from Jack

A recent exchange with Jack regarding an older post on Mazzo, conducted over several emails:

Jack: I said that about Mr. B? Mazzo in "Diamonds" used to puzzle ME; it was anticlimactic, in contrast to the big cast in white, the symphonic Tchaikovsky music, and coming last always. When Farrell came back into it, it was GRAND FINALE and then some! I loved Mazzo in "Duo Concertante" too, she was right for that; no coincidence, it was made on her.

me: I remember pretty well that you had said that Mazzo in Diamonds was confounding to Mr B. Mazzo to me was almost clam-like in her reticence. In that way she lacks the majesty that Farrell commands. She required delicate coaxing to flower and Diamonds is too grand a ballet for it.

vehemence, paraphrased

(at a lebanese restaurant in Chicago)

jack: Kay Mazzo in Diamonds just didn't look the same. That used to drive Mr Balanchine crazy.

me: He was trying to recreate Farrell. No one can recreate Farrell in Diamonds because no one is Farrell. He's trying to recapture something that isn't possible, tapping on an overbred body line to invoke something that is innate!


I happen to like Mazzo in Duo Concertante a lot, but comparing her to Farrell is like asking someone to race a Mazda MX-5 against a Duesenberg. Like her or not - and I'd venture to say that I grapple often between liking her and throwing things at her - there's nobody who dances quite like Suzanne Farrell.

In a curious juxtaposition, after reading Croce's "Farrell and Farrell-isms", I had the most curious image of Suzanne Farrell's reappearance in the Symphony in C Adagio; she is jammed unceremoniously into her costume before someone gives her a great shove, at which time Ms Farrell begins bourreeing fantastically, floating in the direction of the force applied onto the stage and into the arms of her cavalier.

It is then I realize that it is merely a ballet recreation of the Prince on the Bridge of a Castle Moat from The Sound of Music and grow heartily ashamed of myself.