Marvin Hamlisch’s song from A Chorus Line came to mind as I read Sarah Kaufman’s very lengthy piece published in The Washington Post. I totally applaud the Post for devoting this much space to this article and to Sarah for writing it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/07/AR2009050704620.html?wprss=rss_print/style

Sarah and I studied ballet together at Metropolitan Ballet in Bethesda Maryland years ago. One of our classmates went on to become a prima ballerina with ABT. I turned down my ballet scholarship to L’Ecole de danse classique in Monaco at the same time Amanda McKerrow, who I was fortunate enough to score the same as in a Royal Ballet Exam went off to New York. Amanda had the perfect dancer body-petite, lithe, gorgeous turn out and feet, beautiful face, disposition, talent and height. She was 5′3″ and I already at 14 was 5′9.” Although only a teen I was realistic about my future in dance. This is not a surprise in an industry where ones career usually (without injuries) ends around 35 at the latest.

Here is a clip of Amanda performing from You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlwvRp-PccE

No dieting and practice would alter the fact that on pointe I was too tall!
This was pre MTV so the thought of becoming a choreographer hadn’t crossed my mind and I wanted to go to college anyway.

Reading Sarah’s article about the specter of George Balanchine and his hold on American dance I wondered if Sarah might have read Gelsey Kirkland’s autobiography, Dancing on my Grave. At the time of its publication I did not read it. Gelsey Kirkland was a dancer with ABT when it was based at the Kennedy Center. It was truly a golden age of ballet - Russian defectors played into the politics of Washington, the Cold War resulted in ballet and political intrigue as well as spectacular dance.
There was a cult of celebrity to the Russian dancers - Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova (a haunting Odette/Odille), and then Mikhail Baryshnikov arrived in Washington DC and we were transfixed. The Bolshoi, The Kirov, ABT, The Joffrey, and New York City Ballet seemed to be competing for dollars and prominence on the world stage from the Opera House of the Kennedy Center.

Gelsey Kirkland, a young American dancer, partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Clara in his adaptation of The Nutcracker in 1977. I was there opening night and met them backstage after the performance. It was a thrilling evening. When her drugs and love affairs resulted in her leaving ABT I recall being very sad. I viewed it not as a fault of her character but of a system which used artists, making demands on them, and then tossing them aside. It seemed the physical toll on ones body coupled with the emotional challenges to ones ego would be hard for anyone but the most disciplined of personalities.
Her firing scared me enough that I had no desire to try drugs, alcohol or even cigarettes as a young dancer.

Ms. Kirkland’s book published in 1986 tells of her personal struggles with Balanchine when she was a young dancer. Her stories illuminate his arrogance and the spell under which many dancers including Baryshnikov were held and haunted by him. Kirkland’s brave rejection of him, her reasons, and her separation from NYCB to ABT is captivating reading.

In addition to the book being about her, the ballet, her romances, her personal challenges, it is very much a record of an exceptional moment in the ballet world and certainly in Washington DC.
I was at many of the performances which she refers to in the book. In 1986 her love affairs would have been “gross” to me since I had no reference for love and affairs of the heart, now almost 25 years later the book intrigued me and made me recall many names such as Peter Martins, Fernando Bujones, and Patrick Bissell, the dancer who introduced her to drugs, dancers I had not forgotten but whom I had only applauded from a distance.

I would welcome the opportunity to hear Ms. Kirkland speak. I hope that she reads Sarah’s article. I certainly hope anyone interested in that seminal moment in American ballet will read her book and watch the DVD of her performance with Baryshnikov in The Nutcracker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rQSuuHIm8I

The comments in response to the Post article are all worth reading.  Ballet critics don’t get as personal as political comments but the variety of these remarks are worth reading:

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