Mirror, mirror. Gelsey Kirkland looked into her lighted mirror, studied her face, decided she was not as pretty as her sister, decided that she was not pretty. Her autobiography, Dancing on my Grave, is the story of someone lost, someone who needed mature guidance, companionship. She is highly intelligent. This is not necessarily a blessing. High intelligence will nearly always magnify the pain of being human. In her world there were performers. Strength and character were rare.
At the age of thirty-three she still lived with the pain of being ridiculed by other children at a summer camp. They bullied her for what they saw as her physical defects. She suffered. From an early age she wanted to be a great ballerina but believed she could not be a great ballerina if she was not perfect.
Her master, Balanchine, insisted that his ballerinas starve themselves, be skin and bone that they might be lighter-than-air divinities on stage. The training regimens were severe, legs and feet in constant pain. The training damaged bodies. The performers were disposable elements of a great continuing show.
Gelsey Kirkland’s father was a drunk and a bully. He told her that ballet was frivolous. A psychologist trying to help her overcome cocaine addiction told her she must give up ballet. She wanted Balanchine to be the father she’d never had. Like her father, Balanchine had been married five times. To Balanchine she was no more than a product to develop and sell. She wept. He dismissed her, told her to go home, have a glass of wine. Divinity came with a cost.
At age sixteen Gelsey Kirkland decided to unburden herself of her virginity and find a lover. What was this all about? A young performer creating the theater of her own life? The field of candidates for lover was limited. She would mate only with those who were members of her elite world of professional dance or who were at least minor celebrities. She chose a marginal rock star who was the husband of a friend. As she put it, she stole her friend’s husband. She judged the man loathsome but lived with him for several years. He was a barnacle, a squatter in her apartment. In reading her autobiography we sometimes forget how young she was as the story unfolded. She was a child. She yelled, sobbed.
Touch the sun, flame out. Be timid, whither. She wept at the beauty of art, could not separate her heart from performance, see the fraud of the heartless.
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