Daily Inspiration Quote by Suzanne Farrell

Stage fright gets romanticized as fear of judgment; Suzanne Farrell frames it as something stranger: sensory deprivation. Under the glare, the audience stops being a crowd and becomes an absence, a literal "black void". That image does quiet, efficient work. It strips performance of the comforting feedback loop - smiles, frowns, the human cues you can ride like a wave - and replaces it with pure inference. You perform not because you are seen, but because you choose to believe you're being received.

Farrell's phrasing also slides a dancer's reality into language usually reserved for singers and speakers: "message". Ballet is famously wordless, and Farrell was forged in an era (and a company) where Balanchine demanded speed, clarity, and attack - a kind of eloquence without syllables. Calling it a message is a subtle insistence that technique isn't the point; it's the delivery system. The "life out there" is the audience, yes, but also the risk of deadening into routine. If you can't see faces, you can't chase approval. You're forced into conviction: commit to the phrase, the line, the emotion, even when you can't confirm it's landing.

There's something almost spiritual in the bargain she's describing. The void isn't hostile; it's a test of faith. Performance becomes an act of transmission across darkness, where the performer supplies the certainty the room withholds. That is why the quote resonates beyond dance: it's about communicating under conditions that refuse to reassure you.