Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Suzanne Farrell profile by Joan Acocella


Recommended Posts

Farrell Fan, I certainly didn't intend to imply that I believed that Farrell was/is standoffish. It's a sad fact that shyness is often interpreted that way. Perceptions do matter, regrettably, and one thing I remember from Daniel's article was that he felt the need to refute the charge (among others) that Farrell was aloof, remote, and generally hard to deal with.

Link to comment

I actually thought the article was less about what was wrong with Martins and more about what is right with Suzanne than most articles about NYCB. I thought it was refreshing, compared to the usual stuff I read about the company -- which typically has an overt tone of "he's no Balanchine, he's ruining the company through neglect, and if you want evidence, he fired Farrell!"

I've never gotten the feeling that Acocella is a Martins supporter, but again, I think she takes a somewhat balanced view of things. Even though she is clearly not in the Martins camp, she has tried to avoid -- in print anyway -- overtly being one-sided. My beef with some of the critics is that they are so unhappy with Martins, they are blinded to what's right about the company.

This story basically recited the facts, and said Farrell's a great coach, it's sad she isn't part of NYCB. But she lives on! To my mind, that's fair.

Link to comment

JA made me wince with the following:

"Balanchine made 'Mozartiana' two years before his death, and many people believe that it is about his death". He also did a similar version of 'Mozartiana' in 1945 using the same "Ave, Verum Corpus". It was as beautiful as the later use of the music. In that production a lovely soloist named Dorothy Etheridge (think, Jenifer Ringer) performed this part, which was called 'Prayer' carried on stage in a reclining position supported by two men.---but, I am getting away f rom myself---in 1945 NOBODY said he was thinking of his death---so why second-guess him now?

Link to comment

Yes, he did. I forget the title -- I think it was for a school performance -- and Le Clercq played a girl stricken with the disease -- a dancer in the character of Polio touched her and she fell to the ground, as I recall it described. A ghastly coincidence.

atm711, while it may be true that the second Mozartiana had thematic similarities to the first version, that doesn't mean that Balanchine didn't have special reasons for revisiting the piece at that particular time. I don't think it's necessarily "second-guessing" him to speculate in that vein. Acocella's remarks on the ballet made me stop and think, too, but in a slightly different vein. When I saw Mozartiana on television, it didn't seem to me to be directly about death, but about a place that transcended death --maybe heaven, maybe somewhere else, but another world. (Farrell says something similar in her book, I believe.)

Link to comment

It's that opening, with the ballerina seeming to invoke something from above--Once Balanchine was dead, it always looked to me as if the ballerina were summoning him, from somewhere up above the chandeliers in the State Theatre. As if he had said, "Dance this ballet, and I am with you." (He's the "partner" for the ballerina, really.)I had this feeling distinctly when Maria Calegari first took over Farrell's role. ("The redhead, so beautiful," as Balanchine said.)I would suppose it is different for ballerinas who did not know him, but the notion still persists, at least for me.

Link to comment

But I do think atm's point is a good one to remember. The ballet WAS done earlier and no one wrote about it as a reflection of Balanchine's recent brush with tuberculosis. We layer our own meanings onto ballets, and sometimes they make it into print, and these then become everyone's images and meanings.

Link to comment

The point I was trying to make is that the 1945 version of the 'Ave, Verum Corpus' could also be interpreted as being about death--it was sad and lyrical, and it was not interpreted as being about HIS death. I see no reason for connecting his death to the later version.

Link to comment

If Balanchine's health had been visibly failing and he had died a year or two after completion of the first version, it might have been, however.

The general principle that one should proceed with care when applying biography to art is always a good idea, and one that it's wise to keep in mind.

Link to comment

The mystique of Mozartiana has been promulgated by Farrell herself. Even the title of her autobiography refers to it. In the book, she writes of having "a dream so vivid that I could not distinguish between sleeping and waking. Although we had not begun the ballet and I had no idea of its format or implications, I dreamed about Mozartiana. I was in a place composed of tall spires. There was sound, not Mozartiana, but a kind of shattering, prophetic, organ-like sound, and I was walking on the vibrating spires upward from one pinacle to another. It wasn't precarious. My footing was very stable; I was holding on to the air."

She concludes that chapter with this paragraph: "Balanchine at the age of seventy-seven had given us a vision of heaven as he interpreted it from the Lord's Prayer, 'on earth as it is in heaven,' and it was a very beautiful place indeed, a place past desire, where dancers perform for the glory of God. My dream of climbing spires was answered -- Mozartiana was the light. It was because this ballet existed that I could survive the death of the man who made it."

Link to comment

Thanks, Alexandra, for questioning--more diplomatically than I would have--the level of depth in Acocella's piece. I think, though, one of the shallow areas concerns Suzanne's change of heart regarding running a company. For one, to put it bluntly, she wasn't good at transmitting her ideas to dancers. I watched one of her coaching sessions in the early 80s--at Chicago City Ballet where she was coaching Bugaku. To be sure, this was not one of her primary roles (although she did dance it, of course), but she had definite ideas about how it should be done and an uncanny mastery of the choreography. The problem was that when she became exasperated with the principal woman in the rehearsal, she just stopped talking and started dancing it herself, full steam ahead. Acocella's article *hints* at her growth in patience with dancers, but I wanted to know more.

As ever, I also wanted to hear more about the reasons for the paucity of women in leadership positions in ballet. Suzanne's life story sheds really important light on this phenomenon.

Link to comment

Thanks for that story, Ray -- it fits in much of what I've read. Perhaps what's most interesting now about Farrell is that she has gotten past this and can now look at what is in front of her instead of sticking to preconceived notions. Don't all dancers start out that way when they begin to coach? If they're lucky, they have someone older and wiser around who'll say, "I wouldn't do that," or "Remember you were 5'7 and she's 5'3. Don't you think this or that should be adjusted because of the height difference?" or whatever. And some listen and some don't. Farrell seems to have listen and grown.

I also would like to say, just for clarification, that I didn't mean to call the piece shallow, although you are welcome to :) My guess is that Acocella was writing a general interest piece, something intended for anyone who picks up the New Yorker, and put in as much detail as she and her editors thought that readership would tolerate.

I say this from some experience, because my book has extensive material on coaching and that was the section in which prospective mainstream publishers were especially disinterested :(

I'd like to read more about how Farrell coaches, too -- and how other good coaches coach -- and I hope we'll be able to read about that in the future.

Link to comment

Very interesting post, Ray. I think in Farrell's case the sex issue may be a moot point. Certainly a man who held her position in the company would have been first in line for consideration as successor; on the other hand, if she'd been a man she wouldn't have had her special relationship to Balanchine.

I have noticed, however, that the Impossible to Deal With bar seems to be considerably lower for women than men. :(

Link to comment

Amen! I've seen so many more men (straigt and gay) throw tantrums than women in class, rehearsal, and even--yes it's true--in performance.

Suzanne was a model of focus and concentration, even when being manhandled by a group of *very* inexperienced "partners" (I should know--I was one of them!) or neglected by an experienced one as he flirted, from center stage, with dancers in the wings.

Link to comment

Okay, I don't subscribe to The New Yorker, so I checked out their website and it doesn't mention this article. Is it in the current newstand issue, or do I need to make a trip to the local library to see if they still have it? I'd really like to read the article. My daughter thinks the world of Miss Farrell so I'm always interested in reading about her. Please let me know if I need to go to Borders or the library to find it.

Link to comment

Something that's been touched on in this thread hit home today. A friend of mine who's not a ballet fan said he'd read the New Yorker article on Suzanne Farrell and thought it was "wonderful." He said he felt as though he'd learned a lot about Balanchine, ballet, and Suzanne. So while some of us may have been bothered by the recycled material, the much-prized "general reader" was very pleased and impressed. At least in Ken's case.

Link to comment

I remember stories of Suzanne teaching the Kirov, Lezhnina particular, in Scotch Symphony, and Lezhnina wanted the music slowed down, Farrell was pretty upset with her on that.

I think ballerinas used to just be "good" and take direction, not ever talk back, that all changed.

A friend, also a non-ballet goer, thought it was a "readable" article, as she put it, no ballet babble.

Link to comment

I'm all for readability; the Acocella piece certainly was that. But the New Yorker *used* to have a reputation of readable prose that also told us something new (weren't parts of Taper's Balanchine bio first printed there?). I really don't mean to fault JA--she's got a lot to do with very little space and, I imagine, time and resources.

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...