How 'Bobby' Became Suzanne Farrell
The late George Balanchine was maybe the greatest choreographer in American ballet, but most of his famous creations could never have come to life without Suzanne Farrell. The legendary ballerina is one of this year's Kennedy Center honorees.
The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen spoke with Farrell the day before the ceremony.
"You know, I never wanted to be a ballerina. I needed to dance," says Farrell. "I just heard music and wanted to dance, wanted to be in a company, and wanted to make it my life."
Roberta Sue Ficker was a chubby cheeked girl from Cincinnati, always getting tangled up in her long, sinewy legs. But her mother knew she had a gift and packed her daughters in a car and headed to New York City.
The rest, as they say, is ballet history: the little girl got to audition for Balanchine himself.
"I couldn't understand a word he said at the audition, because of his accent," she remembers.
But Balanchine understood the way she moved and soon, Roberta Sue became someone new.
How did she come up with her stage name, Suzanne Farrell?
"My real name is Roberta. And of course, in those days, I got such teasing. I was called 'Bobby' in school. Bobby Sue. So I wanted to keep my initials. So I went through the phone book, the Manhattan phone book, and thought Farrell sounded nice," she explains.
And Suzanne Farrell was a sensation.
"And we are on the stage and I look over and this demon of a dancer -- sort of like hungry legs flying all over the stage and I can't believe her and I am supposed to keep up with her," remembers dancer Jacques d'Amboise. "I missed a few, not so easy to dance with Suzanne Farrell -- as well as not so easy to dance like Suzanne Farrell."
Balanchine created ballet after ballet for her -- it was called an "alchemy of genius."
Does she think she helped him redefine dance?
"I wasn't thinking anything like that at the time. I was just busy trying to do what he wanted and contribute. It was a very special sort of collaboration. And often it was intuitive. You know, he got to the point where he would just say you know what I want," says Farrell.
"And it was a very unique way of working. And you know, it's hard to describe. It's hard to put into words, since so much of it was about energy and covering space and the music and what he wanted. It wasn't intellectual. It didn't need that many words. Couldn't be put into words," she says.
Farrell says in a sense, Balanchine choreographed her life both onstage and off. "The nice thing about being born when I was in relationship to his lifetime is that I had all the fun and benefit of dancing the ballets he choreographed before I was born. And then the honor and fun of the ballets he choreographed especially for me. So it was almost as if I lived his whole lifetime in my short lifetime. And now I'm sort of continuing his lifetime, in the later part of my life."
These days, Farrell devotes her life to teaching and with her company, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Balanchine's dances that were once hers now belong to a new generation of dancers.
Balanchine said he didn't care what happened to his dances after he was gone. And yet, Farrell recreates them on the stage and teaches them to her students.
"I am sure he wanted them to go on," she says. "Because he loved people, he educated an audience, he wouldn't have given us these wonderful gifts and then expected them not to be performed again and also, they're just so wonderful. Every generation of dancers should be able to know the thrill of having these ballets in their body."
Suzanne Farrell performed her first ballet for George Balanchine when she was just 16, and was on stage more than 2,000 times with the New York City Ballet.
The 2005 Kennedy Center Honors airs Tuesday, Dec. 27 at 9 p.m. on CBS.