Gelsey Kirkland (born December 29, 1952, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) is an American ballerina. Kirkland joined the New York City Ballet in 1968 at age fifteen, at the invitation of George Balanchine. She was promoted to soloist in 1969 and principal in 1972. She went on to create leading roles in many of the great twentieth century ballets by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Antony Tudor including Balanchine's revival of The Firebird, Robbins' Goldberg Variations, and Tudor's The Leaves are Fading.She is perhaps most famous to the general public for dancing the role of "Clara" in Baryshnikov's 1977 televised production of The Nutcracker. She left the American Ballet Theatre in 1984.
In April of this year I taught at American Ballet Theatre in New York and hope to continue teaching in the States. Currently we are working on a book project... based on how a dancer prepares for a role using ballet technique, mime and acting intentions. "Also we are starting to work on a series of CDs, music for several levels that can be used in ballet schools.
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Ballet is surviving in the small towns of America, probably because parents send their children to learn something that they perceive will help them, like playing a musical instrument. Whether this will survive in this modern world is certainly beyond my ability to answer. If there were money to support worthwhile artistic endeavors, rather than expecting them to generate money, maybe ballet at its best could survive.
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The ballet can touch each one of us. It does this by having strict boundaries that encourage dancers to refine their sense of movement, while struggling towards expression, sort of like squeezing a tube of toothpaste from the bottom and waiting patiently for it to finally overflow at the top.
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I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the people I offended in Dancing on My Grave, such as Baryshnikov and Peter Martins. I would have liked to have had the wisdom to keep my personal problems out of the work. But that's life.
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(Advice to young dancers): "To work slowly, move against the tide. Listen and look behind the surfaces of things. Look back in history. Look forward to hope and look beyond the mirror."
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Some say that the 70s and 80s were a golden era of ballet and just being a part of it was extraordinary. I remember working in the studio with a sense of being on a real journey with the teachers and coaches who gave their time freely to me. I'm eternally grateful to the late Stanley Williams, to Maggie Black, David Howard, Pilar Garcia, Greg Lawrence, and of course to all my long-suffering dancing partners.
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(When going to Russia to see Baryshnikov dance): "I made a snap judgement: He was the greatest male dancer on the face of the earth."
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The nature of my passion was such that I danced with a passion to spite the music in my sleep. The entire household was sometimes awakened by loud thumping noises coming from my room.
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The meaning of dance is not contained in the individual steps any more than the meaning of a phrase of music is contained in the individual notes--the meaning of ballet was to be found in the development of a theme, in the relation of the compositional parts to the whole.
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Fortunately for children, the uncertainities of the present always give way to the enchanted possibilities of the future.
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Fact
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Currently lives in a seaside house in Australia, with her husband and two dogs. [2005]
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With Kevin McKenzie, she is co-choreographing the upcoming American Ballet Theatre production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty", in which she will appear in the role of the evil fairy, "Carabosse". [May 2007]
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Winner of the Dance Magazine Award [2006]
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Will open and serve on the faculty at the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in New York City. She and her husband, Michael Chernov, are the Artistic Directors. [2010]
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Currently lives with her husband, Michael Chernov, in New York City. [December 2010]
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Is now retired from performing and has become teacher and coach. [2004]
Edward Villella described her as having "steel-like legs that are doing the most fantastic technical feats while the upper body is soft and lovely as though nothing were going on underneath" in Time magazine.
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Was on the May 1, 1978 cover of TIME magazine.
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Resigned from ABT in May, 1984.
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Is a dear friend of Anthony Dowell, artistic director of The Royal Ballet.
She applied for the position of Artistic Director for a ballet company in Ireland, yet when she got the job, she wound up turning it down - in favor of teaching.
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She appeared as guest artist with the Royal Ballet 1980-1986.
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Baryshnikov called her "The best ballerina of her generation."
$1.5 Million
