Dancing on My Grave: An Autobiography [Paperback]

Dancing On My Grave is an important read for anyone with an interest in dance. Why? Because Gelesy Kirkland (at least in my opinion) was one of the best dancers ever, and to me this book explains a lot about her dancing style. I thought her book was fascinating and sad, it would make anyone think twice about a career in dance!!! I especially found Gelsey's descriptions of working with other artists outside strict ballet interesting- I think that her descriptions of developing technique are helpful to dancers who want to understand their art. I learned a lot from reading this book, I cried at times and I reccommend it highly to anyone who is interested in either dance or biography.

As a fan of Mikhail Baryshnikov's and George Balanchine's work, I somehow didn't want to like this book. However, reading it, I found myself taking Kirkland's side more and more. The book is well-written, and it insightfully but often also mercilessly describes the life of a dancer, including the obstacles Kirkland in particular had to face. I have often read that Kirkland is self-serving and narcissistic and tends to blame anyone but herself. I don't agree. Indeed she takes responsibility for her insecurities and bad choices as readily as she blames others - Baryshnikov and Balanchine in particular.
What I did not like:
I cannot always agree with what she has to say about different dance styles: I for one do not see Balanchine's ballerinas as robots, and much as I like Kirkland's own soft, fairy-like approach to dance, she doesn't seem to me like the independent, self-taught rebel she makes herself out to be. There is a lot of Balanchine in her dance, and a lot of the dancer Baryshnikov needed her to be, and much less of the self-taught lone artist she designs in the book.
When she tells the stories of her relationship with Baryshnikov or rather: of how it felt to her), I felt for her but also for him. He may have made it hard for her, but she certainly made it as hard for him. She presents her sexual and emotional servility as a necessity to please him, but the way she describes it, we see that it did not make him happy - a cause for her to see him as even more of a tyrant. I personally think it commends him that he felt sick of the servility of his girlfriend at times (although, again, I am sure it was not easy to be with him!). It seems like all her life, she needed excuses to destroy herself (the result of an unhappy childhood), and each of her partners before she got help was as such an excuse for more misery. If he wanted her to be servile, he was a self-serving tyrant. If he resented her for being servile, he was an insensitive tyrant.
I also didn't like the fact that she mocks Baryshnikov's English by transcribing his wrong pronounciation: the man is not English, and we all can imagine a Russian accent - it need not be highlighted to ridicule him by quoting him with sentences spelt like "Vhutever you vant" or "Is some-sing ze matter?". While all the time Kirkland laments about his constant disrespect, she herself sure does not seem to hesitate to mock him (rather publicly).
What I liked:
Kirkland makes it very clear that her misery clouded her vision. Every time she alludes to her problems with her appearance, with her men and so forth, she only describes how it felt then, as if she knows that she cannot in retrospect justify or reconstruct or even recall how far from or close to the truth her insecure, drugged, sick self was at the time. This is a very honest approach that I liked a lot.
She also tries to formulate very clearly what about ballet made her so miserable - two things, it seems: one, that she was always taught that she was only worth as much as a ballet master was willing to invest in her, and two, that she couldn't express herself through the rules of her art at the time. This last point in particular is elaborately discussed in the book, and although I do not really see all her wishes and ideas for dance expressed in the ballets where she claims to have employed them, I think her remarks are of utter importance for artistic approaches to ballet, and for attempts to reconcile and develop the more classical and the more modern approaches that exist.
Finally, this is the story of a person who nearly destroyed herself fatally in the midst of a lot of so-called friends and partners who could and should have noticed and helped. It is important to tell this story, because in an art that requires such focus on the body, the problems Kirkland describes are never far, and they need to be acknowledged and dealt with by the ballet community.
All in all, although irritating and reducing the world to a world according to Kirkland at times, an interesting read - always to be interpreted with a grain of salt.

My favourite dancer biography, despite stiff competition. I have a massive crush on this woman; how could she dance like that (see YouTube) and write like this? Passionate, beautifully written account of her struggle with her demons (including her feelings for Baryshnikov) to achieve her dream of artistic perfection. Couldn't put it (or the sequel) down.

BUY IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!