A Life In Dance -- Suzanne Farrell Carries On The Dream Of Ballet Created By Her Mentor George Balanchine

She was one of the fortunate few, a Swan Queen among the common flock. Dulcinea to George Balanchine's Don Quixote in dance and in life.

Suzanne Farrell, principal dancer with New York City Ballet for much of a 30-year career and the diamond of choreographer Balanchine's eye on and off the great stages of the world, occupies a rare place in ballet's haute monde.

Farrell, now in Seattle to set Balanchine's "Mozartiana" on Pacific Northwest Ballet for a program that opens tomorrow, is arguably the most celebrated American dancer of her generation. Her repertory exceeded 100 ballets. Balanchine alone created 23 roles specially for her.

The first gift, "Meditation" (1963), has never been danced by anyone but Farrell. It was the beginning of a rare relationship - Farrell was 18, Balanchine 59 - and the first sure signature of her art.

"Balanchine hadn't only choreographed a ballet," Farrell wrote in her autobiography in 1990, "he had choreographed our lives." Lives that would become cover material for Life magazine in 1965.

Eleven years after Balanchine's death in the spring of 1983, Farrell has no regrets about the influence "Mr. B" exerted on her life.

"You know what?" she said last week, leaning forward, eyes charged like magnified protons despite a long rehearsal of "Mozartiana." "Balanchine is still choreographing my life, pushing me in the right direction. I don't dance anymore, but I don't feel any less a dancer. My art, any art, has to be a way of life."

Farrell, 49, retired from dancing in 1989, after a valiant but short-lived return to the stage following a hip replacement two years earlier. What once she danced now she teaches, championing the Balanchine cause with companies in the U.S. and around the world.

Both Farrell and PNB co-artistic director Francia Russell, also a New York City Ballet alumna, have made trips to Russia to teach Balanchine's "Scotch Symphony" and "Theme and Variations," respectively, to dancers at his alma mater, the Kirov (Maryinsky) Ballet.

For all of Balanchine's calculation and control ("If you marry a dancer, you always know where she is - in the studio working," he used to say), Farrell says she never felt cloistered from the larger world by their relationship. (Balanchine married several dancers, but Farrell wasn't one of them.)

"In Balanchine's company I learned more about the world and my art than I ever could have imagined," she says. "You remember it more than you remember books because all the senses are participating. With Balanchine, the senses were always working, whether he was making a dance or eating a meal."

A DANCE PRODIGY

Farrell witnessed her first professional ballet at age 10 when Ballet Russe came to Cincinnati. And when the company needed a young Clara for "The Nutcracker," Farrell got the part.

Farrell was 15 when she received a full scholarship to the School of American Ballet, the training ground for New York City Ballet. At 16, she was invited to join the parent company. At 18 she was dancing "Meditation" and falling in love with Balanchine.

Theirs was a union of spirit that endured for 20 years, through "Don Quixote" (which Farrell and Balanchine danced together in 1965) and "Diamonds" and "Vienna Waltzes" and "Mozartiana" (1981), Balanchine's last complete ballet. It lived on even after Farrell married fellow New York City Ballet dancer Paul Mejia in 1968. It stayed alive when Farrell left Balanchine's company and the U.S. for five years to work with Maurice Bejart's Ballet of the20th Century in Belgium.

"Dancing was always our common ground . . ." Farrell says in her autobiography. "It was as if our spirits agreed even when our hearts did not. . . . The physical side of love is of paramount importance to many people, but to us it wasn't. Our interaction was physical, but its expression was dance."

NO REGRETS

There were reverberations from their pas de deux, consummated or not. Balanchine's history of courting his principal dancers was well-documented. When Newsweek got wind of the liaison with Farrell, the magazine reported, "The exquisite Farrell is the latest in a 40-year series of Galateas that include Danilova, Geva, Zorina, Tallchief and Tanaquil Le Clercq."

The fact that Balanchine was still married to Le Clercq when Farrell danced into his life didn't ease any tension.

Though she acknowledges "emotional repercussions," Farrell has no regrets.

"If anything, I think I was well-paid in all the years we shared," she said last week. "I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. The closeness, the fun, the inspiration, the experimentation, even the heartbreak - I'd do it all over again, exactly as we did the first time."