Gilroy
– After graduating with a degree in dance from University of
California, Irvine, ballet dancer and Gilroy native Elizabeth
Farotte found herself at a decisive point in her life, hoping it
wasn’t a dead end.
Gilroy – After graduating with a degree in dance from University of California, Irvine, ballet dancer and Gilroy native Elizabeth Farotte found herself at a decisive point in her life, hoping it wasn’t a dead end.
“I had my first job, and then I wondered where I would go from there,” said Farotte. “I was very burnt out from auditioning, and I’d faced a lot of rejection.”
These are all par for the course for a professional ballet dancer, who has to train for years and pit her skills against “hundreds of girls at every audition.”
But then Farotte heard about an audition for the Oberlin Dance Collective, which operates out of San Francisco. The company was more contemporary than the one Farotte had worked at before, BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. Nevertheless, Farotte knew they would need classically trained dancers, and auditioned.
“They made me an apprentice for a year, which basically meant I was proving myself,” Farotte said. “It was a lot of understudying, and learning.”
By the end of the first year, ODC hired her, and now, in her second year with the company, Farotte starred as the title character in “The Velveteen Rabbit,” which ran through mid December,
“It’s very satisfying to hear kids laughing, to see them get so excited,” Farotte said of the show, whose audiences include as many children as adults.
Based on a book about a stuffed rabbit that comes to life through the love of a little boy, “The Velveteen Rabbit” is ODC’s answer to the seasonal favorite “The Nutcracker.” Farotte plays the title role as well as the role of Nana, a part which requires two people to play: one to be the legs, and one to be the head. As the head part, Farotte has to stand on another dancer’s shoulders, directing him with body language, as the dancer below has virtually zero visibility through Nana’s thick skirt.
“It’s an extremely challenging role,” Farotte said. “But it has to be two people, because the dancer playing the boy is a man. So Nana should look tall next to him.”
The part on top, which Farotte plays, is mostly acting. It’s her other role, as the Rabbit, which brings an even bigger challenge: Farotte has to wear a full rabbit costume, fur and all, and a very heavy headpiece.
“It’s hot and hard to see out of,” said Farotte, who needs her other dancers to help direct her to each position.
ODC is currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of this special production, which is already all sold out. Luckily, Farotte’s parents, Rosalind and Gordy Farotte of Gilroy, were able to see the show in its first weekend.
“It’s very athletic dancing,” Rosalind Farotte said. “I think ODC is known for its athleticism, with a lot of lifts.”
Rosalind Farotte said her daughter has been dancing since she was 4 years old, and had announced at that age that she was going to be a dancer.
“I thought, ‘oh, that’s great,’ because it’s kind of like saying you’re going to be a professional football player,” she said.
“It’s a career full of rejection, and so few positions, especially in today’s economy.”
Rosalind Farotte enrolled her daughter in lessons with a local teacher, Julia Reynolds. At first it was basic jumping and stepping, but Farotte stayed with the lessons, and quickly became serious.
“It sounds silly but by the time I was 8, I had decided to be a dancer, and I really meant it,” the younger Farotte said. “I was very serious.”
When her daughter chose to attend Presentation High School so she could attend ballet classes five times a week, Farotte said she knew just how much her daughter wanted to dance. Rosalind Farotte remembers driving her daughter to weekend rehearsals and performances in “The Nutcracker,” with the San Jose Ballet.
“She’s done “The Nutcracker” since she was about 8,” Rosalind Farotte said. “She was always doing that or something else.”
While attending college, which Farotte says is unusual for a dancer, she broadened 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. Performing principal roles in works by William Forsythe and George Balanchine before a French audience was a new experience for the dancer.
“The audiences were very responsive, which was shocking,” Farotte said. “It was a great experience.”
Coming to a company like ODC is also a new experience for Farotte, who has found that not everyone in the 12-person team has been trained for years in the same ways she has.
“I get a lot of inspiration from my fellow dancers,” she said. “They’re all very different. There are people in this group who started dancing at age 20, people who went to college for English or something else.”
After “The Velveteen Rabbit,” Farotte will dance in the ODC’s annual Dance Downtown, a series of about seven pieces in three productions. Specializing in a more modern kind of dance than traditional ballet, some of the pieces are brand new, having just been created by the dancers and choreographers.
“We get an assignment or concept, and work on it,” Farotte said. “The variety of ideas is amazing, they really reveal where people come from.”
Directed by Brenda Way and KT Nelson, the two artistic directors at ODC, the series will run from March 2 through 19. This is only the first of many productions Farotte hopes to perform with the ODC, which she says is her new home.
“I’d like to stay here for a while, and see how I can excel,” Farotte said.
“She loves everything about the ODC,” her mother said. “And in this profession, you really have to love it, because you have to eliminate other parts of your life to do it. When Elizabeth was in high school, there were things she couldn’t do because all her time was spent dancing. Your heart and soul has to be into it.”
