Gelsey Kirkland's Dancing on my Grave
...a and Her Dancing Horse, is meant for children ages nine to twelve. Another she wrote with her husband, The Shape of Love. A different dancer, Toni Bentley, has written her own autobiography of her experience with the New York City Ballet, Winter Season: A Dancer’s Journal. She describes the company from her point of view. Jennifer Dunning’s “But First a School”: The First Fifty Years of the School of American Ballet contains details on the beginning of the ballet school Kirkland attended. Suzanne Farrell, a dancing phenomenon, wrote an autobiography called Holding on to the Air. Once a Dancer, by Allegra Kent, is a very in-depth autobiography including details of personal issues, similar to Gelsey Kirkland’s. Gelsey Kirkland became a ballerina during the height of both Balanchine’s and Baryshnikov’s legendary work with ballet in the 1970s and 1980s. At this point in history, a significant number of students were auditioning and joining both schools. It was very popular for a dancer to become as thin as possible, like Suzanne Farrell, Balanchine’s favorite ballerina. In effort to become just like her and impress Balanchine, Kirkland became anorexic. Also, several new ballets were being produced to influence Kirkland to strive for her dream of becoming a dancer, such as Spartacus in 1968 and Le Baiser De La Fee in 1972. Kirkland suffered through many disorders and hardships in her life. One of the more serious, anorexia, is a psychophysiological disorder that occurs when a person has a fear of becoming obese or in Kirkland’s case, tries to live up to standards and pressures of having a stick-like figure. People with this disorder have persistent unwillingness to eat and constitute severe weight loss. Self-induced vomiting, excessive exercise, malnutrition, amenorrhea, and other physiological changes often accompany it. Along with this disorder came her addiction of cocaine. Cocaine is an addicting stimulant drug, which Kirkland always wanted more of. It nearly killed her. Despite her suffering of these disorders, Kirkland was still able to deliver an exceptional performance whenever needed. In every pas de duex, or dance for two, Kirkland danced with a different male partner. She learned the importance of staying focused during adagio, or slow, choreography. Kirkland’s autobiography is arranged in chapters chronologically with her life. She starts with her childhood and family at home, and then moves into her life with the ballet company. She tells of how the pressures of being in the company and having the perfect figure threatened her life with anorexia. She became so obsessed with having the perfect body for the ballet director that she went on for days without eating anything. She was hospitalized when her disorder was revealed to ...