Farrell Fan

canbelto, I completely agree with you about Suzanne's hairdo, and very much appreciate your tactful apologia on its behalf.

I was completely fooled (but delighted) by the order of appearance of the honorees. Who would have thought Suzanne would be next to to the socko Tina Turner closing? Apart from Suzanne's, my favorite segment was Tony Bennett's -- a real class act paid homage by a wonderfully diverse group of musicians -- Diana Krall, K.D, Lang, et. al., highlighted by that elegiac muted trumpet solo of Wynton Marsalis. From Jack Reed's early post on this thread, I gather that appearances by Maria Tallchief and Arthur Mitchell were edited out of the Suzanne segment. I'm sorry about that, but have no complaints otherwise. She looked gorgeous, as always. "Divert. No. 15" was hard to see on my small screen, but I'm told by a non-balletic friend, that "the colors looked beautiful." I realize not everyone is old enough to have seen Suzanne dance in live performance. That's too bad, because nobody who saw her leading the WRENS in "Union Jack" could ever again think of her as "glacial."

The high point was the Suzanne Farrell Ballet's revival of Balanchine's Don Quixote in June. Low point was NYCB's dreary opening night in November, with no Balanchine on the program.

My impression is that the era when "modern music" meant "atonal music" is long gone. Am I wrong?

As I previously said, the article is typical of articles in the New York Observer. In my opinion it is not a mess. It is gossipy, rambling, and fun to read. Heavy editing would destroy it. As for the NY Times covering this story, the Times is often the subject of Observer "exposes." Mr. Sulzberger, Jr. has made clear that he considers stories in the Observer unworthy of his newspaper's attention.

Oberon, I agree with you. Peter Martins did Farrell a favor by firing her. Had she remained at NYCB she would never have been allowed out from under his shadow.

Just got my "hard copy" of the New York Observer. Whatever one thinks of the article, the front-page color illustration -- of Peter Martins as the Nutcracker -- is priceless. The inside photographs, however, are on oddly-chosen lot: Anne Bass, Martins and Darci Kistler, a 1985 photo of Martins and Bernadette Peters, and one from 1939 of Balanchine rehearsing Vera Zorina in "On Your Toes." She is identified in the caption as "Eva Hartwig." This is like calling Suzanne Farrell, "Roberta Ficker."

The gossipy tone of the article is typical of The New York Observer. I enjoy reading this publication because the gossip is often about topics I'm interested in. Dated or extraneous though parts of this piece may be, does anyone think it is inaccurate? The thought that being a great dancer is different from being a good teacher parrots the self-serving Peter Martins allegation that Suzanne Farrell couldn't teach.

On the whole, I thought it was a good article, even though it told me more about the infighting at SAB than I really want to know. Thanks for posting it, Alexandra. I never thought I had anything in common with Anne Bass, but her sentiments about how NYCB and SAB were once the most important things in her life and are now irrelevant, pretty much reflect mine.

I posted this anecdote a long time ago, but it's time for a reprise. A friend of mine, long active in the NYCB Guild, told of sitting next to a woman who said she'd been going to the Nutcracker for many years with her children, and was now carrying on the tradition with her grandchildren. He told her that was wonderful and asked if she ever attended other NYCB performances. "No," she said, "I don't like ballet." Yesterday I went to the Nutcracker with my eleven-year-old grandnephew, who enjoyed what he saw, as did I. (Weese, Hanna, Peck, Kramarevsky). I've been going to NYCB for so long that I remember when Nuts was part of winter season subscriptions. (I hope another old-timer can corroborate this, because it seems so inconceivable now that sometimes I think I may have imagined it.) It doesn't seem to be quite the hot ticket it was a few years ago, but the place was well filled for a performance at the strange time of 5 p.m. The tickets were $99 each. Everything about Nutcracker these days tends to separate it from the NYCB repertory, including the higher prices and the supposedly child-friendly starting times. It's hard to generalize about the audiences. A man in front of me yesterday enjoyed Teresa Reichlen's Coffee much as Mr. B had predicted he would. At the end of her variation he shouted "Brava," (not 'Bravo") while the childnext to him gave him a quizzical look. Most of the kids pay close attention, occasionally asking questions of the adults with them, who seem to have a good time. But it's become very much a special event, even for me. I still have three subscriptions to NYCB, but this was the first Nutcracker I've been to in half-a-dozen years.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised because it happens all the time: a dancer leaves the company with which she's made her reputation, ostensibly to stretch her wings and try new things. That was certainly the impression one got with Ansanelli. There'd been talk of her joining the RB for some time, presumably because of their repertory. So her first performances with her new company are of her old repertory. What's the point?

I like the Taper book so much I have three copies of it -- Harper & Row's first edition from 1963; Macmillan's "Revised and Updated" edition from 1974; and the Times Books edition of 1984, the year after Balanchine's death. Nevertheless, I understand canbelto's frustration very well. As dirac suggests, this is not the definitive biography the subject deserves, nor was it meant to be. But surely, this can't be the last word. We know that all his wives and mistresses remained friends with him after they became former wives and mistresses, and that he liked to compare himself to Mayakovsky, "I am not a man, but a cloud in pants." What's needed is a biography as towering creatively and psychologically complex as Balanchine himself. Perhaps it will be the work of another generation.

I much appreciated that Mr. Jackson mentioned all the Farrell dancers by name. The report as a whole captured the excitement of the evening almost as if I'd been there.

Croce's book is supposed to be about Balanchine's ballets, so unless one believes that Balanchine's life is all in the ballets, it won't really be a biography. Nevertheless, one hopes for more insight into Balanchine's life than was evident in Taper's biography, which, incidentally, began life circa 1960 as a New Yorker profile and was subsequently "revised and expanded," as they say.

Stinks? That implies that somebody's doing something wrong deliberately. I like to make jokes about it, but I don't think that. I just assume the many delays have been caused by a quest for getting it done right. I think it's admirable that Farrar Strauss & Giroux continues to have the book on its publishing list after all this time.

This is akin to new clues turning up in the disappearance of Judge Crater, or a progress report on Second Avenue Subway construction. I don't mean to deride your post, Phaedra392, and I congratulate you for keeping after the publisher to provide a date, however fanciful. I admit that a little flicker of hope has arisen in me on reading this that publication might yet occur during my lifetime. So thank you.

I add another "wow," Jack, that's great! Thanks for sharing it with us. Was there any mention at all of Peter Martins?

to dirac for the comprehensive coverage of the Kennedy Center Honors. Included are President Bush's comments at the reception, which are surprisingly eloquent. There are some bright people on the White House staff.

The subject of NYCB's Swan Lake upsets me, so I'll let others provide details. I'll just say that while ABT's Swan Lake is no great shakes, NYCB's is an abomination.

For me, one of the pleasures of seeing the Farrell company in Washington is coming home and reading the comments of others, thereby reliving the experience. La Source was the least successful, I think. I was also disappointed in Morton Gould's music for Clarinade. After all, Benny Goodman was the King of Swing, and this score didn't swing. But I could certainly see Suzanne in the part. Duo Concertant went well with all three casts. Ansanelli was very moving in La Valse and Mladenov was the most creepy death figure since Francisco Moncion.

OKOK it seems to me you should judge ballet from perforances rather than rehearsals -- although I love SF's rehearsals

I've been hoping for that for years. Farrell could oversee the Balanchine repertory and Martins everything else at NYCB. Do I hear an objection?

For Sarah Kaufman in today's Washington Post, the big news was not Alexandra Ansanelli but the performance of Erin Mahoney-Du in "Clarinade." "A performance like that is what audiences have come to expect from Farrell's troupe. She may not have the world's best dancers, but she works magic with them. So inviting is the prospect of seeing what she can do with Balanchine's choreography that several New York dance critics were at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday, passing up a gala opening of the New York City Ballet." Of Ansanelli, Kaufman says, "She will likely not appear with Farrell after this run; she has been offered a contract with the Royal Ballet. It is a pity: here is a ballerina who could profit so much from Farrell's ability to cut away the mnnerisms and fluff." Happy Thanksgiving.

The score for every John Cage ballet I've ever seen at NYCB has been for strings, piano, whatever, and audience coughing.

It might be the same magical means of locomotion that allows Sugar Plum to glide across the stage on a single pointe. Except that in this case the ballerina is reclining and seems pulled along by the sheer force of Albert Evans's personality.