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Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts
is kicking off its new season with a ballet performance by a
company run by one of America’s most famous ballet dancers-turned-choreographers,
Suzanne Farrell.
On Sunday, Oct. 12, Farrell’s Kennedy Center-based dance company
will perform a program of works created by her mentor, George
Balanchine. This year marks the centennial of the revered choreographer’s
birth - he’s often referred to as the father of American ballet
- but Farrell, a principal dancer in Balanchine’s company for
many years, says that’s not the reason for the all-Mr. B program.
"He was always a force in my life and an incomparable choreographer
and a generous man," Farrell told GO Brooklyn in a telephone
interview from Philadelphia. "I’ve always wanted to show
him to the public and dance his ballets; they’re extraordinary.
[Suzanne Farrell Ballet has] always done Balanchine. We have
also done [Jerome] Robbins in the company’s repertoire and a
couple [Maurice] Bejart things. But primarily its Balanchine.
Which doesn’t mean there won’t be somebody else in the future,
if I see something I like.
"But what could be better than Balanchine? It has nothing
to do with the centennial. I’ve always danced Balanchine. I celebrate
him every day."
Farrell was an important muse for Balanchine - in fact filmmakers
Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson made an Academy Award-nominated
documentary about their creative partnership titled "Suzanne
Farrell: Elusive Muse" in 1997. As proof of their fruitful
partnership, Farrell says Balanchine created 23 ballets just
for her.
"It’s a new position for me to be in as a director of my
own company, but not a new world as an interpreter, as a collaborator,
as a dancer of Mr. Balanchine. There are other repetiteurs from
the [George Balanchine] Trust and they are very fine and some
of them were staging his ballets before I did and I give them
credit. But none of them worked as closely with Mr. Balanchine
as I did.
"Nor did he do 23 ballets for them. So I’m not the only
person who stages his ballets, but I come from a different place."
Now the former principal dancer for New York City Ballet is an
official repetiteur, or teacher, for the George Balanchine Trust.
In other words, seeing a Balanchine dance coached and interpreted
by Farrell is as exciting as seeing the work set by Balanchine
himself.
Farrell hints that her company’s performances may be even better,
because she has the added advantage of being a female choreographer
working with female dancers.
"Balanchine didn’t dance, and he wasn’t a woman," explained
Farrell. "But now that I’m a woman and I’m teaching these
ballets and women are learning them, it becomes a different dynamic,
not a problem, just a different dynamic. It’s a benefit, because
I’m asking women to move like a woman, not like a woman to move
like a man who choreographs.
"At the same time, it’s kind of charming that they want
to do it the way I did, but I want to see them do it their way
with my help, not my insistence, but my help. I think that’s
kind of a first in the way a company is being run with this kind
of repertoire. In fact, I know it’s a first, or a uniqueness
to my company, I should say."
Among the works on the Oct. 12 program will be Mozart’s Divertimento
No. 15, which Suzanne Farrell Ballet performed during its 2000
inaugural performance.
"Mr. Balanchine didn’t choreograph much to Mozart because
he felt it didn’t need a physical counterpart, a visual representation,"
explained Farrell. "But it was so beautiful, the music.
And Balanchine loved Mozart, and the properness of the music
and the manners of the music and the intelligence of the music,
so he made this wonderful ballet
"[At Brooklyn Center] we are showing the heart of the ballet.
The heart of every Balanchine ballet is the pas de deux, the
dance between the man and the woman. That’s what you’ll see,
plus the Theme in Variations section. It’s the real heart and
soul of the ballet. It’s just exquisite."
Farrell describes Balanchine’s choreography for this piece of
music as "pure classical ballet," which dazzles not
because of pyrotechnics, but because of "the fragility of
it, which makes it difficult. The quality is exquisitely simple
and that makes it complicated - the timing and the sophistication
of the ballet."
Her company will also perform Balanchine’s "Variations for
Orchestra,’ with music by Igor Stravinsky; his "Tzigane,"
with music by Maurice Ravel; and his "Apollo," to music
by Stravinsky.
"Stravinsky was [Balanchine’s] mentor," explained Farrell.
"Because Stravinsky’s music is not the kind of music one
would put on the recorder to listen to, Balanchine wanted Stravinsky’s
music to be heard by as many people as possible. And that I believe
is one of the motivations for why Balanchine choreographed so
much to Stravinsky. And of course Stravinsky wrote pieces of
music for him ... They had a longtime history and collaboration."
Among the dancers on the program is Natalia Magnicaballi, who
has been a principal dancer with Farrell’s company since 1999.
"I have Natalia Magnicaballi who does a wonderful ’Tzigane.’
That was a part done for me," said Farrell. "I love
watching her and I liked the way I did it, but I like the way
she does it. So that’s exciting."
Another treat for Balanchine aficionados will be the company’s
performance of "Apollo," that is, Balanchine’s original,
uncut version featuring New York City Ballet Principal Dancer
Peter Boal.
"This is the older version [of ’Apollo’] with the birth
scene so even Peter had to relearn this version because it is
no longer done in the City Ballet version. This is the version
that I prefer and up until ’79 we did. Then Mr. Balanchine decided
to take out the birth section and just have it after the muses
come in and Apollo is already a full-fledged god. (And I have
my reasons for why Mr. Balanchine changed that, but I’m not going
to tell you)," she said with a laugh.
"But we are doing the version Mr. Balanchine first choreographed
in 1928 and the version that Stravinsky composed for. Ultimately
I think it’s the piece Mr. B preferred. And musically it has
the score intact and Balanchine rarely tampered with the music.
"I like [this ’Apollo’]. It is the first version I did.
I don’t relive my past. I’m very happy in my present and I’m
happy to be present in my dancers’ present. But it’s the version
I did when I first got in the company. And I think it solidifies
the music, it sort of explains the music and why it was written
that way. Even in Stravinsky - as it is written - it says ’the
handmaidens,’ ’the birth of Apollo,’ the music is there. It’s
even in Stravinsky’s directives. So I like that continuity.
"I did it when I was 17 and I did it when I was 37. And
I did both versions. And I believe that Balanchine trusted me."
Now that Farrell has donned the mantle of artistic director of
her own company, she has additional worries that say a world-renowned
principal dancer didn’t have, but she takes it all in - in rather
elegant - stride. She is hoping to grow her 34-member company
to 40 members; she would also like to lengthen her company’s
season to 30 weeks (so the dancers won’t have to take outside
employment to support their dancing); and in June 2005, she plans
to stage a revival of Balanchine’s "Don Quixote," which
hasn’t been done since 1977 ("when I last did it"),
said Farrell.
"We do full value and full production ballet and also are
mobile enough to tour and go to venues and cities and audiences
that might not be able to have ballet because the pieces are
too big," said Farrell. "I think that’s wonderful because
not everyone can go to major cities. I came from Cincinnatti
and I saw ballet once a year. I would have like to have seen
more. We’re a perfect example of wanting to bring ballet to everyone.
There are hundreds of thousands of little girls in every little
town who study ballet and they should see quality ballet."
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts
presents Suzanne Farrell Ballet at Brooklyn College’s Walt Whitman
Theater (one block from the junction of Nostrand and Flatbush
avenues) on Oct. 12 at 2 pm. Tickets are $30. For more information,
call (718) 951-4343 or visit the Web site at www.brookl
©2003
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