Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse.

is the documentary that filmmakers Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson have been building up to over a decade of tributes to the ballerinas of George Balanchine. In 1982 they released Reflections of a Dancer: Alexandra Danilova, a salute to the career of his colleague, consort, and inspiration from his Maryinsky and Diaghilev years Dancing for Mr. B: Six Balanchine Ballerinas, which premiered at the 1989 New York Film Festival, offered revelatory interviews with and footage of his muses during the periods of great creativity from the 1940s into the 1970s.

Documenting Farrell's collaboration presented Belle and Dickson with special problems. No other ballerina so inspired and fulfilled Balanchine the artist while so obsessing and frustrating the man himself Flattering as it must have been for her to be wooed by the world's greatest neoclassical choreographer, it did not alter the fact that Farrell was a pious Roman Catholic girl (Roberta Sue Ficker of Cincinnati) and he the husband of a wheelchair-bound wife. The heady epithet Shakespearean could be applied to the conflict that arose between them, once it reached the stage where neither could avoid decisions guaranteed to cause the other pain. Belle and Dickson succeeded so admirably at capturing Farrell's story--and it's one of the great ones in ballet--that Elusive Muse caused a sensation at last fall's New York Film Festival. By press time, it had no national distributor, though a booking in Manhattan was a possibility for January. PBS has scheduled an airing on June 25, 1997.

Much of the film's power radiates from precious archival footage of Farrell dancing onstage. A 1965 excerpt from that eternal work in progress, Don Quixote--even accompanied by Nicolas Nabokov's dreary score--proves a breathtaking reminder of how she could tear off more difficult steps in sequence than anyone had thought possible before, and could do so with a grandeur that matched her daring.' The rarely shown, misconceived 1967 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream provides an equally mesmerizing reminder of how stunning she could be even in repose; as Titania the twenty-three-year-old Farrell had an inner glow as nacreous as Marilyn Monroe's.

Regrettably, all dance sequences are never allowed to go on long enough, and some of her great roles are ignored completely. Much of our frustration subsides, however, when the interviews that are the framework and the impetus of the film resume. New York City Ballet colleagues Jacques d'Amboise, Arthur Mitchell, and Edward Villella provide invaluable eyewitness accounts of Farrell's arrival and her reign as the master's favorite, and her departure from and subsequent return to the company. Too bad we could not hear from the late Diana Adams, who recommended young Roberta Sue to the School of American Ballet after she saw her in class ("You could not take your eyes off her!"), or John Taras, who presciently made the first work on her at NYCB (Arcade, in 1963).

Oddly, we also do not hear from Peter Martins, her ever-supportive partner at City Ballet, who never dropped her until after he became its ballet master in chief, when he abruptly cut her off the payroll. Martins's comments would have been welcome, since her dismissal came soon after articles appeared championing her as his replacement; but his busy schedule never permitted even the most fleeting of chats. We must make do instead with the Dance in America excerpt from Tzigane in which he slinks about her, coldly clicking his heels together as he goes.

We are, however, favored with footage of Maurice Bejart. Farrell danced for him from 1970 to 1975--without regrets, she insists. Genuine as the affection between them seems during a touching reunion, Bejart nevertheless brings a characteristic aura of phoniness to this film. The camera crew just happens to be in his apartment when Farrell arrives. His pas de deux for her and Jorge Donn is a sensational, sling-your-partner affair mismatched with the Love Scene from Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette. (Arturo Toscanini called it the "most beautiful music ever written," but you'd never know it from this.)

Somewhat more mixed emotions were occasioned by the several appearances of Farrell's mother. Immense as is our debt of gratitude to this lady and to countless other Ballet Moms down through the ages, it was impossible not to have unsettling thoughts about the--shall we say--suffocating nature of their breed as the appearances of Mother Ficker accumulated. She appeared to be clutching the corpse of a small white dog that she had apparently--and, one feared, inadvertently--smothered by clamping its muzzle in her left armpit. A palpable sense of relief swept through the audience at the press screening after this creature was eventually discovered sitting bolt upright on her knee, regarding the camera with unblinking indifference.

Affection, admiration, and eventually awe are the operative emotions raised by watching and listening to Farrell. Covering the same ground in her 1989 autobiography, Holding On to the Air, she had antagonized some reviewers for discussing Balanchine in a manner they had found arrogant, and even a bit brattish. Watching her now express the same thoughts and recount the same stories--her face bearing the lineaments of aging and her voice uninflected but quietly firm--few could doubt her devotion to Balanchine or to his art. Scenes of Farrell dancing are succeeded by those of her teaching, of her setting his works on Miami City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, and the gifted troupe assembled for last fall's Balanchine performances at Kennedy Center. Her instructions blend technical expertise with shrewd insights only a seasoned pro could pass along.

When needed, she can work just as hard at maintaining other essentials, as she demonstrates in an amusing contretemps with the costume department at the Opera over the costume for Tzigane. In the hallowed tradition of that establishment, it is decided that for its production the original red gypsy costume must be turned into green. Voila? The sly local joke in Farrell's comment that the ballet would now look like Irish Fantasy (a NYCB curtain-raiser of yesteryear) was lost on the parisienne confronting her, but the immovable resolve behind Farrell's smile was not. The Opera gypsy was dressed in red.

Occasionally, I'm sorry to say, the screen goes black for a second to make some needless "alienation effect" or something. The chief flaw of Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse, however, is its title. While she eluded the embraces of Balanchine the lover, Farrell never failed to embrace wholeheartedly all he stood for as an artist, and nothing of her greatness has eluded Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson. To the great debt we owe Suzanne Farrell, we can now add another of gratitude to them.