Once an Inspiration to Balanchine, Suzanne Farrell Now Shows the Way

New York Times

05-05-2025

'Too much energy, too much, too much, too much,' Suzanne Farrell said as she watched Isabella LaFreniere rehearse George Balanchine's 'Chaconne.'
Farrell's direction, calling for more delicacy, softened the edges of LaFreniere's crisp attack. Over the course of an hour, Farrell transformed the pas de deux they were working on — not the haunting one that opens the ballet, but the 'pas de deux proper,' as she described its bravura counterpart — in big and small ways.
There were important Farrell lessons along the way: To stay was to be stuck. To have too presentational an approach was a 'favorite hate.' And to jump with stiffly held arms, as Peter Walker, the male lead in 'Chaconne,' did during a variation, was fighting the body's natural way of moving.
The arms 'don't have to be huge, but they can't be nothing,' she told Walker. 'Nothing is nothing.'
And the opposite of nothing is Farrell, the ballerina whose influence, arguably, looms largest over New York City Ballet. She originated many lead roles in the company for Balanchine — the choreographer called her 'the other half of my apple' — starting with 'Meditation' in 1963, and triumphed in countless others. She feels fortunate that she entered the company when she did.
'I had the benefit of doing all those beautiful ballets that he did before I was born and then the things that we did together,' she said of the man she calls Mr. B. 'So I kind of lived his whole life in my lifetime with him.'
That partnership continues through Farrell's coaching, which she was doing recently at City Ballet, her fifth visit since 2019. 'I still feel he's present,' she said. 'Not in a weird way. But in a very metaphysical kind of way.'
She was happy, she said, to be back. 'The halls of the theater are just like old times, you know, like an old friend,' she said. 'I love what I do, and it's been good to me, and you have to give back. I'm the beneficiary of every dancer that came before me. No one does this alone.'
As for future visits? 'I don't look that far in advance,' she said. 'I always feel that Mr. B is steering me in the direction, and I just go.'
After Farrell retired from dancing in 1989, she worked as a ballet master at City Ballet until 1993; under the leadership of Peter Martins, who had been her frequent dance partner, her contract was terminated. Since Martins's retirement in 2018, a steady stream of former company members have returned to coach under the artistic direction of Jonathan Stafford.
'I love doing this,' Farrell said. 'But I didn't always get a chance to do it. So, naturally, if you don't get a chance, you say, 'I don't want to do that.' But there's a time for everything.'
Originally Farrell resisted coaching. But when she formed her own company, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, which ended in 2017, she found she had to do it — because she had to do everything.
'And that was great because it was very unified,' she said. 'We were small and it was what I call united individuality. But I have to know the person before I can get deep into them to coach. You have to peel away the layers.'
Farrell hasn't worked with everyone at City Ballet, of course — the company is huge — but over the past few years, she has developed relationships with some dancers, notably Mira Nadon, who danced last spring in her staging of 'Errante,' formerly 'Tzigane.' Farrell, who lives in Phoenix, has recently worked with Nadon and others including Walker, Chun Wai Chan and Tiler Peck on a film project in Arizona focusing on Balanchine's pas de deux.
Her approach is not one size fits all. 'Like a writer tries to find the best word for what they want to say, I try to give the dancers, my students, this philosophy: To give them a physical thesaurus of how to dance,' Farrell said. 'When you're young, you sort of masquerade behind the easy things, the legs, and the things that a young person would find impressive. But there's so much more than just that.'
During her week at City Ballet, dancers, if they were free, parked themselves in the studio under a barre to watch Farrell work. Along with 'Chaconne,' she coached 'Errante,' 'Apollo' and 'Vienna Waltzes.' She also taught company class, 'which is important because it prepares you for Mr. B's ballets,' she said. 'You can't do his ballets if you don't train his way.'
Walker, who watched all of Farrell's rehearsals, said that in class she spoke about dancing with the entire body. 'You can't just leave a part behind,' he said. 'It's all coordinated and it's all engaged.'
One thing Farrell insists on, Walker added, is subtlety. That fits with what he hears about 'extreme misinterpretations' of the Balanchine technique, 'how things have become so extreme.' But the reality, he said, is that 'it's not so exaggerated.'
That finely drawn approach was more than evident in the performance of 'Apollo' that opened the company's spring season, with Chan as the god, and Nadon, Miriam Miller and Emily Kikta as the three muses. A lingering, however fleeting, in the choreography's photogenic moments has become ingrained over time. But Farrell emphasized the fluidity of dancing. The music steered the dancers through steps, seemingly reborn, that crystallized two fragile ingredients: simplicity and elegance. Farrell restored the ballet, the oldest in City Ballet's repertory, making it young again.
Chan, who also worked with Farrell on 'Errante,' said: 'If we go with the music, the step is just going to be right, and it feels right. But if we don't listen, if you're trying to learn the step without the music, it's totally a different dynamic.'
As a coach and stager of Balanchine ballets, Farrell is specific, down to earth and in natural possession of the kind of intelligence that goes hand in hand with quick humor.
She isn't short on opinions. 'People are so mirror conscious, which dilutes everything,' she said. 'We're losing épaulement' — the placement of the shoulders and head — 'because everybody's looking in the mirror. I told them today I don't believe you can be an honest performer and spectator at the same time. When you are a performer, you look out of your eyes. When you're a spectator, you take in. If you look in the mirror, you become the spectator and you sap your image. It's like your aura disappears.'
At one point during the 'Chaconne' rehearsal, Farrell, mirroring LaFreniere, bobbed her head up and down like a bird dipping its beak into a fountain. 'Easy, easy,' Farrell said. 'Too many heads, too many heads.'
Even LaFreniere had to laugh. Farrell said later: 'I like her energy, but you don't have to have that kind of energy all the time. This pas de deux is very regal. I don't like that saying 'less is more,' because less is just less.'
She illustrated her point with a story: One day, when Balanchine was teaching class, he had the dancers perform a rond de jambe, or the circular movement of the leg. On the eighth count, he made them stay still. 'People were uncomfortable that there was nothing happening,' she said. 'And he said, 'Silence is a beautiful thing.' And it is, especially in this day and age. Silence has volume. Silence has a sound. It's the absence of movement, but it's the presence of everything else.'
This season Dominika Afanasenkov makes her debut in 'Errante' opposite Chan. The ballet, set to Ravel, has a sultry sensibility in which the female lead is gradually possessed by the music.
'Temperament!' Farrell called out more than once to get Afanasenkov into the right state of mind.
Last year, when Afanasenkov was first rehearsing the ballet, Farrell would tell her to 'dance in red for 'Errante,'' Afanasenkov said, who added that the role felt outside her comfort zone. 'I've never really done anything that fiery.'
'Errante' starts out with a slow walk to a violin solo that builds in rhythmic complexity. 'It's not even a step. It's just walking out, but it feels so revealing,' Afanasenkov said. 'You're the only one on the stage. And you're just walking, and you already have to bring so much emotionally and character wise to that simple walk. If you're not confident in who you are at that moment, it's so clear that you're not and she sees it, too. She just goes, 'No.''
That usually means it's time to start over. 'I was a little bit anxious,' Afanasenkov said, 'and I started going before the music, and she was like, 'You're not listening, you're not reacting to the music.''
In the studio, Farrell would watch the dancers from the front, calling out directions while her feet, still dancing, tapped the floor. Many times, her voice stretched counts into musical notes singing them as a way to imprint the accents into the dancers' minds and bodies. During the 'Chaconne' rehearsal, she held LaFreniere's hands while counting.
'What a special experience to hold Suzanne's hands and truly feel in her bones what it was and what it should be,' LaFreniere said.
A big moment came on the first day in the studio when LaFreniere and Walker were rehearsing the pas de deux that opens 'Chaconne.' Set to ballet music from Gluck's opera 'Orfeo and Euridice,' the ballet was first performed in a 1963 Hamburg State Opera production. For the City Ballet premiere, Balanchine added a new pas de deux, a seamless and shimmering duet that begins with a simple walk to the opera's 'Dance of the Blessed Spirits.' He choreographed it fast, between a matinee and an evening performance.
Farrell asked LaFreniere what she was thinking as she crossed the stage. 'Heaven,' she said. When Farrell came in the next day, she said, ''I don't think you should be thinking about heaven,'' LaFreniere recalled. 'She said, 'Actually it's about Orpheus, it's the underworld.''
That changed everything. LaFreniere shifted her focus downward. 'Everything needed to be a lot quieter, a lot calmer, a lot more grounded,' she said.
Farrell said that she doesn't like to jump on dancers too soon. She tries to see how they will develop their performance or characterization. 'And then I thought, no, you're not in heaven,' she said. 'Not that there's a story, but there has to be drama. You have that beautiful music, and you can feel the pathos of the music, and then they walk in and they just pass. They miss each other, like so many things in life. It's so bittersweet.'
Later, a second pas de deux is full of the kind of classical dancing that transcends time. It is, in her words, 'Just totally different,' she said, punctuating her next thought with a delighted laugh: 'That would be more heaven.'