Holding on to the Air : An Autobiography

Suzanne Farrell joined the New York City Ballet in 1961 and went on to become one of George Balanchine's most celebrated muses. By the time she retired from performing in 1989, she had achieved a career without precedent in the history of ballet. She danced over one hundred ballets, a third of which were composed expressly for her by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Maurice Bejart, including masterpieces in which the limits of ballet technique were expanded to a degree not seen before. As a repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, she has staged Balanchine ballets for companies throughout the United States, as well as for the Royal Danish Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, and the Bolshoi Ballet. In 1999 she staged a week-long season of Balanchine for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., which led to the creation of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet as an ongoing partnership with the Center. Farrell joined the faculty of the Department of Dance at Florida State University as a Francis Eppes Professor in 2000. She is the recipient of honorary degrees from several universities, including Yale, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.

Farrell, for years the chief muse of New York City Ballet cofounder and master choreographer George Balanchine, has led an extraordinary, frequently controversial life. Here with former NYCB dancer Bentley, she tells of it with humility, integrity, wit and sophistication. Farrell's is first of all a classically American story of a self-made woman: growing up a tomboy and a dance student in a broken home in Cincinnati, Ohio, she struck out at 15 for Manhattan with her mother and sisters on the chance that she might be accepted into the famed School of American Ballet. Discovered, aesthetically molded and eventually wooed by Russian-born Balanchine, she left NYCB in 1969 after it became apparent that her husband, dancer Paul Mejia, could have no career there so long as Mr. B.'s jealous moods prevailed. Farrell returned to the company in 1974 and retired in 1989 at the age of 44, one of the century's greatest ballerinas. The details of her decades as a dancer vie in interest here with those of her private self; she is both discreet and incisive in her views of on- and offstage events. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The dance world has been waiting to hear Farrell's story ever since this noted ballerina retired from the New York City Ballet in 1989, six years after the death of NYCB director George Balanchine, acknowledged choreographic genius of this century. As Balanchine's muse and center of his attentions, she collaborated with him in the creation of his most enduring ballets. Though she could not reciprocate in kind when he fell in love with her, she speaks with real feeling of their mutual devotion, which found its physical consummation in their work together at the ballet studio and in her performances for him onstage. The book's highest appeal will be to the dance audience; ballet students and fans will find it fascinating. It is essential for any performing arts collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/90.
- Sheila Riley, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.