THE SUZANNE FARRELL BALLET
Download Press Release (Adobe PDF)
For immediate
release, please
Press contact:
Richard Kornberg & Associates, (212) 944-9444
Richard Kornberg /
Billy Zavelson / Danielle McGarry
Richard@KornbergPR.com / Billy@KornbergPR.com / Danielle@KornbergPR.com
THE JOYCE THEATER FOUNDATION, INC.
PRESENTS
THE SUZANNE FARRELL BALLET
DEBUT SEASON AT THE JOYCE
ALL BALANCHINE PROGRAM
FEATURES ACCLAIMED WORKS AGON, MEDITATION,
HAIEFF DIVERTIMENTO, DIAMONDS
PAS DE DEUX
& THE BALANCHINE COUPLE
OCTOBER 19 – 23
The Joyce Theater Foundation is proud to present The Suzanne Farrell Ballet,
making its Joyce Theater debut with an all-Balanchine program, from October
19 – 23, 2011. The engagement will feature some of
Balanchine’s most acclaimed and cherished works – Haieff
Divertimento, Meditation, Diamonds pas de deux from Jewels, and Agon.
Tickets for this week-long engagement are $10-$59 ($26 - $44 for Joyce Members)
and are available through JoyceCharge at www.Joyce.org or by calling 212-242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to
change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th
Street, in Chelsea.
The Suzanne Farrell Ballet (SFB) is led by the legendary New York City Ballet principal
who, since founding the company over ten years ago, has established its
prominence in the ballet world. One of George Balanchine’s most
celebrated muses, Farrell devotes much of the company’s repertory to the
works of this master choreographer. For its Joyce debut, the
engagement presents an all-Balanchine program that features some of his
most cherished works. First performed by New York City Ballet in
1947, Haieff Divertimento had not been seen for over
15 years until The SFB company revived it in 2010. SFB has the
distinction of being one of only three ever to recreate the work. The
program also includes Meditation, the first ballet
Balanchine created on Farrell and the first to which he gave her ownership; Diamondspas de deux from Jewels, considered one of Balanchine’s most
beautiful pieces and acclaimed for its classical style that juxtaposes a
grand scale with sweetness and vulnerability; and Agon, an
intimate, athletic work, premiering in 1957 and considered groundbreaking
at that time. Featuring an Igor Stravinsky score commissioned
by Balanchine, Agon was created during a three-year period between
1953-1956 when the two artists worked very closely together to combine
Stravinsky’s innovative and complex meter changes with Balanchine’s vision
of 17th-century court dance.
Suzanne Farrell, one of George Balanchine’s most celebrated muses, is a
legendary figure in the ballet world. Born in Cincinnati, Ms. Farrell
moved to New York City in 1960 after winning a Ford Foundation scholarship
at the School of American Ballet. One year later, she joined Balanchine’s
New York City Ballet. Her unique combination of musical, physical,
and dramatic gifts quickly ignited Balanchine’s imagination. By the
mid 1960s, she was Balanchine’s most renowned ballerina. When she
retired from the stage in 1989, Ms. Farrell had achieved a performance
career that is without precedent or parallel in the history of ballet.
During her twenty-eight years performing on stage, she danced a repertory
of more than one hundred ballets, nearly a third of which were composed
expressly for her by Balanchine and other choreographers, including Jerome
Robbins and Maurice Béjart. To insure the preservation of Mr.
Balanchine’s legacy, she founded The Suzanne Farrell Ballet in 2001.
Ms. Farrell is a repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, the
independent organization founded after the choreographer’s death by the
heirs to his ballets to oversee their worldwide licensing and
production. Since the fall of 2000, Ms. Farrell has been a tenured
professor at Florida State University. In addition to her work for
the Balanchine Trust, she serves in a variety of cultural and philanthropic
organizations. Her best-selling autobiography, Holding On to the Air was published in 1990, and the documentary Suzanne Farrell –
Elusive Muse was an Academy Award nominee in 1997.
The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, making its Joyce Theater debut for a
one-week engagement from October 19 – 23, will
perform as follows: Wednesday at 7:30pm; Thursday – Friday at 8pm;
Saturday 2pm & 8pm; Sunday 2pm & 7:30pm. Dance Chat,
a free post-performance talkback with members of Suzanne Farrell Ballet,
will take place on Thursday, October 20. This enlightening discussion
is open to all patrons attending that evening’s performance. Tickets
range in price from $10-$59 ($26 - $44 for Joyce Members) and are available
through JoyceCharge at www.Joyce.org or
by calling 212-242-0800. Please note: Tickets prices are subject
change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th
Street, in Chelsea.
# # #
About The Joyce Theater Foundation
The Joyce Theater Foundation, a non-profit organization, has proudly served the dance
community and its audiences for three decades. The founders, Cora Cahan and
Eliot Feld, acquired and renovated the Elgin Theater in Chelsea, which
opened as The Joyce Theater in 1982. The Joyce Theater is named in honor of
Joyce Mertz, beloved daughter of LuEsther T. Mertz. It was LuEsther’s
clear, undaunted vision and abundant generosity that made it imaginable and
ultimately possible to build the theater. One of the only theaters built by
dancers for dance, The Joyce Theater has provided an intimate and elegant
home for more than 320 domestic and international companies. The Joyce has
also commissioned more than 130 new dances since 1992. In 1996, The
Joyce created Joyce SoHo, a dance center providing highly subsidized rehearsal
and performance space to hundreds of dance artists, as well as special
residency opportunities for selected choreographers to support the creation
of new work. In 2009, The Joyce opened Dance Art New York (DANY) Studios to
provide affordable studios for rehearsals, auditions, classes, and
workshops for independent choreographers, non-profit dance companies, and
the dance/theater communities. New York City public school students
and teachers annually benefit from The Joyce’s Dance Education Program, and
adult audiences get closer to dance through informative Dance Talks, Joyce
Pre-Show gatherings, and post-performance Dance Chat discussions. The
Joyce Theater now features an annual season of approximately 48 weeks with
over 340 performances for audiences in excess of 135,000.
#
# #
Leadership support for The Joyce Theater’s
2011–2012 season has been received from the LuEsther T. Mertz
Charitable Trust.
Lead support for accessible and inclusive
programming provided by MetLife Foundation.
Additional support for this engagement was
provided with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts; the
New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building
strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties; and the New
York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City
Council; and with private funds from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest
Endowment Fund to encourage the performances of out-of-town companies at
The Joyce Theater.
Major support for The Joyce has been
provided by Alphawood Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation, First Republic Bank, The Hearst Foundations, The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Fund for the
City of New York, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation,
The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and The Shubert Foundation.
# # #