A Dancing Doll Essay Research Paper The — страница 2

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image of the ?perfect? dancer. Despite this, she continued to dance in the company. At the age of eighteen, she was flying through Balanchine?s repertory due to her unique ability to fill almost any role in all of his ballets. During the company?s tour of the Soviet Union, Kirkland had a rare lack of control concerning her diet, eating more than she ?should? of the exotic cuisine she came across. This led to an obsessive bout with anorexia that would take all of her energy. She wrote, ?I wanted to live and dance on nothing. I wanted to empty myself out completely. Purification and punishment seemed to go hand in hand? (Grave 102). Along with this new determination came illness and fatigue, which led to her first encounter with illicit substances. Before one performance,

Balanchine gave her a ?vitamin? (which turned out to be an amphetamine) to give her the energy to complete a performance. Invited to dinner by premier danseur Ivan Nagy and his wife Marilyn, Kirkland was first introduced to the idea of defecting from the New York City Ballet to the American Ballet Theatre. With this in mind, she began to allow herself more freedom in the choices she made in her career. She chose to go back to a class taught at the School of American Ballet, leaving her coach and mentor of two years, Maggie Black. Disaster struck as she was rehearsing for one of Jerome Robbins? ballets ? Kirkland broke her foot. Only after months of healing and rehabilitation was she could dance again. When she was able again, she took classes with David Howard who taught at a

different studio. He once again attempted to retrain her from all of the bad habits she had accumulated over the years. She continued to rip through the repertory of the New York City Ballet just as she had before her injury, but this time she added more personal zeal and drama to each of her performances, much to the dismay of Balanchine. At this time, Kirkland embarked on a series of relationships that left her empty and tarnished. Partnered with Peter Martins in a few ballets, a short involvement developed that extended past the walls of the studio, but had a violent ending. It was through Martins that Kirkland would first meet Mikhail Baryshnikov, whom she would partner with after leaving Martins and the New York City Ballet. Baryshnikov defected from Russia and joined the

American Ballet Theatre, and asked specifically for Kirkland to partner with him on the stage here. Soon after his arrival in the United States, he partnered with Gelsey off-stage for a shaky four-year relationship. Baryshnikov brought both joy and pain to Kirkland?s life throughout the duration of their troubled association. When they first danced together at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), Kirkland had no training in the dramatic expression of movement, and had to learn an entirely new set of dance vocabulary in order to perform the romantic ballets she was cast in. With the ABT, the two toured Europe performing excerpts from romantic and classical ballets in conjunction with the local companies. Back in New York, Kirkland turned toward a miming instructor to help her with

the still unfamiliar territory of the dramatic side of ballet. Performing the title role in Giselle, she faced new hardships in the dance arena when it seemed to her that ?meaning was gradually sacrificed in a misguided quest for ?authenticity?? (Grave 189) and ?the mechanical reproduction of style [had] replaced mimetic discourse? (?Reflections? 44). During this ballet, she realized that Baryshnikov and herself had two completely different approaches to their dancing, causing tension between them and the way they interpreted the dance and executed the movement. In 1976, Kirkland and Baryshnikov were acted to play the lead roles in a film about an American ballerina who falls in love with a Russian star. Disliking the false portrayal of the ballet world and the producer?s

unwillingness to listen to her ideas and suggestions, Kirkland began to look for a way out of the role and found illness. She became slave to both bulimia and anorexia during the months of the production and, intermittently, for years to follow. ?Although Kirkland naturally fit the current image [of thinness]?she began to exaggerate her image by becoming anorexic? (Horosko 54). Because of her disappearing physical frame, the producers decided to replace her. Weighing less than eighty pounds at five feet and four inches, she was only a shadow of her former self. It wasn?t until her mother was near death in the hospital that she realized the danger in what she was doing to herself and worked to cut it out of her life ? at least, for the time being. She returned to the ABT and