What a powerful insight of the drug abuse within the ballet world. I know, i know all the words being said about her and her book-(self pity, lies, over-analysis, lack of confidence, insecurities, exaggerations and so on...)-BUT, hey...she certainly had the courage to dig into this "forbidden", unspoken topic.. an objective issue...and STILL very present. I did love the book, i found it raw, honest, well structured and very valuable in terms of being a real wake up call for young people, dancers or not, on cocaine addiction and its horrible consequences. One more book about the topic? Welcome, reality. Tiresome subject for some? A life-or-death issue for others. As long as drugs keep claiming lives-(as almost claimed Kirkland's)-, the warning voices will never be heard loud enough. Bravo for Miss Kirkland...for being a survivor, and for writing about it.

And bravo to you, Cristian, for such a thoughtful, sensitive and courageous post.

I am curious, cubanmiamiboy, what made you believe that Kirkland's first book was "honest"?

If calling yourself a "cocaine casualty", or a junkie is not being honest, then it would be a lie, in which case it would be stupid.

To put it simply, I think the problem many readers had with Kirkland's book was that she seemed to blame all her problems, including addiction, on other people, even including Balanchine. It's been years since I read the book, but I don't recall that she took responsibility or blame for anything that ever happened to her.

She did on her cocaine addiction issue. On the artistic matters she certainly sees herself as a product, a result of many factors, including her own weakness and Balanchine syllabus, which she couldn't comprehend.

She acknowledges her condition, which is not the same as acknowledging her own responsibility for it. Balanchine betrayed her trust by giving her that "vitamin" in Russia, Bissell manipulated her against her better judgment to just try cocaine. I am grateful that her survival instinct kicked in when it finally did, rescuing her. But at least to the point when the manuscript went to press, I don't think she was ready to face herself -- at least not publicly.

I agree that one of her nobler goals in writing the book was to make herself an object lesson for younger dancers. I hope that aspect of it has had the desired effect.

Carbro, to the best of my recall she does present both events, the amphetamines given by Balanchine and her initiation in the cocaine habit with Bissel in an objective, factual, simplistic way, just recollecting the way her body and mind reacted. On the other side, several times she mentions her self destruction as a sad product of her own choices. I really didn't detect a guilty implication of her surroundings, including Balanchine's "vitamin" story, which is not even linked to her upcoming display on drug abuse.



Some images are really horrifying and raw...

I, too, think it's an honest book, because I think she was speaking her truth as she knew and felt it. I took away a sense of pervasive shame and confusion, as well as an unhealthy single-mindedness which allowed her to survive to a point. That doesn't mean that it's unbiased or that she was right or 100% honest with herself. It was very much a product of a point in her life when she had embraced sobriety, which is like a type of conversion.

I read a article, perhaps in Dance Magazine, that talked about how at a gathering of ballet people, Edward Villella made a plea to stop treating Kirkland so harshly; she was pretty much excommunicated from much of the dance community after publication of her book. I just finished reading Kavanagh's Nureyev biography, and I don't think her self-described behavior could touch his at its vile worst. And how many excuses were made for him -- early poverty, always an exile, etc. (I'd take his father over hers.) Apart from trading sex for drugs in the worst years of her habit, which is hardly uncommon among heavy users and addicts, I never got the impression that she was an inveterate user; more that she shot herself in the foot before she could manage to please someone.

One of the things about the ballet community has been its refusal to admit that many problems that affect society, from drug and alcohol use to eating disorders to treating students as expendible, are issues in the ballet world. That makes it impossible to place Kirkland on the continuum. The ballet world was not credible when it behaved like a dysfunctional family in denial and pointed its collective finger at the bad child, however badly behaved that child was. This makes it impossible to tell how far she was toward the extreme or whether there were many more cases like hers that were swept under the rug or dropped as expendible.

Most eloquent, Helene. I quote the below portion of your text, which was the only part I couldn't quite understand, viz., your reference to 'an unhealthy singlemindedness...etc.'




Did you mean a 'healthy single-mindedness that allowed her to survive to a point'? All I mean is I can't grasp how 'an unhealthy single-mindedness' would have any beneficial effects. Obviously, I get the gist of most of what you're saying so intelligently, so therefore just wanted this little part clarified.

I wasn't clear. I meant that the part of her character, single-mindedness, that allowed her to survive was part of what tied her up and set her back once she made it past the first danger point in what was an intense emotional war. Of course, if you don't survive, you can't heal, but look at how many years it took her to do so, and it seems that this happened in phases.

There's something i found curious. Among all the ambivalent feelings of Kirkland regarding choreographic issues and choreographers-(Balanchine one of them)-there's only one character which she seems to venerate and praise with high regard, describing his artistry and mastery with profound respect: Antony Tudor. Curiously, this is the same only character from the ballet world which Villella, as he tells us in his "Prodigal", couldn't stand to work with at all.

There's one thing to keep in mind when regarding Kirkland presently as an historic figure: All that most readers today have to go on is Kirkland's own writings, and it's very hard for a biographer to take on a subject like her while she's still around. Time and mortality will probably have to intervene before a full and balanced picture emerges.

That’s right. Kirkland became the designated screwup, the one that makes everyone else feel normal and healthy in comparison.



Because their approaches to their work and art were similar, I think. They liked to analyze and think things through, and Tudor’s merging of dance and drama would be perfect for Kirkland. She was obviously uncommonly clever, with a genuinely inquiring mind. Unlike Balanchine Tudor would have responded to that and not told her diplomatically to shut up and dance. Which doesn’t mean there would be no conflict in the studio, with two such strong and similar personalities, but a fundamental understanding and respect would always be there.

One of the most touching lines in Dancing on My Grave is Kirkland saying of Balanchine, “I never knew what to do with my love for him.” She rose in the company during a period when Balanchine was still mostly in his post-Farrell funk, and one wonders if things might have been different for Kirkland and for him (and possibly for the history of ballet) if circumstances had been more propitious. Melissa Hayden told Robert Tracy that “Kirkland got too much too soon without the right kind of support.”



The line between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ single mindedness can be quite difficult to draw at times.

I have found it very illuminating to compare Allegra Kent's autobiography "Once a Dancer..." with "Dancing on my Grave". Kent also had a complicated home life, both as a child and as an adult, and she too had certain issues with Balanchine, problems showing up for performances, etc. However, Kent and Kirkland had/have seem to have completely different personalities and tendencies, so Kent comes across as incurably optimistic and loving whereas Kirkland gives the impression of being unreasonably pessimistic and relentlessly perfectionist. I assume that a biography written by a third party - and they both deserve a biography - will show these talented women in a different light.

Speaking as someone who "was there" to see and meet the pre-teen and early teen Gelsey, I have to remember that she was very fond of Kent, and had little good to say about Farrell at that same time. She was always working on something, to the point of "hitting the wall" and trying to push through it, rather an endorphin junkie. We mostly all hoped that she'd grow out of it, but she didn't. It would be idle to deny that there were some who viewed her defection from NYCB with delight, "Good, now she's out of the way," but on the whole, most of us liked her -- a lot! Her crash was a train wreck for us. Ghastly, but too morbidly fascinating to look away.

After reading Villella's and Kirkland's autobiographies consecutively this past month, what struck me was that both agreed on Balanchine's main faults--he used company classes as laboratories for his choreography rather than as warm-up sessions, which caused them physical damage, and he did not provide much in the way of explanation to his principal dancers on how to dance his ballets, which forced them to seek outside counsel.

His evaluation of dancers as non-thinking instruments of his intellect in itself must be demoralizing to work with on a daily basis. So Villella and Kirkland sought out other teachers for class and coaches for artistic development--just to find a way of dancing choreography they were told had no meaning.

As for Kirkland's crack-up with drugs, I found it not untypical of people whose talents aren't supported by a tough enough psyche in dealing with the on-going stress of high profile jobs. I've known brilliant engineers, scientists, marketers and others whose talents could not deal with the daily challenge of performing at their peak without a mistake. They, too, resorted to alcohol and other drugs to get through their career, and many didn't. In short, I didn't find her collapse into anexoria and drug addiction isolated to the ballet world.

Interesting enough was to find the "non private coaching" concept widely justified by Farrell in her book. Talk about differences.

I have spoken of this before but Gelsey's follow-up book to "Dancing on My Grave" which was co-written with her ex-husband Greg Lawrence was published in 1986 and entitled "The Shape of Love". It has a very different tone from "Dancing on My Grave" which was written at a time when Gelsey was still in a painful place having been driven from her dance career and only just in the first stages of recovery from drug addiction. The first book does point the finger at various individuals such as her alcoholic father (she doesn't link her substance abuse issues with his), Lucia Chase (didn't give her enough emotional support or care as though that were part of her job) and Balanchine and others. Gelsey in the second book which deals with her return to the stage is willing to place more blame on herself and is more generous to others.

BTW: in recent interviews in Dance Magazine, Gelsey admitted that she regretted spilling personal information about Peter Martins and Mikhail Baryshnikov including taking us inside the bedroom with sexual details (unflattering to both gentlemen). Both men are powerful and well-connected, then and now and probably made their displeasure felt. Both were running NYCB and ABT at the time that Gelsey was trying to return to the stage in the mid-1980's.

Kirkland's complaint about Martins in her first book was that during their relationship, he made a show of saying he'd stand up to Heather Watts, but didn't.

However, I remember a passage in the book where she is sleeping with Martins in his apartment and wakes up in the middle of the night to discover Heather Watts in the bedroom watching them together in bed. Evidently Peter didn't ask Heather to return her spare key.

Just another note: though Bissell and Kirkland are the most frequently singled out examples of drug abuse casualties of the eighties they were not alone. Probably the most prominent and the most tragic but cocaine was big back then and lots of people in the dance world were using. However, it was made to seem that Patrick and Gelsey were the unfortunate exceptions to the rule and not part of a larger trend. Susan Jaffe has admitted in interviews that she had a brush with drug addiction very early in her career but the Gelsey example likely forced her to clean up her act sooner rather than later.

FauxPas, just curious about something – did Kirkland actually say that she was sorry for providing Too Much Information about her affairs with Martins and Baryshnikov because they took it out on her professionally, or is this speculation? (I haven’t seen the interviews.) Thanks.





Well, we have only Kirkland’s side of it. It seemed to me that Martins was a little confused himself, and if Kirkland had been more experienced in such matters she would have realized earlier that his loyalties were still with Watts and moved on.



Right. They were scapegoated, in a sense.

Gelsey just mentions that she regrets hurting people with her comments in her book specifically Martins and Baryshnikov. She doesn't mention which comments but they would have to be the personal information about her relationships with them. It has been a while since I read "Dancing on My Grave" and I don't have the article handy. However, her comments were likely in response to the emotional hurt she caused these men, not for the repercussions to her career.

However, I drew the inference that after publishing the book, Gelsey would not have been welcome at Misha's ABT or Martin's NYCB. I don't know if either gentleman directly or indirectly expressed their indignation or dismay about her published revelations. However, if they were upset then it is highly unlikely that she would have been taken back into the fold at either of her former artistic homes. Especially if Gelsey was as universally reviled personally by the dance world as she seems to have been at that time according to a previous poster's comments re: Villella's plea for mercy.

There was a strong and generalized disapproval that Gelsey divulged certain details about other people's intimate details that I don't think it was necessary for either Martins or Baryshnikov to request/demand an apology. Suggestions that one was due could very well have come from either the general reaction in the press or someone in her circle -- or even herself, retrospectively.

What truly appalls me is that her editor, Jacqueline Onassis, a zealous protector of her own privacy, allowed the inclusion of certain unnecessary details.

Thanks for clarifying, FauxPas.



Well, 'fulsome breasts' got past her....

(Also, Kirkland's book is actually pretty mild fare as far as tell-all memoirs go. )

There is one sad but probably all-too-true in Villella's "Prodigal Son" about Kirkland and Bissell. One night after a performance with Villella somewhere Bissell and Kirkland stayed after the performance and downed a bottle of vodka together. When they ran out they broke into the stage manager's office and got another bottle. They then downed what Villella euphemistically calls "controlled substances." Kirkland wandered off, and a very intoxicated Bissell slashed his wrists, which earned him a trip to the hospital. The next day they danced beautifully.
To me, that kind of story deserves pity, and not hatred. Beauty and talented wasted.

I still think that Baryshnikov got the best retribution at least in the Art of the Bon Mot:

"Kiss and tell is one thing, f*** and publish, that's another!"

Twyla Tharp gave his performance in the sack a rave review in her own memoir. I imagine they're still speaking.

Not even pity (well, the whole syndrome of substance abuse, yes, of course, but not applied to this performance exactly), much less hatred. While not recommended by any means (even if you're not performing), but it's, in fact, extremely impressive. Of course, in the long run 'beauty and talent wasted' is correct, but in the short run it gives an extraordinary insight into talent and professionalism. I do wonder what the 'danced beautifully' looked like, though, because it was probably at least different (unless the vodka and pills were every day) from the norm. Canbelto, did it say anything about that specific performance, other than that it was 'beautiful'? I imagine that this has been many times the cause of something in a performance that seemed 'off', although the reason not having been known to the viewer, even if this one happened to have been inspired. They would still have been high somewhat, of course, and obviously the wrist-slashing would have been pretty superficial.

Lynn Seymour gave an after-glowy review of Martins' in her memoir, but, again, that wasn't Kirkland's complaint.

I was commenting on the "f___ and publish" remark Mel had just posted.

Too true. There's a larger account yet to be written about drug use and ballet, especially in the 1980s.

Not to mention alcoholism. The most famous example being, probably, the universally beloved Erik Bruhn. Yuri Soloviev as well.

I knew a group of dancers in the early 70s who were stoned on grass all the time (including when they danced), and dropped a lot of acid. They were not also drinkers, though. They were well-known in New York, and include some famous names still. I don't think think it affected the quality of dancing in their case, since the whole company seemed to be at ease with it, and one became one of the greatest dancers in another company (although after that, I don't know what their drug habits were, but there weren't any breakdowns). Artists in the late 60s and early 70s were still using certain drugs as part of their creative processes, and these I'm talking about could certainly 'hold their pot', didn't had bad acid trips, etc. I thought this very interesting, because I certainly did not have a tolerance for these substances, although I tried some of them. It could be different with modern and ballet dancers, although one of these I refer to was trained as a ballerina, and did things like 'Coppellia' with other companies. I think there was some writing about Martha Graham having a drinking period, some critic said something about her even 'dancing when she was so drunk she nearly fell off the stage', but another dancer I knew didn't know much about this. She obviously got over it, though.

Then there's just debauchery, which will often include many drugs, although I don't know if kavanaugh mentioned anything during her catalog of Nureyev misdemeanours.

And then there's just self-medication.

Yes, I always found it amazing how some of the dancers I knew could work stoned, high, tripping, on no sleep b/c of being out all night. And many of them were forces of nature onstage. Perhaps part of it was that they were all so young....

I am stunned, stunned, as I recall an interview with Grace Slick. Grace did not deny using drugs. She did deny ever performing in anything but a cold-sober condition. Otherwise, she couldn't hear the music properly. And she wasn't moving around, doing potentially dangerous things in slippery, satin pointe shoes.

Hmmm... that may have been true for Slick, but it certainly hasn't been true for a host of pop stars past and present. Martin Scorsese had to do some judicious cutting to ensure that a certain eminent rock star featured in The Last Waltz didn't have a big cocaine drip coming out of his nose, to take only one example. Being high doesn't necessarily make you non-functioning, especially when you're younger.

There's self medication, there's debauchery, there's having a good night out...there are many different ways and degrees of drug use as there are of drinking.

I think you'll find that drugs were the one 'misdemeanour' that Nureyev was never guilty of, he seemed to have a complete aversion to the drug scene. All the Nureyev biographers and commenters seem agreed on that.

Thanks for that, Mashinka, and that makes it all the more complex. Because the dancers I knew who used drugs quite freely were themselves, on the other hand, not nearly so promiscuous as Nureyev was. They were even faithful to their lovers, etc. They were not, however, using cocaine, which does seem to be the one that has caused the most trouble with some dancers, or it has been publicized as such the most. And it always has to do with the physiological and mental makeup of the person--which is why I never used LSD even though offered it me by one of these people (although they didn't insist on it), because I thought it would be terrifying for things to seem to change that much. What has always interested me, though, is people who don't seem stoned, who you can't even tell are high. They don't change at all after smoking, but someone like Kirkland who had a lot of problems was bound to have the most serious reactions. And someone mentioned Jaffe, I hadn't known she'd ever had a brush with drugs. I would imagine the discipline of a ballet dancer will usually allow them to limit the damage, and stop using, because they already have support from what they are doing, by its very disciplined nature. So that real breakdowns and overuse are probably the exception rather than the rule among dancers who have experimented.

There goes the myth of the nunlike ballet dancer, sacrificing all for art.

I'm curious as to how one trusts a partner who is high--pas de deux work can be very tricky and often dangerous.

I think cocaine use was pretty widespread--and very "ok" white collar--in the seventies. It was "safer" than amphetamines, the use of which was on the wane by then. Before this therapists and doctors used to prescribe Dexadrine, dexamil (with miltown to take off the edge) for depression--or as "mood elevators", and that spilled over to all sorts of illegal versions. All of those drugs, cocaine and amphetamines and quaaludes--and even LSD--had a brief period as a tool for doctors and then a long underground afterlife.

In the late forties wasn't benzedrine sold over the counter, like NoDoze, so truckdrivers could drive all night? In my liner notes somewhere, the writer remembers seeing Charlie Parker pouring Bennies from a bottle into a cup of coffee just before a recording session in Los Angeles (which may have led to his "Relaxing at Camarillo").

So dancers weren't alone in this, and as Patrick says sometimes--maybe most of the time--drug use becomes self-limiting. And "promiscuity" too.

Well, to assume to speak for my ballet sisters, how do you trust a partner who is obtuse and unmusical but there 'cause he's nice eye candy (or as Maria Tallcheif used to call it, enraptured by a strong jawline, "poetic" and "vulnerable")? Some of the drug-using dancers I'm thinking of--of course this doesn't mean all of them, nor am I endorsing drug use--were better high than many at their sober best.

The novices were the teenagers with their mothers in tow. I believe Tchinarova said there were eight Mamas on the Bellet Russe tours.

Naturally one is expected to do one's best with the partner one is given, however skilled. That includes being respectful enough (of the partner, audience, director, and art form) to be sober while working with them. This isn't confined to men--I certainly wouldn't want to have to partner a lady who murders me with her chemically-assisted port de bras or other movement, whether the critics are in raptures or not.

Something that I remember the most about Kirkland's tales is her questioning of the "don't ask don't tell" mantra within ABT's directives on the drug issue back on her days, as well as the lack of resources or helping mechanisms available to addict dancers due to the unwillingness to acknowledge the problem. She also wondered, as well as i do, if written policies related to this are being implemented nowadays, or if official medical help-(Company Primary Health Care Providers)-is available for those in need.

Speaking of being murdered by chemicals, remind me one day to tell the story of partnering the ballerina who went on a millet-only (whole grain, natch) diet for a month...

Robert La Fosse's autobiography "Nothing to Hide" shows the partner's view of working with the using Gelsey Kirkland. They were rehearsing "Giselle" together. He describes her looking unattractive - disheveled with a puffy face. She seemed sullen and withdrawn as I remember, having difficulty communicating her ideas. Evidently they had trouble establishing any kind of rapport which Gelsey alludes to as well in her book describing him as immature (also missing the sexual chemistry that Misha brought to the table). The rehearsal process was difficult - La Fosse describes Kirkland as being a dead weight when he had to do the Act II lifts but onstage they looked lovely with her body draped in a long line but not so lovely on his shoulders and back. Anyway, La Fosse didn't have fun partnering Gelsey at the period in her life when she was on drugs.

Ray, that does sound unfortunate, to put it politely.

Re: the lifts in Giselle, I don't entirely blame Kirkland--the technique for those lifts is similar to that used for the lifts in Les Sylphides. The woman must not jump at all; the man must lift her as "dead weight" because otherwise she ends up looking heavy, and it spoils the illusion of weightlessness. However, it is quite hard on the man.