Daily Inspiration Quote by Suzanne Farrell

Tests don’t sound like ballet’s natural habitat, which is exactly why Suzanne Farrell’s line lands: it flips the script from dread to desire. Coming from a dancer whose career was forged in the high-stakes ecosystem of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, “tests” aren’t Scantron sheets; they’re auditions, rehearsals, roles, and the quiet daily exam of whether your body will obey. Farrell treats evaluation as sport - not because art is a game, but because institutions often make it one. She names what’s usually left unspoken: that the arts, for all their romance, run on rankings.

The intent is practical and a little defiant. By framing tests as “another form of competing,” she claims agency over a system designed to judge her. It’s a psychological hack: if you can recode scrutiny as competition, you turn anxiety into adrenaline. The phrase “healthy competition” is doing reputational work, too. Ballet’s competitive culture can be brutal, even corrosive; calling it healthy is both aspiration and self-protection, a way to separate sharpening from shaming.

Subtext: discipline isn’t just obedience to standards; it can be appetite. Farrell’s statement suggests a performer who doesn’t merely endure assessment but feeds on the clarity it provides. In a field where subjectivity masquerades as merit, tests offer a rare promise of rules, outcomes, and measurable wins - even if that promise is partly an illusion.