57b
ROBERT GARIS
are like an expert practice session of difficult balances which begin
without fanfare and end without cadence. Because of all this, the un–
theatrical way Farrel! moved her exceptionally beautiful body invited
you to think of her as the world's most beautiful athlete. All her ges–
tures were fluid, economical, plaint, graceful; but then everybody
knows about the natural grace of athletes, and Farrell's youth accentu–
ated the ath letic implications of her fine condition and beautiful co–
ordination. She seemed simply the right instrument for that particular
ballet.
Episodes
had played wittily against your expectations of ballet
grace and ballet meaning, and Verdy's artistry clarified both the wit
and the meaningful, even curiously familiar pattern underlying the odd
positions and phrase-lengths. But
Movements
has no witty parodistic
intentions or implications, and doesn't get meaning by contrast; nor did
Farrell's dancing seem to be playing against a more familiar style. Her
untheatrical self-confidence - not at all the same thing as modesty–
was simply her way of behaving, hardly a style at all. So you were un–
prepared for her next role in
Meditation.
In this distinctly romantic
love-duet, rather old-fashioned in atmosphere, modern only in its frag–
mentary elusiveness and ambiguity, Farrell danced not with cool athletic
mannerless poise, but with a ravishingly soft and sensuous tenderness.
The beautiful athlete had become overnight the great new romantic
dancer of our time, and this impression was deepened in the dream–
vision dancing in
Don Quixote,
the
pas de deux
at the end of the
second act, the long group dance at the beginning of the third. The
sophisticated wit in Marcela's gratitude dance in pastoral style showed
an even more surprising instinct for genre.
But when she began to appear in roles not specifically contrived
for her, the true secret of Farrell's style became apparent. She is not,
and probably never will be, a notably warm or dramatic dancer in
herself. And she seems almost entirely to lack Verdy's artistic intelli–
gence and dedication: she doesn't seem to shape her roles by conscious
decisions. Farrell's grace, taste, warmth - her personality itself - alI
these seem the unconscious external manifestations of quintessential
physical gifts. Denby, in one of his wonderful simplicities, wrote that
the basic secret of ballet dancing, as of all kinds of dancing, is how
to keep your balance when you are moving very fast and changing
direction suddenly. Farrell has this gift to a degree you never thought
possible. And since she is also extraordinarily strong, quick and reck–
less, her sense of balance lets her dance with an impetuosity and an
immense dynamic range that no other dancer cou ld risk. For the
balance Denby means doesn't have anything to do with standing on one
toe for an hour, or never letting your leg wobble in an arabesque; it
