Dancing on My Grave: An Autobiography

Rating:
Summary: Stunning....
Review: As a ballet dancer, I have come to find the not-so-glamorous side of the ballet world: eating disorders plague it (and directors encourage them), dancers having multiple relationships with other dancers, and the constant pressure to always be at the top. Gelsey Kirkland seemed to have a ballet career that was glorious and fulfilling, yet with every hit of cocaine she took to keep her dancing, her life gained more emptiness and she was dying. Her personal torment is so personally and vividly revealed in this autobiography that you can actually feel her pain and loneliness as she reiterates each of her harrowing experiences. It is sad that some of her best dramatic performances were given at the lowest points in her personal life. This is one of the most stunning autobiographies I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing and beautiful.
Review: Dancing in my Grave, by Gelsey Kirkland is an amazing book. The book is about Gelsey's dancing career, and how she mangled her way through the jungle of ballet. In it are described many of the hardships that come with serious dancing. This book may not apply to people who are not into dance. Dance, when taken seriously, can bore people if they're not interested in it. However, all dancers who are even thinking of getting serious with dance should read this book.

This book portrays Gelsey Kirkland as a hero because it elaborates on her issues both mental and physical, but then it tells about her rehabilitation. A hero is someone who does something that benefits someone, not necessarily someone else. Gelsey found and helped a person in need of help, that person just so happened to be her. On page 102, `'I began to starve myself, limiting my diet to candy bars and coffee. This was the first sign of an anorexic syndrome that later would become an obsessive rule in my life.'' Gelsey, although it took her years to realize, convinced herself that she had a problem and she fixed it. To convince oneself that he/she has a problem is a very difficult thing to do. Denying it is the easy way out, or even admitting to it but not changing it is fairly easy but dedicating time to fixing a problem like that, that is what makes a hero.

Gelsey shares not only her problem of anorexia but her usage of drugs, her physical adjustments made for beauty reasons and her personal life issues. Gelsey had an older sister Johnna who was given the gift of physical beauty. Throughout the book it tells how Gelsey tried to change her physical appearance as much as possible to be beautiful like her sister. Gelsey undertook many face operations and adjustments to other areas to her body to make her look more like a prima ballerina. Gelsey grew up with a hard family life, possibly partially the cause of her problems later on in life. She shares her dependence on drugs and her fathers drinking problems as well.

Another virtue of this book is its great description of George Balanchine. Through most dancers eyes during Gelsey's time Balanchine was a god. This shows how Gelsey got close to him and started seeing things others could not see. The book tells about her partner Mikhail Baryshinkov and her partnering days with Misha and other wonderful dancers. Great views of the differences in Russian ballet and American ballet are exhibited in this book.

Dancing On My Grave is a very informational book on dancing, but at the same time it tells the story of a great adventurer and a hero who saved herself from the lies of prima ballerina beauty. This autobiography takes the reader behind the scenes of the `'making'' (training) of a perfect ballerina, and tells all of the gruesome details of love, beauty, drugs, eating disorders, and both physical and mental pain. Gelsey Kirkland worked through all of those hardships and made her mark on the ballet world. The key factor in that is that she realized that she had problems and so she was able to fix them and live through them to write Dancing On My Grave to warn others in her same position. Experience is everything, and so in the world of ballet Gelsey Kirkland is a genius.

Rating:
Summary: A book to read and read for more
Review: Gelsey Kirkland doesn't hold back in her tell all life story. She doesn't cover and hide her relationship with Balachine, Peter Martin and many others in the ballet world. She doesn't hold back either when she tells us of her drug and emotional problem. Despite all her misfortunes she is one the worlds greatest dancer, who deserves all that the world has to offer her. Her book is a page turner and a look into her fascinating life that is true and emotional. READ THE BOOK AND YOU'LL BE IN LOVE WITH GELSEY KIRKLAND AND WILL WANTED TO READ IT OVER AND OVER!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Great reading for western women involved with Russian men
Review: I first read this book years ago, then again just yesterday and what a different take I now have. I was of course much younger the first time I read it. Now, in my 40s I can better appreciate the confusion, pain and struggle that Ms. Kirkland endured for so many years.
Additionally, this is an excellent book for *any* woman -- dancer or not -- who is involved with a Russian man. I am technically still married to one, and though I have great respect and admiration for both Baryshnikov and Russian men generally, reading Ms. Kirkland's words about dealing with the mood swings and game playing that went on -- my God -- it was like reading my own experiences. Ms. Kirkland, you are spot on about the difficulties in a Russian-American relationship. Unlike Baryshnikov, my husband is not an intellectual nor an artist -- but he is Russian through and through, and is either tender and romantic and precious, or stone cold and punishing. Some of the passages from "Dancing on My Grave" I could repeat *WORD FOR WORD* from my own relationship. I struggle every day to move on. This is a most difficult entanglement to escape and to stay would mean my personal destruction. Ms. Kirkland is to be commended for her strength in this regard.
So. This book is not only a compelling autobiography but it is useful on so many levels to a great many people. For dancers, for individuals with eating disorders, self-esteem issues, and that sad little minority -- Western women involved with Russian men. The latter I relate to most strongly, and I can't say what it has meant to learn that it's not just me, and I am not losing my mind. This is something much needed for women in my situation because while there is a plethora of advice online and in books to assist western men involved with Russian women, there is absolutely no help for western women who hurt and struggle in their relationships with Russian men.
Thank you Ms. Kirkland for pouring your heart out in this amazing book. I have no doubt your honesty and directness has helped countless people.

Rating:
Summary: View on dance
Review: I've seen several professional dance performances but until I read this book, dance didn't interest me. Kirkland gives a view into interpretation, and now I want to see her performances (those on tape) and also study the history of dance. I thought this would be a big gossipy book, and there is some of that, but most of her focus is on dance. She's very thoughtful and explicit in how she interpreted the roles she played. The gossipy bits can probably be put down to her lack of reflection; this book was written when she was very young.

Rating:
Summary: I have now read this 13 times...
Review: If I could plagiarize a life story, this would be it. From the family, to our fathers, to the teachers, to the addictions, her life in dance matched my life in dance quite eerily. I even have Gelsey's mom's birthday, I found out through reading this. This book is not rooted in idolatry for Balanchine or Baryshnikov, it tells the truth of a talented, intense, insecure woman who found her way out of the darkness to claim her gift, her voice, her artistry. Great artists are not just good or bad, they are both in equal measure. Could anyone else have the courage to leap towards fame only to come crashing down and then tell it like it really was? Kirkland is an anomaly in the dance world for her unorthodox techniques on the stage and in the classroom, but the physical articulation she achieved during her performances is amazingly surpassed by the strength, clarity, and conviction in her words. I picked this book up for the first time in 1991, only to read it again two months later. I have recently reread it for the 13th time, so comforting are her words. The layering of her descriptions and the vocabulary in which she illustrates the struggles of her life show nuance, shape, a dark ambience. This book, whether you're a dancer or not, tugs at the mind as well as the heart. Dance dies instantly after the performers leave the stage. Gelsey's words do not. Out of all the dancer's autobiographies out there, this one stands out. She struggles mightily for just the right phrase to describe the joy and the sorrow of the art she chose. The pictures you will gather upon finishing this, will show once and for all that substance is much greater than shadow, and that truth is the only thing worth holding onto in the end. She might be something of a maverick, but her contributions to ballet and teaching are illuminated brilliantly as she recounts the more sordid moments of her life without apology. No one could have described her better than herself. Read this and gasp--once again, she gives us her best. No dance collection is complete without this book.

Rating:
Summary: The truth will set you free
Review: Never have I picked up a book and been completely pulverized with such honesty about the dance world, a world I was part of for 12 years. I have recently reread this book for the 13th time. I can't count the number of passages where I felt exactly the same way about a director, a costumer, a choreographer. I thought I was alone with these impressions. Her words provide great comfort when I remember my own experiences.
Many of her assertions regarding the idolatry of Balanchine and Baryshnikov vs. who they might have been underneath their "genius" touches on one simple fact: they were still human, and thus, flawed. Dance, which dies instantly, is supposedly ethereal and perfectionistic. In reality, it is a punishing art, and takes much mental and emotional focus to deal with the fleeting splendor one achieves while onstage. Her unflinching honesty, revealed from the eye of the studio and not so much the stage, came from a great struggle throughout her parents' uneasy marriage, her alcoholic father, and the struggles of anorexia and drug addiction, appears in passage after passage. When you have delved through the lower depths, you find the words to articulate the feelings all these previous things have denied. It's as if all the physical anguish finally pushed the right words out to describe her experience. I'm sure she made more than a few enemies by revealing all, but in the end, we all have to live with ourselves. We may never know another person as intimately as we know ourselves. She wished to please everyone by being something other than herself. In the end, to paraphrase from her book, she found who she was by seeing what she was not. Out of all the Balanchine dancers who've written autobiographies, Gelsey's and Toni Bentley's "Winter Season" stand out. Both of these dancers seek the truth, and with this, they found themselves. An excellent, stunning read. I adore this book.

Rating:
Summary: This touched my heart
Review: No other autobiography I have read has ever been this powerful. I was pulled into Gelsey's heart and felt her pain. She is probably the most beautiful and amazing dancer that ever was in America. Yet she did not feel beautiful. I could relate to all of Gelsey's struggles and emotional hardships. I recommend this book to all those who enjoy autobiographies, all who enjoy ballet, and especially to those who wish to become dancers. It gives a truly realistic view into the dance world. Will become a favourite. Other books to read; Holding Onto the Air by Suzanne Farrell, The Shape of Love (which is the continuing book to Dancing on My Grave) by Gelsey Kirkland and Greg Lawrence.

Rating:
Summary: Dancing on my Grave review
Review: This book written brilliantly by Gelsey Kirkland and Greg Lawrence is positively a book that I would recommend to all dancers like myself as well as anyone that is intregued by the effects of the dance world. In this book Gelsey takes us through a journey of chaos and problems. When you read this book you travel through the abusive effects of drugs as well as more dancer prone problems like eating disorders and self-image. You also see the beutiful side of the ballet world and it helps you relize how much work ballet dancers put into their passion and how little they get out of it. Gelsey and Greg did a great job at showing the reader dancer or not how hard and sometimes impossible the dance world can be. Over all in my humble opinion I think that this one is a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: a horror story
Review: When I read 'Dancing on my Grave', I felt like I was in some surreal horror movie. I was nearing the end of my recovery, but while I read the book I felt like I was being dragged back 5 years or so to when my life was hell. The writing was good and so compelling that I could not put the book down, but I was miserable for every minute of it, and depressed and drained when the book finished. Gelsey delves deeply into her self-loathing, and the problems incumbent - anorexia and drug addiction. You feel like you are inside her tortured and despairing head. It's awful. But she never really comes to any conclusion. At the end of the book, she meets a wonderful man, flies away with him and says they are going to recover together. But although she sounds hopeful, she doesn't give any direction to the reader who might be going through the same hell. She leaves you in limbo and you just have to hope desperately that it all worked out. (In real life, I don't know if this happened. Two addicts cannot recover together.) I really don't think this book is helpful to anyone who reads it, except someone completely removed from either dance or eating disorders who wanted some insight.