Dancing on my Grave...........

an autobiography by Gelsey Kirkland (1986)

Finally this  week saw me  finish reading this autobiography. I actually started reading it in the summer as background information and from a personal interest point of view for my inquiry question  but  time constraints with work and travel and all the other articles and literature I was ploughing through simultaneously,  I didn't get to read it in its entirety till now but finishing it I can say  it was really useful as an insight from a dancers own point of view and a very honest account of the pressures faced by a professional ballerina and how that can manifest itself in life threatening behaviours and health issues. 

Now I've managed to finally finish the book I thought I would do a quick review for the blog as I do quote from the book as evidential in my final critical review of my inquiry question and it may be of some interest to any others out there in the BAPP community who are studying body image issues  or those who just have a passion for dance.  If nothing else it is valuable as a wake-up call for the dance world and any young dancer  of the terrible consequences that can happen as a result of eating disorders and drugs.

 "Dancing on My Grave" is the first of two autobiographies of one of America's most celebrated ballerinas, Gelsey Kirkland, who is possibly best known for her role of Clara thanks to the filmed production of "Baryshnikov's Nutcracker." It is a very personal and brutally honest account of her own (very sad in places) story of a dream which became a heartbreaking nightmare.

The book is co-written by her then husband Greg Lawrence, and chronicles her  startling memoires of her  artistic transformation from George Balanchine's "baby ballerina" to one of the most acclaimed ballerinas in her generation.  It is a passionate, detailed  account of her struggle with her personal demons to achieve her dream of artistic perfection. 

Controversial  upon its initial release, Kirkland's memories may be surprising to some,  her legendary partnership with Baryshnikov was not all smiles and glamour, and her New York City Ballet years showcase a negative look at the unofficial founder of American ballet, George Balanchine . The majority of the book discusses her dancing years and mind set, her struggles with body image issues including anorexia and bulimia, self harming, plastic surgeries and her final fall from grace and battle with a cocaine addiction.

 "Dancing on My Grave" is written in an easy, conversational manner,  but often she  also mercilessly describes the life of a dancer, including the obstacles she  in particular had to face.

She was pretty much excommunicated from much of the dance community after publication of her book, being criticised for self pity, lies, over-exaggeration, having a lack of confidence, having insecurities etc but at least she had the courage to speak out at a time when it was an almost 'forbidden', unspoken topic in the dance world  and told the truth from her own perspective as she felt it and saw it. This doesn't mean it was un biased but I think this is a warning voice that this is how the pressures put on a young dancer can manifest into very damaging health and psychological issues. For Kirkland the consequences were horrible and almost fatal.

From the earliest age she always felt she could not please anyone and this eventually led to a spiral of self destruction.........................

She was born in 1952  to father Jack, a playwright, and Nancy, an actress, in  Pennsylvania, U.S.A.  She also had an older sister, Johanna, the favourite. This favouritism, in addition to her demanding and alcoholic father,  her own perfectionism and desperation to achieve would lead to problems in the future. Johanna started attending the School of American Ballet and Gelsey started soon after, starting an intense rivalry between the sisters. As a student she was incredibly dedicated - a workaholic some say. When she first started attending the school she was not very flexible at all and worked on her stretching like crazy to achieve the flexibility required of a ballet dancer. She also took extra ballet classes and worked as a model, something she hated, to pay for the classes, and later on quit high school so she could dance more. At just fifteen years old George Balanchine asked Gelsey  to join the New York City Ballet, and two years later she was promoted to Soloist. At this time Balanchine created his new Firebird with her as the lead. Although Firebird was not a success there was much praise for Gelsey.

Her description of the ballet world is of an abusive world of eating disorders, verbal harassment, fierce competition, and injured, fatigued, and malnourished dancers. 

She had always been very concerned about her looks and underwent several plastic surgeries  to improve her onstage 'line'. She had her earlobes trimmed and her nose reduced, and silicone implants in her lips and breasts.
 She was also anorexic and  bulimic and addicted to cocaine.
 Finally she eventually collapsed due to nervous exhaustion and a potassium deficiency and was forced to stop dancing.

In the book, Kirkland reinforces how influential a role model or teacher can be on a dancer. She was prepared to go to any lengths to please Balanchine and this included starvation, taking amphetamines  and cosmetic surgery in her desire to meet his ideal.   

She idolized him and made him out to be a kind of father figure. She states ,'His word was holy', his monopoly on taste and creative control was absolute  and the dancers' devotion to him made them dependant on him for ideas and psychological motivation. She was  extremely dependent on him as an authority figure and struggled to think for herself and be self-reliant such was her dependency on his every word and every aspect of her existence. He was so influential and so frightening no one would have dared to question him. She knew too well if she did she would have been out of the company. 

  

 Although  she weighed less than 100 pounds at the time, Mr. Balanchine was not satisfied. He stopped a class to inspect her body, thumped on the bones of her chest and said: “Must see the bones. Eat nothing.”

She describes his desire to give all his dancers through his training the endownments of his muse, Susanne Farrell,  and "he  demoralised each female dancer in her despair that she did not look like someone else".

I think a real interesting quote from the beginning of the book is, " I was speechless for months as a child. Isn't it funny I  would make a career out of being seen but not heard ”, as if she felt she was always worthless, that she didn't have a voice, she was always controlled by others.

What happened to her , whether partly as a result of her own insecurities and obsessive personality as many in the ballet world would like to advocate , it cannot be under stressed that it can be equally attributable  to the influences and subsequent consequences of the pressures put upon her in her young life to conform to certain ideals  and she was constantly unhappy in trying to obtain an unrealistic and utopian ideal in order to please others.

Whatever the ballet world wants to say about Gelsey Kirkland and the rights and wrongs of her 'kiss and tell' autobiography, it cannot be denied that Balanchine is responsible for the current aesthetic 'skinny' look attributable to western ballet dancers, he promoted the skeletal look by his costume requirements and his hiring practices, as well as the treatment of his dancers.

What happened to her was nothing short of miraculous that she survived and a result of her determination, single-mindedness and her heart to continue and survive -  she was at many stages of her career 'Dancing on her own grave'  - despite numerous dance injures, anorexia , a severe drug addiction and all the damage it was doing to her body, she kept going and continued to dance and to perform. Many dancers who had done the same wound up unable to keep dancing and having to retire, or in the hospital, or dead. That is a very sobering thought.

It can never be measured whether, had she had support and been nurtured as a dancer, with her particular personality traits, it would have resulted in the same catastrophic chain of events or not, we can only speculate and there are those who say she was her own victim because of her own insecurities and obsessive personality  but certainly throughout the book she sees herself as a product, a result of many factors, including her own weaknesses and as a sad product of her own choices. What I think is encouraging is that she sees one of her nobler goals in writing the book as to make herself an object lesson for younger dancers.

I think the book is valuable as a source  of evidence to my inquiry from a dancers inside perspective and although  it is just one more book about this topic it provides  a reality of the horrific consequences that can occur in individual cases and that with other research is still relevant today. For many the dance world holds none of these issues but for others it can be a  life - or- death  issue  and as long as those risks are evident and keep claiming the health and psychological well-being and, in some extreme cases, the lives of female dancers, then as far as I am concerned, the warning voices can never be loud enough and that gives my inquiry a real purpose.   

Her own personal  message to young dancers is , " Look forward to hope and look beyond the mirror."

Reference:

Dancing on my Grave  - Gelsey Kirkland with Greg Lawrence, 1986.