2005 Recipient: Suzanne Farrell

The Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation Presents Suzanne Farrell with its 54th Annual Capezio Dance Award

Totowa, NJ / New York, NY : The Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation is proud to announce the selection of Suzanne Farrell as the 54th recipient of the Capezio Dance Award. Awarded annually since 1952, the Capezio Dance Award is presented by the Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Capezio Ballet Makers, the world’s leading manufacturer of dance footwear and apparel.

The Capezio Dance Award celebrates significant contribution to American dance by an individual, company or institution. It honors a recipient who or which brings respect, stature and distinction to dance and who or which exhibits innovation, creativity and imagination. Suzanne Farrell’s accomplishments, from dancer to coach to dance company founder to artistic director to professor, epitomize the essence of the Award. Her lifetime achievements place her amongst those extremely rare individuals who achieve greatness in all of their endeavors.

Born in Cincinnati, Suzanne Farrell received her early training at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Selected as a Ford student, she moved to New York to attend the School of American Ballet and in the fall of 1961 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 1960’s, she was Balanchine’s most prominent ballerina and to this day remains an icon of an extraordinary dance era.

At the time of her retirement from the stage in 1989, Farrell had achieved a career as a dancer that is without precedent or parallel in the history of ballet. During her 28 years on the 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. She has restated and re-scaled such Balanchine masterpieces as Apollo, Concerto Barocco, and Symphony in C. Balanchine went on to create new ballets for her – Diamonds, for example, and Chaconne and Mozartianna, in which the limits of ballerina technique were expanded to a degree not seen before.

Her dancing was only act one. Creatively charged, Farrell then elected to apply her prodigious talents to passing the mantle. She created a prestigious program of master classes, “Exploring Ballet with Suzanne Farrell”, at The Kennedy Center. That partnership blossomed into her founding The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, which made its debut in the fall of 2000 during The Kennedy Center’s Balanchine Celebration. The company’s primary mission, with Farrell as Artistic Director, is to provide ballet of the highest quality in a dynamic, efficient touring mode, reaching audiences throughout the world.

Farrell’s efforts on behalf of and contributions to dance in America and throughout the world are limitless: she is a repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust; holder of the Francis Eppes Chair in the Arts at Florida State University; serves on the arts council of the Princess Grace ; and has served on the New York State Council on the Arts, the Arthritis , and as vice president of the Board of the Professional Children’s School.

Farrell’s autobiography, Holding On to the Air was published in 1990 and Suzanne Farrell – Elusive Muse was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Film in 1997.

In November of 2003, Farrell was awarded the National Medal of the Arts.

Observing the occasion, on June 22, 2005 Michael Kaiser, President of The Kennedy Center and previous Capezio Dance Award honoree, will present the Award, together with a Ten Thousand Dollar ($10,000) check, at the premiere by The Suzanne Farrell Ballet of Balanchine’s Don Quixote. This much anticipated performance will mark the first staging in 25 years of this powerfully moving ballet. Past recipients of the Award include Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Mitchell, Maria Tallcheif, Rudolf Nureyev and last year’s recipient, Savion Glover.

The Capezio Ballet Makers Dance Foundation is devoted to creating a greater appreciation of dance as an art form and, in addition to the Award, makes annual grants to national, regional, state and local dance organization, programs and projects.