The Life and Work of Gelsey Kirkland free essay sample

According to many skilled dancers, knowledgeable critics, and essential lovers of ballet, Gelsey Kirkland is one of the most well-known and admired American ballerinas of our time. She was born on the 29th of December in 1952, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Jack Kirkland and Nancy Hoadley. Her father Jack was a play writer, known for his production, Tobacco Road. During the making of Tobacco Road, he met his fifth wife Nancy, who played one of the leading roles for the production. The couple married and began living together on the outskirts of New York before entertaining the idea of raising their family on a farm in Pennsylvania, Gelsey’s birthplace. Due to Jack’s previous marriages, he had a large extended family that lived on the farm with them, which made for a very busy and rather chaotic household. Within this extended family, Gelsey had an older sister Johnna, a younger brother Marshall, a half-brother Christopher, and two half-sisters Robin and Patricia. â€Å"For a good number of Kirkland’s early years, approximately from the age of two, she remained speechless to the point where her family began to consider her a mute. Although this was later found out to be false during an incident in which she cried out in the desire for a relative to remain at the farm longer, this set the precedent for Kirkland’s life of making a career out of being ‘seen but not heard. ’† Around the age of four, Gelsey’s father’s involvement in lavish spending and deteriorating wealth, which accumulated from his famous playwrights, caused the family to give up the farm and relocate to Manhattan, in Central Park West. As the family’s funds continued to dissipate, they moved to three different apartments, ultimately taking a toll on the man in charge of the household, Jack. Eventually, personal problems began to take a toll on the entire family, Gelsey especially, as her father became an alcoholic, which caused him to suffer from a total of five heart attacks. After watching her father’s downward spiral, Gelsey rebelled in the way that had been most familiar for her: not saying a word. Appropriate for this unhealthy environment Gelsey and her family had been placed in, her mother enrolled her in ballet classes at the age of eight, which caused her to follow in the footsteps of her older sister Johnna. At this time, Gelsey’s mother simply saw ballet as a safe activity for her and did not envision it as the extravagant career it later turned out to be. Nevertheless, she was the one to take Gelsey to her first audition at The School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center, the official training academy of the New York City Ballet, which was established in 1934 by legendary choreographer George Balanchine and philanthropist Lincoln Kirstein as the first and the most essential step in their quest to create an American classical ballet company. † This opportunity eventually placed her in the first division of the academy. Therefore, Gelsey became involved in dance at a very young age. However, she was not always the extremely gifted and talented dancer she is known as today, which is what makes her such a unique, hardworking dancer. In fact, in the beginning, her sister Johnna was a far better dancer than she was. Gelsey was not born an amazing dancer, but instead worked to obtain the talent and ability she came to possess later on in her life. As a whole, her struggle to become a good dancer foreshadows the obstacles she faced later in life. Her dedication and determination from the very beginning was most recognized when she began taking extra ballet classes and even quit high school in order to turn her focus towards perfecting her ballet technique. Thus, she was invited by George Balanchine to join the New York City Ballet when she was fifteen years old in 1968, indicating the beginning of her career as an established ballet dancer. Balanchine, regarded as the primary contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet, was the choreographic discovery of Sergei Diaghilev, noted for his irreplaceable training and distinctive choreography in abstract ballets. Gelsey quickly became a personal favorite of Balanchine, and upon acknowledgment for her amazing talent, she was promoted to soloist in 1969 and principal dancer in 1972. Throughout these years, she danced the lead role in Balanchine’s revival of The Firebird, which he choreographed specifically for her, John Clifford’s Reveries, in which she appeared alongside her sister, and Jerome Robbin’s Goldberg Variations. The fact that Balanchine created the choreography for The Firebird exclusively for Gelsey embodies the close relationship between the two. In 1972, Gelsey went on a tour through Russia with the New York City Ballet, where renowned Russian American dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov first noticed her. Two years later, she left the New York City Ballet when Baryshnikov sought her out to join the American Ballet Theatre, where she performed as his partner in Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, and The Nutcracker, which is her most important and celebrated role. Gelsey at first refused this role, and Marianna Tcherkassky ended up dancing the role of Clara in the Washington D. C. premiere of the production at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on December 21, 1976, but she finally did the role afterwards, and danced it in the television version. It was first telecast by CBS as a Christmas season special the next year on December 16, 1977. Believed to be their finest work together, she and Baryshnikov both danced beautifully and superhumanly, and Gelsey impressed the audience by performing just as well as her more famous partner. â€Å"Many people consider The Nutcracker to be their finest work together, and Kirklands portrayal of Clara the most memorable of all her works. † Gelsey spent many years dancing alongside Baryshnikov before he left the company to return to the New York City Ballet, following in the footsteps of Balanchine, which left Gelsey with a new partner, Patrick Bissel. This new relationship sent her career, as well as personal life, into complete deterioration. Up to this point, with the unhappiness and stress associated with obtaining the ideal body of a ballerina, she had already gone through several plastic surgeries. â€Å"Bissel introduced her to cocaine, leading into another life-threatening condition of anorexia. Yet Kirkland and Bissel were attracted to each other and began to form a romantic relationship solely based on drugs and sex. Their antics caused them to be fired from the ABT, though later they were rehired. Just within these few short years, in 1984, Kirkland’s career came to a dramatic halt when she finally collapsed due to what was labeled as nervous exhaustion and potassium deficiency. Through this, Kirkland was forced to leave the ABT and dancing in general. † During this otherwise unfortunate phase in her life, Gelsey Kirkland met and fell in love with her husband, Greg Lawrence, who was also a former cocaine user. After taking a substantial amount of time off, along with the growing support from her relationship with Lawrence, she made one last return to the stage in a debut of her former partner Baryshnikov’s version of The Nutcracker, the role she was most known for. The fact that when Gelsey decided to perform this role as her last return to the stage represents that it will always be an important part of her career and life. Her return to the stage ended up not being her last, but instead was such a hit that she was asked to appear with the Royal Ballet in a Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II in 1986. Following this reintroduction back into public interest, Gelsey and her husband collaborated in writing one of three autobiographies. The first autobiography, published in 1986, is entitled Dancing on My Grave, which describes all of the obstacles she dealt with in her life, beginning from her early life and her entrance into the world of dance, continuing onto her life of drug abuse and obsession with body appearance. It is a raw, natural testament to self-mutilation beginning with the treacherous, overworked ballet feet to the obsessive pursuit of the ballet body. In this autobiography, Gelsey herself states, â€Å"I have already seen my grave, my birth place as a ballerina and an artist. Though this season may be my last, the steps continue after the body has been stilled. The dance goes on forever. So shall I. So shall we. Let that be my epitaph, my prayer, my final gesture. † Published four years later, her second autobiography, The Shape of Love: The Story of Dancing on My Grave Continues, dealt with her move to England to dance with the Royal Ballet, and then her return to the American Ballet Theatre with a clean slate and a renewed outlook on life. After returning to the United States and the American Ballet Theatre, Gelsey and her husband published one more book, The Little Ballerina and Her Dancing Horse, in 1993. Gelsey eventually divorced Lawrence, and in 1997, married Michael Chernov, a former dancer, actor, and theater director, who also danced with the American Ballet Theatre. Gelsey retired from performing, and transitioned into a ballet instructor, teaching and coaching at places such as the American Ballet Theatre, The Royal Ballet School, English National Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Adelphi University, the Victorian College of the Arts, and Steps on Broadway, an internationally recognized dance studio in New York. Nevertheless, with Chernov and the American Ballet Theatre’s artistic director Kevin McKenzie, Gelsey choreographed a new production of Tchaikovskys The Sleeping Beauty, in which, after more than twenty years of not being on stage, she danced the role of Carabosse, the Wicked Fairy. In 2006, she was awarded the Dance Magazine Award, and when asked in an interview what life lessons ballet has taught her, she said, â€Å"Good work comes with team effort, not in isolation. Searching for truth in movement, finding the intention behind movement is essential, like it is in life. The pride of worldly success will not bring any lasting peace and can quite easily destroy a persons soul. Anything exceptional requires great struggle. That the necessity in ballet to apply strict boundaries in order to attain freedom can be a starting point for finding a similar truth in everyday life. † In 2010, Gelsey opened the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet with Chernov. The academys mission is â€Å"to encourage dramatic storytelling in ballet by providing specialized training for gifted students and by establishing a classically-oriented studio company capable of creating new dramatic works. † The training syllabus is based on traditional Russian, Danish, and French techniques, incorporating kinesthetic and remedial practices, all guided by proven scientific methodology. According to Gelsey, her teaching philosophy is that â€Å"the meaning of ballet was to be found in the development of a theme, in the relation of the compositional parts to the whole. † The accomplishment and prestige of founding of her own academy and studio company represents her redemption in the world of ballet. It shows her unconditional love for the art of ballet and her refusal to let her passion for ballet disappear. Part of what makes Gelsey Kirkland such a distinguished and interesting ballerina is the conflicts she experienced, both physically and emotionally throughout her life and career. Similar to Anna Pavlova, the most famous ballerina of the twentieth century, Gelsey had to work very hard to become the amazing dancer she was. Her perseverance as a dancer can also be seen through the struggle she went through to survive the trials of love affairs, drug abuse, and eating disorders. Nevertheless, the fact that she overcame these obstacles and placed no boundaries to the potential of her own success is what makes her such a strong and admired ballerina is. From the experience she has dancing with some of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world to the accomplishment of founding her very own dance company, Gelsey Kirkland will continue to be one of the most amazing American ballerinas of our time.