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Suzanne Farrell


Ceeszi

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. . .Farrell said she had no interest in doing the classics, that there was more emotion in a moment of Balanchine's ballets than in Giselle and her flowers. And in a way, Balanchine re-did the Giselle myth over and over in his ballets - lovers meeting and than parting in sacrifice. All you needed to do is see Farrell in Meditations or the 2nd movement of Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 or Serenade...

Thank you, Dale. This really hit the mark for me.

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Farrell would have trouble dancing the classics especially in her later years because of her knee injury which made jumping difficult. Mr. B would have around that, but you can't avoid jumps in, say, Giselle or Swan Lake.

Farrell was great in Balanchine's Swan Lake. I can still see her plunging into supported penches and throwing her arms back (as she loved to do). She was quite dramatic in all her ballets, but also cool - that was her mystery.

Balanchine's take on the classics might be another thread, but I found it interesting to read or hear dancers such as Markova and Toumanova speak about the coaching they received from Balanchine in ballets such as Giselle. He certainly knew all about them and probably how to dance them.

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..... the coaching they received from Balanchine in ballets such as Giselle. He certainly knew all about them and probably how to dance them.

Coincidentally, last night I was watching a tape I had just had made from a 16mm film from 1970 called "Ballet with Edward Villella". It was a teaching film, extraordinarily interesting, and was probably a TV production, given its length of 27 minutes. Villella wrote, narrated, and did the bulk of the dancing in it, including an Act II excerpt from Giselle, where he entered as Albrecht. The choreography was Balanchine's and Villella described how he was taught to perform the role.

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but the thought of an all-Balanchine Giselle makes my head hurt. (The port de bras alone....

There was a Ballet Theater Giselle in the 50's that Balanchine had a large hand in---he used Berman costumes...to me, it looked much like the Dolin version---with different sets...

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i'm not sure how long ABT's 1946, etc. GISELLE kept balanchine's 'grave scene' which he is said, in his cat. of works, to have restaged according to the maryinsky ending - w/giselle's being set to rest on a bank of grass away from her grave where she was said to sink and where flowers were then to spring up - the royal ballet had a version of this too, in recent memory.

there is a 1950 kinescope of a telecast from NBC w/ kaye and youskevich, truncated, of course, into an hour's length, dolin is credited with the staging, i believe. (incidentally diana adams is myrtha.) but this filming does not include the 'grave scene' balanchine is said to have staged. perhaps by '50, after NYCB started, he withdrew his work from ABT or ABT dropped it on its own. this filming does show the berman costumes, including the dark-tulle-overlay dresses for the wilis. i don't know if they were black or dark green? (only giselle is in all white in this design scheme.)

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Re: Swan Lake with NBoC, I found the quote in Farrell's autobiography:

During the coda of the Black Swan pas de deux I was doing some fast piqué turns in a circle when I heard a loud pop over the sounds of the orchestra.
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Just a note that there are some special Farrell performances up on youtube right now.

I'll not mention what they are here, because I don't exactly want to see them taken down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1RFr80FLXI is the one I was most interested in, but a search for her last name and "ballet" brings up a decent number of others as well.

Aurora--thank you. This is not the perfect medium for this, but for reasons you need not know, I needed to see this right now and in this form. How beautiful it is.

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A nice Q&A with Farrell here.

I noticed that during class you correct the positions of the arms and legs of your students, but you also ask them questions. Why is student-teacher communication important?

Ballet is a silent profession. We don’t talk. The dancers are very disciplined and willing to do everything their teachers or choreographers want them to do, but they rarely say anything. So I ask my students questions because I want to give them a voice. Saying something out loud helps them to process information better. Speaking reinforces their understanding of what the body needs to do and what the movements need to look like.

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