28 Artists & 2 Saints by Joan Acocella

Author:Joan Acocella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307389275
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

SUCH was the situation in which James Wolfensohn saw an opening for the Kennedy Center. Farrell's first Balanchine season at the center, in 1995, had some rough spots, but even then one could see in it something interesting: all the dancers whom one already knew looked better than they ever had before. In the words of Alan Kriegsman, the Washington Post's dance critic, Farrell seemed to move dancers "beyond their own previous standards." Still, the Kennedy Center didn't rush her. After the 1995 season, she waited four years to present her next one. To everyone's surprise, it included Meditation, the first piece Balanchine made for her, the one with the older man and the young ballerina-spirit. This ballet had a highly personal meaning for Farrell; with it, she has said, Balanchine had choreographed her life. No one but she had ever danced it, and consequently it hadn't been performed in fourteen years. It wasn't missed, actually. Many people remembered it as a sort of overwrought thing that might just as well be put in the drawer, like the old love letter that it was. Yet Farrell brought it out and set it on someone new, Christina Fagundes, formerly of American Ballet Theatre. Fagundes had never been a wafting sort of dancer. She was down-to-earth—a mezzo type—and she did Meditation in her own way. When Farrell danced it, the ballet was something that happened to the man; when Fagundes danced it, it was something that happened to her. Thus, if she was not better than Farrell had been, she was more poignant. If Farrell ever sought to show that she was willing to give what she had to others, this was the proof.

From the beginning, a crucial fact about the Suzanne Farrell Ballet was that it was a pickup company. It still is. Every year, once Farrell figures out what she's going to do, she has to get on the phone and find people to do it. Most good ballet dancers are employed by permanent companies, which they cannot necessarily leave for a five-night gig, let alone a five-week tour. As a result, Farrell seldom has ideal casts. As Alexandra Tomalonis put it in the Washington Post, "She's working with schoolgirls and soloists from all over the map." Even when she is working with stars, they are often overscheduled or underrehearsed. Last season, her budget allowed her only four weeks to rehearse seven ballets, and at times that showed. There was many a mishap in the company's new production of Who Cares? Also, Farrell doesn't always have a choice of "types." For the lead man in Who Cares? you need a roguish, jazzy fellow. (He is dancing to Gershwin, and partnering three different women.) Runqiao Du is not such a fellow. He was trained in Shanghai, far from Gershwin's town, and he is sweet and open-faced. But he is the Farrell Ballet's regular lead male, so he did Who Cares? and probably learned a lot from the experience. The same goes for the women who occasionally fell off point in the ballet's solo variations.

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