© University of Florida Press Renee Renouf's review of Suzanne Farrell Ballet Suzanne Farrell Ballet reviews more Renee Renouf reviews

Farrells story is told in chronological sequence. She was born Roberta Sue Ficker in 1945 and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio in a family of three sisters, all given to performing whenever the opportunity was presented or invented. She was seen by Diana Adams screening for the first Ford Foundation Fellowships to the School of American Ballet. Her mother packed the family off to New York City where Suzanne auditioned directly for George Balanchine; he awarded her a full scholarship and an arrangement for the academic schooling she never completed. 

Farrell was sixteen when she joined the corps de ballet of New York City Ballet in 1961; ten months later, on tour, she danced one of the three leads in Serenade and in 1962 danced the second lead in Concerto Barocco in Germany. During the 1963 season Farrell danced her first lead, Arcade, in March, followed by Stravinsky Movements for Piano and Orchestra in April, substituting for Diana Adams who was bedridden to avoid a second miscarriage. In 1965 her status as principal dancer was assured as Dulcinea in Balanchines version of Don Quixote.

I happened to be in New York City the fall of 1965 and watched a class and rehearsal at New York City Ballet. I remember Jacques DAmboise was the sole dancer who said hello to me.  When there was a shift in rehearsals, Farrell, Balanchine and a pianist entered the room, occasioning a sudden stillness and the rooms immediate evacuation by the former occupants, including me.  That night Richard Rapp played Don Quixote. My principal memory of the ballet was the bed at down stage left when the Don was dying. Farrell for me was a wispy blur.

This portion in Farrells book is quite moving; one can not fail to appreciate the emotion Farrell relates  when her mentor/suitor/ choreographer kneels to her when she represents the Madonna.

Another intriguing element was the frequency with which Farrell danced during her initial years with New York City Ballet.  One is impressed she was in everything and appeared to be ready for everything. As an early principal she was scarcely idle, and that was the way she wanted it.
 

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The account of the Farrell-Balanchine romance is treated with decorum, but it is clear that Balanchine felt the complex emotions which an elder person experiences when in love with one much younger, irrespective of gender.  Farrells romance and marriage with Mejia are chronicled and the Diaghilev-type severance occurring with New York City Ballet. This created a difficulties for the young couple for what seemed a year before they moved to Brussels as dancers with Maurice Bejart.  Farrell recognized the degree of commitment amongst Bejarts dancers as the common thread, enabling her to dance in a style quite alien to her experience.

I remember seeing her in Bhakti, unaware her role and pas de deux with Jorge Dunn had been choreographed for them.  What was disturbing about the Shiva-Shakti exposition was not the performance, but Bejarts choice of music.  Like Balanchine, Bejart took an Asian tradition and bent it to his own vision. Bejart used the bol recitation for allaripu, the first part of a traditional Bharata Natyam concert where the vocabulary of steps is executed in three tempos in the adavu sequences. This warms the dancer for the following, more difficult pieces. It also serves to honor and dedicate oneself to the deity.  There was precious little of such demeanor in the dance, but the partnership was quite spectacular.

Farrell related her opportunity to return to New York City Ballet, and the picking up the threads of professional relationship with Balanchine.  There is little doubt regarding the depth of the relationship and Balanchines ability to continue to create roles for her.  Farrell rode to ballet prominence through the singularly fortuitous gift by The Ford Foundation to the world of classical ballet.  If she capitalized on it, this account and her career inform us she made excellent and, I believe, just use of the opportunity.   There is no greater testimony to this  than what I saw  at Zellerbach Hall November 15 with the West Coast debut of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet.

Farrell states in her family background, that she grew up in a family of women, three generations living for some time under the same roof, the fathers having served their purpose being shed in some fashion or another; this is quite telling.  Some of the most prominent dancers in the history of classical ballet this past century seem to have emerged from broken or severed homes: Pavlova; Nijinsky are stellar examples.  I can also list from the de Basil-Massine-Denham administered companies, George Zoritch, Marc Platt, Vera Zorina, Alexandra Danilova.  Many of these dancers were encouraged by their mothers.

These budding dancers, frequently  fatherless, acquired female and male mentors.  What would Pavlova have been without the administrative support of Victor Dandre?  What would Vera Zorinas post-de Basil career have been without the choreographic grooming of George Balanchine? The absence of a father figure, particularly in a nuclear family one who might be related to the arts in some manner, turns the ballet master into a potent symbol for the young dancer, impressionable, intuitive and eager to conquer that world available via pointe shoes.  This is what Farrell chronicles so well, with minimal cant, particularly when it comes to the rupture following Farrells marriage to Paul Mejia.

This was a second reading for me, a welcome one.  Frequently called a legend, Farrell relates real history, sharing classic parallels with other dancers lives. Combined, the result reaffirms  the consistent paradoxes ballet manages to constellate in its orbit.