Farrell to revive Balanchine's Don Q (?)

[Alexandra]

The September Dance Magazine has an interesting tidbit (p. 15). In a piece about the new San Francisco International Arts Festival, Allan Ulrich writes: "The second edition of SFIAF is slated for late May 2005....[Andrew] Wood mentions a few possibilities for that festival--the Royal New Zealand Ballet performing work by the controversial Venezuelan-born modernist Javier de Frutos, and a Kennedy Center sponsored reconstruction of George Balanchine's 1965 Don Quixote by the original Dulcinea, Suzanne Farrell."

No further details at present.

[carbro]

I would love to revisit that ballet! :yes: If SuFaBallet (as opposed to SanFr) revives it for Spring '05 on tour, then maybe, maybe we can hope that they do it at Kennedy Ctr and on tour in '05-06 season? Maybe? Please?

[Alexandra]

This one is worth tracking down. There have been whispers about this for months, but...... :gossip:

I'll check next week to see if anything is concrete -- it may be a matter of funding. I've never seen this Don Q, but from what I've read, it would require more dancers than Farrell usually has at her disposal.

[carbro]

The full ballet would probably require more dancers than she now has, even with lots of doubling up. Is the company expanding, then, I wonder? Or maybe she's mounting excerpts.

[Mel Johnson]

And let us not forget the stage effects. There is a giant which requires acts of macropuppetry, a pyrotechnic horse, plus the obligatory ground fogs, collapsing puppet theater, oh, and the pig stampede. Mustn't forget the pig stampede! That and Don Q getting a cream pie in the face at the end of the palace scene.

[Farrell Fan]

That pie-in-the-face episode never failed to make me shudder and bring tears to my eyes. I know that Mel also shudders at the thought of Balanchine's Don Q. But I'm excited at the prospect. I hope it happens.

[Ari]

As I think we've established here, Don Q requires the resources of a large company. If the rumors about Farrell staging it are true, then I think it's likely that she's doing it for another company, not her own, although perhaps with the participation of her own small company.

[carbro]

I know that Mel also shudders at the thought of Balanchine's Don Q. But I'm excited at the prospect. I hope it happens.

Oh, it is a difficult ballet to sit through. I'm not denying that. And I would not want to see it over and over and over, but I'm so much more perceptive about ballet than I was the last time it was done. I need it for my education.

[Alexandra]

I'm going to move this into the Ballets forum where I should have put it in the first place. I shouldn't have made the assumption that it will be staged by her company -- the article doesn't say that, just that such a reconstruction is a possibility for the 2005 Festival. There could well be a company involved, or it could be that details aren't yet firm. All we know now is that it's more than a thought.

I've always thought Don Quixote sounds fascinating -- if only because it's so different from anything else I know of Balanchine, if not on its own merits. I'll be among the first in line for this one.

[Mel Johnson]

Please be there, with my best wishes. I shall, by that time, have rented out Cedar Island from Farrell as a bomb shelter.

[dirac]

I'd be curious to see it, too, but when even the admirers of a ballet make it sound more like a punishing military exercise than an edifying evening at the theatre, you do have to wonder.

[AG]

I came across this old thread while perusing the board and thought it might be interesting to reread in light of last week's run...some wishes do come true!

[Farrell Fan]

Thanks, AG. It was fascinating to revisit this thread.