already written in.' I was too young to see that Farrell but I saw the New and Improved 70s/80s version many, many times, and I certainly don't imagine she was a better dancer when she was younger. She did dance a bit after the hip replacement, including en pointe in one ballet, but not often before her farewell in 89, which was mostly the Rosenkavalier sequence from Vienna Waltzes (this is all in the book but not necessarily immediate knowledge.)

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For the farewell, she also danced work that was made for her post hip replacement, like "Sophisticated Lady*," marking Martins' return to the stage to partner her on that occasion. The post hip-replacement roles were a clear accommodation to her condition. Martins was much more conservative than Farrell, who explained that she had a metal rod down her thigh bone to anchor the hip, the standard at the time, and that a bad fall or landing would have caused that bone to shatter.

*"Sophisticated Lady" was filmed for the "Dance in America" program "Ballerinas: Dances by Peter Martins."

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