Elizabeth Farotte as a child watched a video of
”
The Velveteen Rabbit
”
so many times that she knew the lines by heart.
Jodi Engle – Special to the dispatch
SAN FRANCISCO
Elizabeth Farotte as a child watched a video of “The Velveteen Rabbit” so many times that she knew the lines by heart.
“We had two videos – ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ – and I watched them over and over again,” she said.
It was early practice for the Gilroy native who is now playing the lead role in the Oberlin Dance Collective’s annual holiday production of “The Velveteen Rabbit” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The production tells Margery Williams’ tale of a bunny who becomes a real rabbit through the magic of a young boy’s love.
The professional dance company’s version of the children’s classic is celebrating its 22nd anniversary, and this season marks Farotte’s fourth year dancing in the production.
“Even though it’s a kids’ show, you’d think it’s easy,” Farotte said. “It’s actually one of the most physical things we do. We have a good time, but it’s physically tiring. In the past five days, we did seven shows.”
For the role, Farotte wears a cumbersome rabbit suit that has large pads for stuffing and a heavy headpiece with ears that she manipulates to show expression.
“It’s extremely hot, and it’s hard to move in,” she said. “And then you wear a big headpiece with low visibility.”
But Farotte can still hear if her antics get the desired reaction from the crowd.
“The kids get really excited,” she said. “You can hear these little laughs from the audience.”
Farotte has spent much of her life dancing. She started taking lessons at the Julie Reynolds School of Ballet in Gilroy at age 4.
“By the time I was 7 or 8, I just felt like I had to be a dancer,” she said. “A lot of kids say that, but I meant it. That was what I really wanted to do.”
It required her to make certain sacrifices for her art. “It takes a lot of normal social time away,” she said. “Instead of hanging out after school, you have to go to ballet.”
When she was in her teens attending Presentation High School in San Jose, Farotte was training at the San Jose Cleveland Ballet five times a week and spending summers at the Boston Ballet.
Gilroyans came to know Farotte through her involvement with local arts groups such as the South Valley Civic Theatre and the annual “Nutcracker” at Ballet San Jose.
“Gilroy is great. I felt like I grew up with a lot of great people around me,” she said. “A lot of those people have come up to see me (in ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’) and brought their grandkids.”
Farotte majored in dance at the University of California, Irvine, where she was the recipient of a Donald McKayle Medal Scholarship and a member of McKayle’s dance ensemble.
“It’s pretty unusual for dancers to go to college, especially modern dancers,” she said.
At UC Irvine she widened her dance repertoire to include jazz and modern styles. She also traveled to Paris to perform at the Conservatoire National Superieure de Musique et de Danse de Paris. After graduation, Farotte performed with the BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio.
Hoping to find work closer to her family, Farotte returned to the Bay Area and auditioned for ODC in 2005.
“I knew they were more of a contemporary company. I hadn’t done anything like that,” she said. “They asked me to come hang out.”
Farotte started as an apprentice, so she had time to adjust and learn the style of contemporary dance the 12-member troupe uses.
“She came from a strictly ballet world,” ODC Co-Artistic Director KT Nelson said. “Now she is in a post-modern dance company. She just dove right in and went after it.
Directed and written by Nelson, “The Velveteen Rabbit”, runs through Sunday in San Francisco with performances in Monterey Dec. 19 and 20.
“I wanted to make it because I was a new mom,” Nelson said. “It was not that I needed a production for kids. I felt like those issues mattered – the issues of love, loyalty, and commitment.”
