Farrell, Morris, Masters, and Masterpieces

Abstract

Farrell, Morris, Masters, and Masterpieces Jay Rogoff (bio) Middle-aged dance fans like myself sometimes fantasize about what the New York City Ballet would look like under a co-directorship of Peter Martins and Suzanne Farrell—or even under Farrell's sole reign. They consider one of the company's misfortunes the fact that this pair of supreme dancers, who formed one of ballet's historically great partnerships in the late 1970s and early 1980s, could not sustain their visionary working relationship as interpreters of George Balanchine's choreographic legacy after Farrell's 1989 retirement. Martins, the master's chosen heir, had been running the company since Balanchine fell ill in 1981—he died in 1983—and in 1993, after a few years in which Farrell served NYCB in only limited teaching and coaching capacities, the company dismissed her. Whatever differences with Martins forced her departure have never become public, although at the time the New York Times's Jennifer Dunning quoted a 1988 interview in which Martins expressed impatience with unnamed NYCB personnel who insisted on faithful adherence to their recollections of how Balanchine staged his dances. In Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson's terrific 1997 documentary, Suzanne Farrell, Elusive Muse, Farrell has nothing but the highest praise for Martins as a dancer and partner. In the past fifteen or twenty years, it has become a commonplace of dance criticism to attack Martins's direction of Balanchine's company, focusing on claims he has mishandled NYCB's priceless asset, the repertory. NYCB dancers under Martins, the charges went, did the steps (in some cases neglecting even those) but didn't perform them expressively, so the ballets had lost their soul. This perception has largely arisen, I think, from a number of ill-advised promotions within the company in the 1990s. Some dancers, elevated too early, needed considerable time, even years, to dance not only with a mastery of Balanchine's technical challenges, but also with the sensitivity and confidence necessary to make clear his works' affective trajectory. A couple of company members who rose to principal either did not have the technical equipment or could not project the expressive qualities of the great roles into which they had been thrust, [End Page 417] or both. To many, the handful of inadequate dancers in these roles tended to tar the company, even though much of the repertory looked strong. Although in recent years the arrival of several brilliant young dancers has reaffirmed the company's glory, some critics still insist that for true Balanchine we must look to Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet, currently directed by NYCB alumnus Peter Boal—or to the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Farrell began her company in 1999, and since 2001 it has enjoyed an annual residence at Washington's Kennedy Center, in addition to touring through the United States and abroad. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet has as its mission the preservation and performance of the ballets of George Balanchine, as well as dances of other choreographers with whom Farrell worked, especially Jerome Robbins and Maurice Béjart. Since 2007 she has also undertaken the Balanchine Preservation Initiative, dedicated to reviving Balanchine's forgotten ballets. This idea presumably grew out of the Farrell Ballet's 2005 re-creation, in collaboration with the National Ballet of Canada, of the full-length Don Quixote (1965), which NYCB has not performed since Balanchine's death. The Farrell Ballet performances I saw in Washington, March 5 and 6, 2010, included an artifact of the company's latest archeological dig, the 1947 Haieff Divertimento, as well as two more Balanchine works new to the company, Donizetti Variations (1960) and the brief, lyrical Act Two pas de deux from A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962); the Balanchine masterpieces Apollo (1928) and Agon (1957); and Jerome Robbins's great duet, Afternoon of a Faun (1953). Farrell, as ballet fans know, was Balanchine's last great muse. His obsession with her during the 1960s resulted in brilliant new ballets, striking revisions in extant dances, and tensions within the company that culminated in her marrying fellow dancer Paul Mejia and quitting NYCB in 1970 (she returned in 1975). However, after Balanchine's death and, later...