About Suzanne Farrell: Suzanne Farrell is an eminent 20th-century ballerina (often referred to as the greatest American lyric ballerina) and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
I had two sisters, and we would love to get dressed up and pretend that we were chic, sophisticated ladies. And I think that was a great sort of preparation, in a way.
So dancing was not something I had a great desire to do.
I had a wonderful childhood, coming from Cincinnati, and I think that it was great going into the life that I was going to have, where you have to start young as a dancer.
That the work involved, the willingness to take chances, the commitment, the opportunity to get on stage and make people happy, was more important than becoming famous, or even what I was dancing.
I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.
When you are on stage, you don't see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across.
I liked to read but, being a dancer, I didn't have a lot of time to read.
You don't learn from a situation where you do something well. You enjoy it and you give yourself credit, but you don't really learn from that. You learn from trial and error, trial and error, all the time.
But what was my motivation was music, and the fact that I love to move around. I'm always moving around.
I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother's or your grandmother's dresses and high heels.
I learned to love dance for its own sake.
As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.
The steps must be second nature to me, so that the music seems to be drawing the steps out of me and I don't look as if I'm struggling to fit the steps to the music.
I could work out a lot of my emotions by going to class and dancing.
