Biography

Suzanne Farrell (born August 16, 1945) is an American ballerina and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Farrell began her ballet training at the age of eight. In 1960, she received a scholarship to the School of American Ballet. Her first leading roles in ballets came in the early 1960s. A muse of George Balanchine, she left the New York City Ballet in 1969 and subsequently moved to Brussels to dance for Maurice Bejart's Ballet of the 20th Century.

In 1975, Farrell moved back to the United States, where she collaborated with Balanchine until his death in 1983; she retired from ballet six years later after a hip surgery she had due to arthritis. Farrell had an unusually long career as a ballet performer, and since her retirement in 1989 has acted as a teacher in numerous ballet schools. She held a teaching position with the New York City Ballet until 1993, and has been a professor of dance at Florida State University since 2000; the same year, she founded her own company, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, which disbanded at the end of 2017.The recipient of several honorary degrees, Farrell remains well-known and respected in the world of ballet and has been recognized for her influence on dance with several awards and honors, including Kennedy Center Honors and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the latter being the highest civilian honor in the United States. She was presented in 1987 with the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement at a ceremony in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was also elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.