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Dancing was getting inside my body, emotionally as well as physically. At the dress rehearsal... I suddenly was in the real atmosphere of the theater. I felt all this sort of dust, or feelings of people who had been there before. It was palpable. And I just thought, ‘this is what I wanted to be.’
Ballerina of the Century
As a child, Roberta Sue Ficker of Cincinnati, Ohio never dreamed of becoming Suzanne Farrell, the youngest ballerina in the history of the New York City Ballet. A devotee of tree climbing, dodgeball and playing “dress-up,” she imagined instead that she would work as a clown. Her study of dance began at age eight when it was decided ballet classes might make the little “tomboy” more ladylike.
Her passion for the art was not instantaneous. Tall for her age, she played boys’ roles in school recitals, and preferred tap and acrobatics to ballet, but finally graduated to a tutu at age 12. After her parents divorced in 1954, her mother worked as a nurse to support her three girls, who were constantly practicing and rehearsing at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.
In 1959, Diana Adams, a star dancer of the New York City Ballet (NYCB) and the discovery of choreographer George Balanchine, toured the country scouting talent for the company’s School of American Ballet. Young Suzanne, 15 years old, was selected to audition for the legendary Balanchine. After winning a Ford Foundation Scholarship to attend the School, she relocated with her mother and sister to a one-room apartment on New York’s Upper West Side.
She began by performing an “angel” role inThe Nutcrackeralong with the other students. At the beginning of the 1961-62 season she joined thecorps de ballet of the company. By that summer, she was dancing featured roles. Choreographer John Taras was the first to create a role especially for Farrell inArcade,which premiered in 1963 with music by Igor Stravinsky. Several weeks later, she danced the lead role in a new Balanchine/Stravinsky collaboration,Movements for Piano and Orchestra.She also danced leading roles inAgon, Orpheus,andLiebeslieder Walzer.
Reviewers began to take notice not only of her long, slender body and impeccable technique, typical of the Balanchine-trained dancer, but of her special personal lyricism and spontaneity. In 1965, Balanchine choreographed a new full-length ballet on the theme ofDon Quixote,to a new score by his fellow Russian exile Nicholas Nabokov. Farrell’s performance of Dulcinea, the idealized dream woman of the addled knight, made her a star. The choreographer had created the role especially to take advantage of her magical, mysterious qualities. He was often quoted in the press as saying of his youthful protégé, “She is my muse.”Don Quixote is considered by Ms. Farrell as her breakthrough ballet in terms of pure emotional honesty on stage. This stunning production sealed the unique bond between the young artist and her inspired mentor “Mr. B.”
In 1965, before European and Middle Eastern tours, Ms. Farrell was promoted to principal dancer. In 1966, she undertook her first leading role from the classical repertoire, the Swan Queen in Tchaikovsky’sSwan Lake.This was a version in which Balanchine combined modern inventions of his own with the traditional staging he had learned at the Russian imperial ballet school as a young man in St. Petersburg. Critics now praised her growing maturity, especially in her signature role inDon Quixote. Between seasons, she taught at the University of Cincinnati. In 1967, the NYCB version ofA Midsummer Night’s Dreamwas filmed by Columbia Pictures.
When Farrell married Paul Mejia, another young dancer in the company, relations with Balanchine became strained, and the newlyweds left the New York City Ballet. Ms. Farrell began a second career at Ballet of the 20th Century, the Brussels-based company of the controversial Belgian choreographer Maurice Bejart. Bejart’s lavishly designed, theatrical works were the polar opposite of Balanchine’s cool, abstract, contemplative approach. The first collaboration was in 1970, a pas de deux entitledBach Sonate. It was followed by many others, includingRomeo and Juliet, Fleurs du Mal, Rite of Spring, Bolero,and their two most successful projects,Nijinsky, Clown of GodandLe Triomphe.
In 1975, Farrell returned to the New York City Ballet. She and Balanchine collaborated onChaconne, Vienna Waltzes, Union Jack, Tzigane, Davidsbundlertanze,and his final masterpiece,Mozartiana,The last two ballets Balanchine choreographed were solos for Farrell, ten months before he died in April 1983. That same year, while on a European tour for the Chicago City Ballet, Suzanne Farrell began to experience intense pain in her right hip. Suspecting a pulled muscle, she continued to dance, but her hip grew steadily worse. Unprepared for the professional diagnosis she finally sought, she could not bring herself to speak the doctors’ word, “arthritis.”
Two years later, by the age of 40, she had tried every treatment available, without improvement. Though physically compromised and often in pain, she continued performing for four years. She experienced more difficulty in walking than in dancing — perhaps a miracle for those moments — but her condition deteriorated, necessitating hip replacement surgery. Suzanne Farrell retired from the stage in 1989.
Following her retirement as a performer, Farrell continued to teach and to coach the dancers of the New York City Ballet in many of the roles she had performed, but in 1993, the new director of the company, Peter Martins, abruptly terminated her relationship with the ensemble that had been her artistic home for over 30 years.
In the years that followed, she traveled the world teaching Balanchine ballets to a new generation of dancers and repaying her debt to the man who made her one of the brightest stars of the international dance scene. She became therépetiteur for the Balanchine Trust, an independent organization founded to oversee the licensing and staging of his ballets. Other troupes she has worked with include the Kirov Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet and many American companies.
Since the year 2000, Suzanne Farrell has been a professor of dance at Florida State University. In that same year, she organized the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, which became the resident classical ballet company of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. For over 15 years, she led the company through performances of many works by Balanchine, including revivals of some of his lesser-known works. In 2003, she received the National Medal of Arts, followed by Kennedy Center Honors in 2005.
In 2006, she solidified her role as guardian of the Balanchine legacy formal with the establishment of the Balanchine Preservation Initiative, created to document and preserve the more rarely performed works of her great teacher and mentor. At the end of 2016, she announced that the following year would be the Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s last season, although she has continued her involvement as teacher and guiding spirit of the Kennedy Center’s expanded dance program as well as her work with the Balanchine Preservation Initiative.
In 2019, following Peter Martins’ resignation from the New York City Ballet, Suzanne Farrell returned to the company after an absence of more than 25 years. The news was warmly greeted by the company’s devotees. The company had endured a period of turmoil around Martins’ departure, and Farrell’s return was welcomed as a sign that the NYCB would regain its full glory, and that the company George Balanchine built would preserve his legacy for generations to come.
- Career
- Date of Birth
- August 16, 1945
“I’m thought of as a cool, unemotional dancer, but inside I’m not. As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.”
The most lyrical American ballerina of her generation was a young student from Cincinnati when, at age 15, she first auditioned for the legendary choreographer George Balanchine. She danced a section of Glazunov’s The Seasons,humming her own accompaniment, and the perfectionist was charmed. Her talent shone from the moment she joined the New York City Ballet, where she would became Balanchine’s “inspiring angel” and partner in the development of the most glorious ballets of our time. Over the next 25 years, with her artful manner and dignity, she proved that any movement could be unimaginably beautiful and mysterious.
This “choreographer’s ideal,” critic’s dream and public star has been saluted recently as “simply the greatest dancer of our century… and one of the most important who ever lived.”
Ballerina of the Century
How did a self-described tomboy from Cincinnati ever adapt to the discipline of serious ballet training?
Suzanne Farrell: My feelings started to change when I realized that dancing was getting inside my body, emotionally, as well as physically. And that it was taking on a whole new dimension, and my life was changing, and I had a performance where I got on stage with an orchestra. At the dress rehearsal, there was no one in the audience, but I suddenly was in the real atmosphere of the theater. I looked out at these empty seats. But I felt all this sort of dust, or feelings of people who had been there before. It was palpable. And I just thought, this is what I want to be. And I knew that dancing would be my chosen profession. And I never regretted it. Never regretted the work. Never got over that feeling. Even now when I go in a theater, it is a very special place to be in. The work, and the responsibility that goes along with it, is very special. I am not afraid of hard work or the responsibility.
There are countless young women who, at the age of five or six or seven, are taken by the hand by their mothers to ballet class. Many young women have this experience but very few continue in dance. Why did you keep dancing?
Suzanne Farrell: I learned to love dance for its own sake. The feeling that it gave me—the happiness, the security, the release of my feelings — it made me a person. It brought out in me the person whom I had the potential to become. I think that’s why I loved it for its own sake, not to be a ballerina. On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life. You are with music. You express yourself in a way that you can’t explain, even to your best friend. And it is in a beautiful environment.
When you get on stage, you can be anything. You are removed from reality in a way, the real world. And yet I think that when you are a performer — and for me, a dancer — is when, to me, that is more real. It is not fantasy. It’s a certain amount of pretending, and your hard work and your training and your professionalism. But it’s more real, because I have spent my life in the theater and on stage, and in the classroom. Far from feeling that it is not the real world, I feel that I see the real world more realistically because I see it clearer when I am dancing.
There was a woman who actually discovered you, Diana Adams. Can you tell us that story?
Suzanne Farrell: I had gone to one audition about a month before I was 14. A Canadian company was coming to perform in Kentucky, and a friend of my mother knew the woman who ran the company, and we thought that maybe I could go and audition, not to be in the company, but to get a scholarship in the school. In Cincinnati, Canada was the “big time.” I wanted to have more knowledge and more opportunities in dance. Mother thought this might be good, so I went down there and I auditioned. And I guess I was a failure, because they were not impressed. So I was going to retire as a dancer. Then the following month, we read inDancemagazine that the Ford Foundation had given money to Balanchine to scout around the country and pick promising students, to have either local scholarships at their own school, or to come to New York. My mother thought this was wonderful, and I decided to come out of my “retirement” and face this audition.
I knew Diana Adams was beautiful because I would go to the library and look at the ballet books and pictures, and I was familiar with this very tall, beautiful image. The fact that she was tall was important to me, because I was very tall, and I had been told in a letter from this Canadian Company that I might be too tall to be a dancer. I used to sleep curled up in a ball because I read you grew at night, and I was afraid I would be too tall to be a dancer. When Ms. Adams came to the studio to watch a class in which we were auditioning, I was very happy to see that she was very tall, so all those fears disappeared for me. When it was over, I don’t know how well I did. She didn’t say anything to us. She talked to the teacher and took her own notes.
I had a program from when I went to see the New York City Ballet in Indiana a couple of months prior to that, and I took it to her, and I asked her for her autograph. And she wrote “good luck” on it. And I thought that she was wishing me good luck, or that she thought I would need it desperately, or I don’t know what she meant. But I took it as a very personal message. Good Luck. And that gave me such inspiration and such trust, so she was the person who eventually suggested that I audition, go to New York and audition for a scholarship. Not that I had one, but the fact that she said “good luck” was enough for me to hang onto, and to consider pursuing my dreams. So we went to New York, and of course I did get a scholarship.
She was a wonderful lady. A very elegant person. I learned a lot from her, not so much in what she said, but in what she didn’t say. She didn’t become overly protective, or say “I think you should do this, or dance that way.” She also told me what she knew when she was teaching class, and made suggestions. I think you can make a better impression by suggesting something to someone than telling them what they have to do.
Who had the most influence on your career? Who had the greatest impact on you?
Suzanne Farrell: That’s an easy question. It was, of course, George Balanchine. He came from Russia via Europe and settled in America in 1933. He started a little company which was not very successful, so he had to start over and over again. Ultimately, he founded the New York City Ballet. I happened to be born at the right time, came to the right place, and had the fortune to audition for him, and work with him, because he is the genius of the century of ballet. I learned how to dance with him. I think he was a great philosopher. He had a wonderful theory that you live in the “now,” which I think is important. Along with living in the moment, you also have to assume the responsibility that goes along with it, and you don’t take your position lightly. But it also means that you get the full value of the moment that you are living, so you don’t look back on your life and say, “If only I hadn’t wasted time, if only I had done this.” You do the best you can. It was wonderful to be able to go home after a performance, and think, well it wasn’t maybe so good, but it was the best I could be at that time. Then you have a departure point and some place to go to for the next time. At least you know you tried your best. There is always some kind of progress, and you learn from that situation.
I learned a lot from him, aside from just learning how to dance. Of course, he was quite a bit older that I was. He was 50 years older than I was. I had the benefit of all his experience, all the ballets he did before I was even born, plus the ballets he did when we were working together, up until he died. It was like I lived his lifetime in my short career as a dancer.
It was a great experience. I think you have to respect time very much, and know the time you are living in and that we are all living at the same time, but we are all at different times in our lives, and you have to see that and make the best of it.
There were ballets in the course of your career that have special importance for you. One wasDon Quixote. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Suzanne Farrell: It is a very involved story. As I said, I didn’t read that much in school because I became a dancer and I didn’t have that much time to sit down and read. Nor have the kind of body that would sit still that long. Mr. Balanchine told me that he wanted to do this ballet. He had wanted to do it for quite some time and he felt he had found the person to do it for. It was a departure for him, because it was three acts, and it had a story. It was a novelty for him to do a big three-act ballet with a big story and lots of scenery.
And he created a part for you?
Suzanne Farrell: Yes. I played Dulcinea, his inspiration. It was particularly exciting because the first night he did the part of Don Quixote himself. It was more a character part as opposed to a dancing part. Basically it brought us together in terms of our future collaboration. Up until that point, I still was always in awe of him, and couldn’t say much to him other than “How’s the weather?” “How’s your cat?” or something like that. It really brought us together where our work and our feelings became very important. It was a great ballet. I had a wonderful time. I played many different parts in it.
What did that chance to dance Dulcinea mean to you?
Suzanne Farrell: It was the first time a big ballet like that had been built around me. There were very few dancing roles for our company of 60 dancers. It was basically my ballet, and that of course caused some friction from other people in the company. On the other hand, I also had a job. I was paid as a dancer, and this was my work. He chose me, and living in the moment I was going to get the best out of it. I started to read the book. Couldn’t find myself in the book — a thousand-page book, you know. Finally I went up to him in rehearsal, I had the book, and I said, “I can’t find myself in here, where am I?” And he said, “No, you don’t have to read the book.” So it was the beginning of where I really trusted him. We learned a lot. I believed that anything I needed to know about the ballet would be in his choreography.
From the technical point of view, he started looking at me and asking me to do things that he had never asked someone to do before. It seemed at the time impossible, and yet I realized that it’s not impossible, it’s just different. So “impossible” went out of my vocabulary. I said, “No, I can’t do it today, but let me work on it.” We were always trying and failing, or trying and discovering. When someone believes in you, and you believe in them, it is a very empowering thing to give someone, and a responsibility to have in return. There is just no end to how hard someone is willing to work when you have their belief in you. Technique doesn’t really play as big a part as how you look at the picture, the part that you play in the picture. I learned a lot from that ballet. I also learned how to dance.
There is another ballet that is important to you:Tzigane.
Suzanne Farrell: In the early days of my career, I was always this virginal girl in white. I liked that, but the tomboy in me always wanted to be a little contrary. I used to wish that I could play the black swan instead of the white swan, or the evil girl instead of the good girl. So when I came back to the company, this was the first thing Mr. Balanchine did for me. I was curious to know how he would see me. Tzigane means “gypsy,” it’s Hungarian. I thought he’d give me something very technical, but the first thing he had me do is sort of mosey on stage in this sort of indifferent quality. I thought this was very strange. “I’m not sure if I want to look like this. What are people going to think? They expect me to dance.” And then I said, “No, he’s always presented you very well, and you believe in him. Let’s try something that hasn’t been done before.” So we started working on this ballet. It was a lot of fun to be a gypsy. By then Mr. Balanchine and I had become comfortable with each other, and frequently he would say, “Oh, you know what I want. You fill in.” That was very nice of him, but also a big responsibility. Because it had to look like what he might do, be in the same flavor, and the same character as what he might do, and wonderful that he trusted me enough to say, “Oh, Suzie, you do it.” It was quite thrilling, and gave me a lot of freedom in a world that has a lot of discipline. At one part in the choreography, he said, “Oh just stand here and do something, and then start turning.”
As the ballet starts out, I’m dancing to a solo violin. There is not even a conductor. I don’t even see the violinist. He’s down in the pit, and there is just a single spotlight on my face. The rest of the stage is dark, so it is very lonely. In fact, it is probably the loneliest I’ve ever been. Even lonelier than walking down the streets of New York by yourself. To be in front of people, you have to look interesting, have to go from one side of the stage to the other, portray something, but you don’t even have the sound of an orchestra to fill the void. Just this one lonely violin and myself. I start to dance. And it stays this way for about five minutes. It was a long solo. Just before the ballet changes, and I am supposed to do this step, and pantomime, and then turn like a whirlwind before my partner is to come in, the violinist got carried away, and he started playing extra music, and I didn’t know what to do! So I reached into my bag of tricks, and I put my hand out and I pretended that I was a fortune teller, writing down a fortune on the palm of my hand. And that became the choreography. And now people would look for that in the ballet, but that was not choreographed. That happened at the moment when I had extra music left over and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing! And so I said, “Well I’m going to write my fortune.” And that’s what I did and by then it was time for the next part of the ballet. It’s remained in the ballet and has become one of the signatures of that particular ballet. That was a lot of fun.
A lot has been written about it but, in your own words, how would you describe your relationship with Mr. Balanchine?
Suzanne Farrell: He of course was my teacher. He was my friend. I believe also in destiny. I think we were meant to be together. That we both had chosen these professions, he from Russia and me from Cincinnati. It’s so strange that our orbits should intercept. We both wanted to work in ballet. So, we became very close. We were very much in love with each other in many ways. And I think that if it hadn’t been that way we wouldn’t have gone on to do the work that we did. We were both very professional. He could work with other people, and I could work with other people, but it was important in the whole scheme of things that we have this great love for each other. And it was devastating at times, but I tell you, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I wouldn’t change any of my life. I’d live it all over again the same way.
What are some of the hardships you’ve had to endure along the way, some of the obstacles you’ve had to overcome?
Suzanne Farrell: Well, I’ve had injuries, but I’d always get out on stage because I think the body is a wonderful thing, and you have to treat it with respect. We haven’t even reached our potential for what we can do as human beings. I went through a period where I had hip trouble. I thought it was just a typical pulled muscle, so I used liniment, and warmed up more than I thought was necessary, all the things we learn to do when you have a typical dance-related injury or sore muscle. Over the months, it didn’t go away. In fact, it got worse. Eventually I realized that I had a very serious problem, and it was the first time that dance had let me down. What had been my salvation and my security with my body was abandoning me. This was emotionally and physically devastating.
It took me a long time to admit that I had arthritis, and that it was not going to ever get better. But strangely enough, when I got on stage, I had no pain, because the moment when I was out there was so important and the “now” of the situation was the only thing that mattered, that my body rallied somehow. We have these powers within us, you know, endorphins. The body can do amazing things in a situation when it is really called upon. And so I remained dancing and performing so that I didn’t have the pain. Even though the same movements in the classroom would be painful, somehow in a performance situation it was not. I went several years in that situation, and I was happy, because by then I was told that I would have to have an operation. You can’t dance with an artificial hip. It was important to me to stay dancing as long as possible, because I knew that once I had the operation I would not be able to dance again. So I was happy. I had to curtail and alter my repertoire. I couldn’t do everything that I used to. But I was dancing and I was happy. There were emotional times. I tell my students, “You have to learn to dance even when you don’t feel like it. Because most of the time you might not feel like it.” But the amazing thing is that, when you start to dance, everything seems wonderful, and puts it in perspective.
How did you decide to go through with the operation?
Suzanne Farrell: By the time I admitted that I needed a hip operation, I had denied it for so long that it was a breakthrough to suddenly say, “I need this.” I knew I would probably never dance again, but I had no choice. By that time, I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to walk down the street without limping. I couldn’t tie my shoes. I couldn’t put slacks on. I was the farthest thing from a person who ever could dance and do all those extremely incredible extensions and contortions that we do.
I had no choice and so I had the operation. I was very happy when I went in, and happy when I came out. Because suddenly I saw that I would live my life, instead of watch it go by, which was the way it had become lately in that situation. And so, of course, the doctor said I would never dance again. But I wanted to. But I didn’t think about dancing again, I just thought about getting well. I put all my energies into the moment that I was now living in, and that was getting well. And I thought, if God wanted me to dance, He will let me dance.
As it happened, it was a long process, and slow, and interesting if not as fast-paced as the kind of life I was used to living. Finally I got back on my feet, and I was walking. People were curious to know what was going to happen to me now. I was giving a little speech, which was the first time I publicly admitted what had happened to me, and the reason why I was speaking was because I was a dancer, but I was speaking as a person who may never dance again.
One of the hardest things that I ever had to do was to be in a situation where I suddenly didn’t have any real control or any of the stability or security that I had always with the dancing. But I had just recently gotten off crutches and I was determined to walk up to this platform and give this speech, in high heels, even if I was slightly listing to one side, and tell these people about what it was like to be a dancer. And what it was like to be a dancer who couldn’t dance any more. And I remember I started to cry because, first of all, I wanted to make my point. I could be admired as a dancer, but I also wanted to be admired as a person. And I said to them that I had to work very hard to become a dancer, but now I had to work even harder to get back any little thing, just to be able to walk, let alone dance.
I wasn’t embarrassed by that. It didn’t really matter. I would be the best that I could be with what I had. If I didn’t dance, I hoped that I would have the conviction and the moral commitment and the courage to let go of something that I couldn’t do any longer, and to do the best that I could do with what I had. I think that was very important for me to say. And it works.
I tell my students, “The act of thinking about something is almost doing it.” If you think positively that you can do it, you are already closer than if you didn’t even try to do it. I think it was a big step for me. Consequently, I did get back onstage. I did dance again. In a different capacity, and not with the range of motion that I had, but I got back onstage. Not to prove a point, not to be some sort of oddity, or hero, but because I wanted to quit myself. I had felt that I sort of had the rug pulled out from underneath me by my hip, and that I also knew that I would be better if I had a goal to reach. I didn’t care really, whether I ever got out onstage again, I only knew that I had to try. That I would be unhappy, I would be unhappy if I didn’t try, but I would not be unhappy if I tried and failed. And so, that was my impetus to get out on stage again and to dance again.
Was this something you always wanted to do, or did it just happen? Was dance always what you wanted?
Suzanne Farrell: No, not in the beginning. I was very much of a tomboy. So dancing was not something I had a great desire to do. In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child. One would come to town maybe once a year. So I think it is rather strange that I got into ballet, something that I hadn’t seen. But what was my motivation was music, and the fact that I love to move around. I’m always moving around. And I think it was important that I learned to love to dance eventually for its own sake, as opposed to wanting to be a ballerina. Because I think it made me realize that there was a lot of hard work involved before you get to be a ballerina. And I never lost loving the actual work that was involved in it. But then, of course, I got on stage and I decided then that I wanted to be a dancer.
You have been quoted as saying that you didn’t want to be a ballerina. You wanted to be a dancer. What does that mean?
Suzanne Farrell: That the work involved, the willingness to take chances, the commitment, the opportunity to get on stage and make people happy, was more important than becoming famous, or even what I was dancing. The particular ballet was not so important as the fact that I was physically healthy, and capable of getting out there and dancing as often as possible.
Let’s get back to your beginnings. What were you like as a kid?
Suzanne Farrell: Very adventurous. Fearless, which I guess was good, ultimately, in having to get out on stage. I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother’s or your grandmother’s dresses and high heels. I had two sisters, and we would love to get dressed up and pretend that we were chic, sophisticated ladies. And I think that was a great sort of preparation, in a way. Rather theatrical, and something that was a lot of fun to do, and in a way it translated into getting on stage, where you dress up and you become someone other than who you are. We used to put on little shows in the basement for the neighborhood people, and of course no one would come. Who would want to see what we had to offer? But we took them very seriously, and we gave these performances.
What about your home life? I know it wasn’t always easy.
Suzanne Farrell: No, but coming from the Midwest I had a great background, I think. We had a big backyard. There were trees. I was always climbing them. There were lots of opportunities to go to sports events, and things like that. I had a wonderful childhood, coming from Cincinnati, and I think that it was great going into the life that I was going to have, where you have to start young as a dancer. You don’t have the opportunity to really lead a normal life, like most young teenagers do. I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance.
Were there any particular problems or difficulties that you recall?
Suzanne Farrell: Yes. My mother was very interested in giving her daughters the advantage of music and dance, if we had an interest in it. My father was not. He thought it was really unnecessary. It cost money, which we didn’t have. And ballet in America was still quite a young profession, and a novelty. There weren’t companies in every city like there are now. He thought it wasn’t a very practical adventure, and didn’t require a formal education, and he was adamantly against it. So, it was a great controversy. There was no support there. Eventually, my parents divorced. I was grateful that I had dancing to fall back on. It was my survival tactic. It was my friend. It was always there. I could work out a lot of my emotions by going to class and dancing. I never felt lonely. I’m grateful that I had ballet to get me through those days. In fact, even when I became famous, it was a great friend to have. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to dance, to tell your body what you want it to do. You tell your leg to go up, and it goes. Not without a lot of hard work in the beginning, but the fact that you tell yourself what you want to do, is a wonderful form of security to me. I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do. You respond, and it works.
What was school like for you?
Suzanne Farrell: School was fun. I loved tests because it was another form of competing, a healthy competition. I liked to have to think on the spot. I never worried too much about whether I would pass or not. I liked math. Counting was easy for me, which was good, because a lot of the ballets have involved difficult counts. I liked spelling. I liked anything that has a big problem to solve. History was not too interesting to me. I liked to read but, being a dancer, I didn’t have a lot of time to read.
What did you like to read? Were there any books, or teachers, that influenced you, or that were memorable for you?
Suzanne Farrell: Of course, in the art class, I was the model. I had long stringy hair. They knew I was a dancer, and they thought that was wonderful to have this profile with this long ponytail. So I feel that I am personally responsible for all these artists learning how to draw a ponytail. I liked Latin, I like languages, I liked all the myths, and the Roman tales that we were required to translate in Latin, and all these interesting people who were never quite what they thought they would be or seemed to be. I was quite theatrical, and very imaginative. That worked very well for the type of world that I went into.
How did it happen that you went to that first dance class?
Suzanne Farrell: My first class started because my two older sisters were in them. One in dance and one in piano. We lived an hour away from town, where the Clark Conservatory was, and my mother had to take me along in the car. So I would always be fidgeting, you know, while my sisters were having their lessons. The ballet teacher came up and said to my mother that, “You really should have your daughter enrolled in some of these classes. It might give her some poise and help her to sit still, and make your life easier.” So I started dance.
We had acrobatic, and ballet, and tap, and I much preferred acrobatics, being an extension of my tomboyishness. I liked tap, because I liked hearing the results of my movements. I didn’t care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn’t feel like I wanted to do. It didn’t interest me until the steps got more involved and I began to get it into my body. I saw that this indeed had quite a bit of self-expression. It was not as uniform as I thought it was, and I started organizing my own little ballet company. I was the boss because I was the tallest. But along with that went responsibility. I had to make ballets for the girls that were going to be in my company. I was very tall as a young girl, and there were no boys in the ballet school. So whenever the recital would come along, I was always the prince, never the princess. I think that’s one reason why I wasn’t too crazy about ballet in the beginning. I never got those pretty tutus. But of course all that changed.
What was it like for a 15-year-old from Cincinnati to come to New York City? What did that look and feel like to you?
Suzanne Farrell: It was quite simple. The only thing that my mother and my sister and I wanted to do, at that time in our lives, was to come to New York and further our training. We got here, and we were, of course, typical tourists. Saw everything, did everything. I had a wonderful childhood in Cincinnati, but my mother had realized that if we wanted to further our training and become professionals, we had to come to New York. Fortunately, she was willing to come. She was more than happy to come. My sister was a very talented pianist. We lived in a tiny one-room apartment, but we were happy. We really lived at the piano, or at the dance studio. I think my work gave me a flexibility that I would not have had. Even thought it is very channeled, and you have to be committed and work very hard, and eliminate some things in your life, it also gives you a flexibility because you have to admit what’s important in your life at that time. It doesn’t mean that it has to last forever. To me, forever is as long as it lasts, as long as you are still productive and you still are the best you can be. I think that was important, and it wasn’t important whether I became famous, I just wanted to be the best that I could be. So you are always in competition with yourself, and not someone else.
Diana Adams helped bring you to New York City Ballet. You replaced her in a ballet a few years after that, didn’t you?
Suzanne Farrell: Yes. She was very much Mr. Balanchine’s idea at that time of what he wanted his female dancers to look like, the long line. She had beautiful long legs. She was very good with the Stravinsky ballets, Mr. Balanchine had started working on a Stravinsky ballet calledMovements for Piano and Orchestra. She and Jacques d’Amboise were to have the leads. It was a small ballet. This music had never been played in America before. It was very atonal, even to people who knew Stravinsky. And she became pregnant. She had always wanted a child and had never been successful in having a full-term pregnancy, so this was very special to her, and she told Balanchine that her doctor advised her not to dance, not to even move. Balanchine lost all interest in the ballet. The premiere was in one week. Stravinsky was coming over from Germany. He was going to attend the premiere. It had already been advertised in the papers. It was a very big disaster that this had happened.
Jacques and I had done a few lecture-demonstrations together for different churches and things. He knew that I could learn quickly, and that I would get out there and try my best, regardless of what the outcome was. He suggested to Balanchine that Suzanne learn it. Mr. Balanchine was not very interested, but Jacques coaxed him into allowing him to take me over to Diana’s. She taught me, literally, while she was reclining on the chaise. It was a small living room. There was no recording of the music at that time. You couldn’t dance on the parquet floor. I was just in my bare feet with her coffee table moved to the side and she was telling me things, and he was telling me things, all to no music, just to counts. It was the most bizarre way, the vaguest way of learning something that would be so physical. On the other hand, I learned something, and we showed it to Mr. Balanchine the next day. He thought it was close enough or interesting enough that maybe we wouldn’t have to cancel the premiere, and he would work from there. He started to work and eventually things came together, and I did the ballet. It was great fun, and a great success. I think I am the only person who learned that ballet under the circumstances that I did. It was a great opportunity for me. It was the beginning of many ballets, many roles of hers that I would eventually learn.
That was an inspirational story. I think it’s a reflection of the kind of courage you need to be a performer, to be a dancer.
Suzanne Farrell: I was still trying to finish high school, which was always a problem between my mother and me. She wanted me to finish high school. I wanted to do what she wanted, because I still didn’t know that I would have this great career in ballet, and it’s important to get your education. Finally, I started learning more roles, and I just went to her one evening and cried. I said “Mother I just can’t do it.” By that time maybe she thought that I might have a career as a dancer.
The first big rehearsal we had, I was coming from having an exam at my school. I was a little late to rehearsal. I thought that I would just have to apologize because I had to take this exam. But I walked into the studio, and there was a film crew from Germany, lights, cables all over the place, Stravinsky sitting in the center of the studio, Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, all of these people. I was late, and they were all waiting for me. I was devastated. The rehearsal didn’t go very well. No one except Jacques and I knew the choreography. I was embarrassed that I had been so inadequate. After it was over I went up to Mr. Balanchine—we still were only speaking about the weather at this point.
I said, “You know, I don’t think you should let me do this ballet. I’m just not ready for it.” And that was not a terribly sensible thing for someone to say, given this great opportunity. I mean, I could have really talked myself out of having this wonderful situation. But I felt that I was not ready, that I just wasn’t good enough, especially since there were so many other better dancers than I was. And he said to me—he clasped his hands like this, and he said, “Dear, you let me be the judge.” And I thought to myself then, well, if he believes in me that much, then I’ll let him be the judge to the exclusion of everyone else. And so it was the beginning of a great understanding. Which is something you have to have in a creative situation. And it made me realize that if he thought I could do it, then I won’t let him down.
Were there ever times when you wanted to rebel, or react against all this discipline?
Suzanne Farrell: No, never. Strangely enough, being such a tomboy, and being so—as my mother says—spoiled as a child, once I started dancing and in a way growing up, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was when I really had no reason to be as a child. When you work, it’s a laboratory. The dance studio, when we were working together, was the place where you experiment. I’m not intimidated by failure or making a mistake, because you learn from those situations. You don’t learn from a situation where you do something well. You enjoy it and you give yourself credit, but you don’t really learn from that. You learn from trial and error, trial and error, all the time. When you fail, maybe you failed in that particular instance, but you have discovered something else. A lot of the ballets that we went on to do were built around mistakes that we had made in the classroom. So you never throw anything out. Rebelling takes up energy. As a dancer, you don’t have that kind of energy to throw away. So I’m not an argumentative person. I’d rather use that temperament to be productive.
There is this image of the prima ballerina, of temperament.
Suzanne Farrell: That’s different from being temperamental. You have to have temperament, because it is part of emotion. Ballets require every emotion you can have, to get your point across, or to move differently. When you are happy you move differently than when you are sad. That’s why it is important to keep yourself in a good frame of mind so that you can be open to all the options that might come your way. To me, getting out on stage is like true confessions. If you feel like you don’t want to be there, you will look like you don’t want to be there. No matter how professional you are, you can masquerade for a time, but people feel what you are feeling eventually, and it becomes very apparent. Temperamental is not good, but you have to have temperament.
No matter how brilliant you were the night before, how many keys to cities you got, whatever happens to you—and it’s all very nice to be accepted and be appreciated, because we want to entertain, we want to make people happy—you go the next morning, and you take class, and you start over and you do exactly what the babies do. To me it’s very humbling and it puts things in a great perspective. You go back, and you start out exactly like the first-year students do. Then of course your class changes and you build, but I think it is a wonderful paradox. It brings you back to your roots. You always have a fresh departure point. You weren’t staying in a situation that had already occurred, you were starting a new life every morning when you went class. That’s very invigorating and sobering. You can allow it to teach you, or you can let it threaten you. Different people handle it in different ways. I decided that I would let what happened to me teach me, instead of traumatize me.
Did you ever imagine that one day you would return to Cincinnati and be given a key to the city?
Suzanne Farrell: No, of course not. That’s all wonderful, and it’s great to meet people now, at this point in my life. When you are on stage, you don’t see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across. And hopefully they are sending a message back. And it is a wonderful feeling. I enjoy meeting people at this point in my life. But no, I never, never expected all these things to happen to me. I don’t know where my life went. I still feel like a 15 year-old girl coming to New York. Dancing does that to you. I think it keeps you really young.
What is a typical day for a dancer?
Suzanne Farrell: I like to get up early in the morning and read. It’s the only time I have to be me, before I become the dancer part of me. Sometimes I would go to the theater and sit in my dressing room, and put on the shoes that I would be dancing in. My feet, which had maybe gotten big overnight, could get a little more small so that when I went into the studio I could put on my pointe shoes and be the best I could be from the moment I start out. That way you don’t use half of class to wake up. I would go to class every morning. You didn’t wake up and say, gee, what am I going to do today? There was no decision. I knew that I would go to the theater, see my friends, but most important I would work, and be happy in that. It was great to know that I had a place to go every morning.
No matter how much you may have achieved, no matter how much celebrity you might have attained, every day you went to class?
Suzanne Farrell: I always went to class. Again, I liked the work that went into dancing. People have to realize there is a lot of fun. It seems very glamorous, and that’s true, it’s wonderful. To me it is like no other profession in the world. But there is constant work. All your life, before you can even get out on stage. If you only live for the performances, you will never learn how to dance. Also, you have to make your body respond, even when it doesn’t want to.
Some mornings you would wake up and say, oh boy, I really don’t feel like going to class. I don’t want to dance. I mean, I got depressed. I didn’t always want to dance every day of my life. But somehow I knew that I had to get myself to the theater to study, to take class, because I think better when I am in the environment that I have spent most of my life. And I always thought better when I was working, thought clearer when I was working. And so, no matter how much I didn’t want to go to the theater when I seemingly woke up in the morning, I always said, well, go and see how you feel. And usually by the time I started moving around and dancing, I would feel good. Some of the mornings that I felt the worst, were the days that I would have the best performances. So you just never know what the day has in store for you. So you always have to be optimistic and say, go and see what happens. Or live this moment as it comes.
A lot has been written about the sacrifice, the pain of the ballet world, of what it takes to be a dancer.
Suzanne Farrell: There is pain and sacrifice in everyone’s world. That’s why, when I was dancing, I had no pain. You have the choice of looking at the donut, or the hole in the donut, and I chose to devour the donut. It’s how you look at things. Yes, there are injuries. But there are injuries in everything. Yes, I got depressed. But you work yourself out of that. When I look back, I have to really put my mind to work to think about what was painful, because I don’t really remember. It’s not the uppermost thing in my mind. It’s not the way my scale of happiness is balanced. It’s just not that important.
Something else a performer has to endure is criticism, either from your peers in your company, or from reviewers. How do you deal with that?
Suzanne Farrell: Everyone deals with it a little differently. I started getting parts when I was quite young, so I got criticized when I was quite young. Everyone wants to be liked. People can have an opinion, but somehow when it’s written in a newspaper or magazine and it’s right there for everyone to read, it’s a little different than if it was just verbal. In the beginning I got good reviews, and then occasionally something was not so nice. Those are the ones I saved, because I found them interesting. But again, I was lucky to have Mr. Balanchine. I put my trust in him as a choreographer, as a person who would not put me out there if I looked bad, because that would be a reflection on him, and he wants the best. So I decided that I would trust him, and listen to him only. It kept me from having to account to other people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But if you ask ten people, you get ten different opinions. I decided to just trust Mr. Balanchine. Of course, his standards were very high, and they became my standards. I just said, “Well, I thought it was good, I did my best,” or “This wasn’t so good, I have to work more on that.” It keeps you from going crazy.
I don’t believe you can be an honest performer and a spectator at the same time. You have to choose who you listen to very carefully. It takes different eyes to be a spectator. Now that I don’t dance so much, I have to reverse the way I look at things, so my whole sense of evaluating a situation is different. But I think critics have to respect the feelings of the person as much as the facts, and report them with responsibility.
Having achieved so much at such a young age, and having had this relationship with Balanchine, what about professional jealousies within your field?
Suzanne Farrell: I know they existed. By nature I’m a shy person. I guess it’s partly from my background. Coming to New York, it was just my mother and my sister and I, and we didn’t have money to go to movies and socialize, so I was very isolated. Most of that by choice, because dancing is, in a way, a solo. You don’t need someone to improve your own dancing. You can do it all by yourself. By nature, I’m a singular person. When I wanted friends, I didn’t have too many friends because I was put into this position where I was getting all these roles. Of course, I could understand their envy. I probably would have felt the same way if the shoe was on the other foot. But Balanchine ran his company the way he wanted to, and that was his choice. In the early stages of my career, there was a lot of competition. There were a lot of good girls around, and it was a wonderful time to be a dancer.
I think it takes away a lot of energy, to be wishing you were doing something else. People ask what my favorite ballet is. It’s the one I’m doing at that moment. It’s ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living. You haven’t lived in the moment that you are really living, you are wishing you were somewhere else.
Did you ever have any fears or doubts about one, your choice of career, or two, your ability?
Suzanne Farrell: I didn’t have any doubts about my choice of career, but I had constant doubts about my ability, yes.
How did you overcome it?
Suzanne Farrell: By working. How do we know what our ability is, until we get in there and work? Just like scientists. They have blown laboratories up many times before they have made a great discovery. We have to do that. What’s exciting in life is that you have options. There are some dancers who like to rehearse, and people I guess do this in life. They rehearse how they are going to live. And that’s sad to me. I always rehearse differently, because the moment is different. Maybe, come time to do this ballet, you are going to be very unhappy, and so that will affect you. You get out there and you smile, but your feelings internally are different. Maybe the music will be played too fast, or too slow. The wonderful thing about life it that there will always be variables. You have to see them and be aware of them to know how to react to them. Otherwise, you are living every day the same.
I would rehearse it differently each time. Maybe it would be awful, but it would be an option, so that when I got out on stage, if the dictates of the moment required it, I had what I called my bag of tricks that I had been through, and you just store them up for the time when they will come in handy. Otherwise, you are rehearsing an opinion, if you do it the same way all the time. If you rehearse the ballet the same way all the time, if you write the same essay, if you draw the same little ponytail, if you do everything the same, you are rehearsing an opinion, and before you know it, you can’t change.
Ballet is interesting. You have to start young, you have to work hard, and yet every minute you are working to get better, you are using up your body, your instrument, which you want to preserve so you can dance longer. It’s not even as if you have a violin and you put it in a case, and it stays good for one hundred years because it is made out of expensive wood. Your body is a thing you have to live with. You go shopping, you walk the dog, you do everything. You want to work as fast as possible, so you don’t have to over-rehearse and use up the instrument. You want to keep in as good health as possible so you can dance longer.
Can you describe the feeling you have when you are in the wings, waiting for your cue, and you hear the music and you enter the stage?
Suzanne Farrell: Before I go out, I have these feelings of insecurity, this “what am I going to do?” feeling. Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don’t quite know how I’m going to do them, because I haven’t lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited. Nervous, not so that I can’t dance, but excited with nerves because I love to do what I am doing. The minute I get out there, I realize that I’m more in control than I thought I was. Because there is no turning back. It’s when we think we can turn back that we don’t make good decisions, or we don’t try hard enough. It’s when you jump off the cliff that you are suddenly in control, in a way that you don’t have prior to that.
People think that you get out there, and you become someone else—a particular part, Dulcinea or the gypsy—and that the whole rest of the world doesn’t exist, it’s oblivious to you. But that’s not true. Yes, you don’t see a lot of things that are going on around you, but you very much know what is happening in this world that you are in. You can’t get lost in this dream world. I’ve had situations where my partner has forgotten to come in, to catch me. So you have to think on the spot. I’ve fallen down onstage. Believe me, you don’t know how fast you can move, how quick you can think, and how smart you can become, until you are in a situation where you have fallen, and people are looking at you. Those are the situations that you learn from. Some of these things that have happened on stage translate into my life, especially now that I don’t dance anymore. If I can handle something like that in front of people looking at me, then I feel I can handle anything. Maybe I don’t know how, but I know I can, and that’s very good.
You’ve had this commitment since childhood. Looking back on it, is there anything you wish you had done, or that you regret not having done? Have you missed out on something?
Suzanne Farrell: Well, if I said I didn’t that would sound a little self-congratulatory. On the other hand, I chose to live in the moment and yes, I made a commitment. You don’t make a commitment and then change your mind.
What is the cost of achievement in that light? What price do you have to pay?
Suzanne Farrell: I don’t look at it in that way. I chose to be a dancer. You don’t only choose the good things; the other things come along. It’s part of life. I know I was depressed and unhappy, and I know I had injuries and pain, but I don’t remember them. To me there was really no cost. You have to work at being happy, and you have to work at being depressed. Some people love to be depressed. I choose to be happy and to work, and that gives you something to hold onto when the rest of your life is falling apart. Life is very valuable. You have to know your worth and you have to work as hard as you can, and you have to live through the hard times. They have their value.
Especially for performers, you reach a certain age when you can’t do what you used to be able to do. How tough are those adjustments as you get older, in this profession, this art that you have committed your life to?
Suzanne Farrell: It was tougher when I saw it coming, because I abandoned my philosophy, and I didn’t live as fully in the now because I saw my “now” that I loved so much coming to an end. I was devastated that I couldn’t dance forever, because I never got tired of my work, I never got bored with it, I never lost the commitment, I never didn’t want to dance. I don’t know where all that time went to. But I saw it coming to a close, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was lost. Strangely enough, on the last performance, it was so easy, because it was the last. I would still wake up, I would still be a dancer. I wouldn’t be dancing anymore, but I will always be a dancer. In a way it hadn’t really changed. I hear music and I wish I could dance.
I had the opportunity to go to Russia and to teach them a ballet of Balanchine’s, and it was good to have something like this to fall back on. I had to suddenly learn 19 parts instead of only one part. I was responsible for the men, the women, and I don’t speak Russian. I was going to a country that was strange. It was exciting to do this in my profession. It was also going to be my acid test—whether I would survive as a non-dancing person. Would I be able to tell them everything that I learned? Would I be open enough to give away all my secrets, or open to them my bag of tricks? Just how generous would I be in a situation where I couldn’t do it anymore? So I went, and I was so happy, because I learned things that I never would have learned if I had physically been dancing them.
We learned to communicate by our energy, by our eyes. I could feel, in the beginning, they didn’t want to accept a foreigner coming over and telling them something that they thought they did better. It was the closest thing to an audition that I had ever been to in my life. At this stage in my life I had to audition, now that I don’t dance anymore. Yet, it all worked out so wonderfully. Eventually I got an interpreter and I told them I trusted them. I told them exactly what had changed me as a dancer, that somebody believed in me. Over the course of days, they learned the ballet. It was not without incidents, and lack of organization, and all the things that go on with being in a country like Russia and trying to get some organization. But I tell you, come time for the performance, I sat out front, I was excited for them in the same way that I got excited when I danced. I didn’t want to be up there. I was just as happy being out there watching. I was happy for them to have this responsibility and this opportunity. I not only taught them a ballet, but I also taught myself that I can survive, that I can be happy not dancing. People want to be happy, and they want to work. They will do almost anything for you if you say “I believe you.” When I say “I trust you,” that’s gotten me farther than one hundred classes or any kind of formal training at all. The more you teach, the more you learn.
What do you say to students say, “Ms. Farrell what should I do, to be what you are?”
Suzanne Farrell: I say that what you are is you. No one has your eyes, no one has your face. That’s so uniquely yourself that you have to try to be the best you can be, and the clearest picture of who you are. You should never want to be someone else. You can learn from me, as we all do, that is what passing it on is. That is what we call tradition. You have to make it in the present and you have to be who you really are. We all know our profession, we know our craft. We go to school, we all can do something. But no one can do it like you do. You have to find yourself, and be the best you can be, which has infinite possibilities.
What do you hope to achieve in the future? What do you look forward to?
Suzanne Farrell: Working. I am a worker, and the more I am doing, the better I am. The less you do, the less you want to do. I have to satisfy my physical capacity as well as my emotional capacity, and in a way it is like starting over again. I feel I’ve done it, but now I’m doing it again because I like to teach, and I’m happy doing that. I find people fascinating. No two people are alike. I have to find their problems so that I can teach them. You don’t just teach somebody how to dance. They can dance or they can’t, but you have to find out what their dilemma is, so that you can teach for them, so they can become better. You have sort of a problem on top of a problem. I enjoy staging ballets. I love the theater, so I wouldn’t mind trying some drama. I’m open to suggestions. I’m sure the next forty years of my life will be as exciting as the last forty, but they are not as clear right now, as when I was a dancer. But, anything can happen. I believe in mystery, and miracles. I just know I have to be working.
Your relationship with cats has not gone unnoticed… and your papier-mache cat that I understand you have taken to performances all over the world. What is this?
Suzanne Farrell: His name is Mr. Lucky. I named him Mr. Lucky in 1960. In Cincinnati, my best friend and I pricked our fingers and mixed our blood. We were blood sisters, and we sealed this friendship for life. She made this cat for me before I came to New York to audition. It was a cute little black cat with ears. Anyway, this was my good luck piece-my talisman. He has been with me all over the world, always on my dressing table. He has lost both his ears, he has not much of a face, but he has always been there with me. And then I have of course other cats.
You seem to have an affinity with cats.
Suzanne Farrell: It started out like that because Balanchine liked cats. He had what he thought was the most famous, talented cat that could jump. I was doing Titania inA Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is where, as in Shakespeare, she falls asleep, and then wakes up in this dream and she is in love with Bottom the Weaver, who has been transformed by magic into a donkey. She wakes up and she loves him. I was only 17 or 18, and I didn’t have quite the right quality that Mr. Balanchine wanted for this part. I mean, how many people dance with a donkey?
He said at the end of rehearsal, “Don’t you have an animal at home that you talk to, or someone that you love and play with?” And I said, “No, Mr. Balanchine.” And he said “Oh, that’s too bad. I have a wonderful little cat, and he is a great jumper and cats are very interesting.” So I went home that evening with my school books and stopped at the delicatessen. You know, every New York deli has at least one cat. This cat had kittens, so I asked the owner if I could buy one. He said “No, you can have one.” So I took one, and brought her home and named her Bottom, and started practicing on this cat, that quality that he wanted. That was the beginning of my cats. At one time I had perhaps ten cats. But she was my best friend. We grew up together. She was the one I confided in when I didn’t have any friends in the company. Next to God, this cat knew more about me than anybody. She was really wonderful. When she thought I was on the right track, she would sit there and purr and listen to me, and when she thought I was wrong, she would go hiiissssss. She would spit at me. She was very human.
Have you had to sacrifice a personal life in order to achieve these career successes? Have you been able to balance a professional life and a personal life? How do you look back on that?
Suzanne Farrell: I think, far from ballet eating into your life and not allowing you to have a life, I think it has given me a better quality of life. It has helped me to be much more balanced, I think, than I would have been without it. I don’t feel the things I have given up. I probably wouldn’t have wanted them anyway. It was a choice. I am consumedwith my work. It doesn’t consumeme. It fills me with a great feeling of who I am and what I want to do. I think there is a timing for everything. I think you can have everything in life that you want, but not all at the same time.
True. Thank you. You were wonderful.
Thank you.
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