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The dark underbelly of the beauty and grace of ballet is laid bare in Gelsey Kirkland's autobiography

7-20-18: My 28th finished book of 2018! Dancing on My Grave by my favorite ballerina, Gelsey Kirkland. You can see I received this book in 1989 from my dad. It‘s a sad, cautionary tale of one dancer‘s struggle with depression and drug addiction. I first read it in 7th grade and, I guess, it scared me enough to not fall prey to some of her struggles. 👍🏼📖#️⃣2️⃣8️⃣

7-16-18: Beach reading!☀️📖💖

10-8-17: Day 8: Books Loved as a Teen. I think I was a weird kid! Some of his subject matter is intense! #bookriot #riotgram #Bookslovedasateen #goddessthesecretlivesofmarilynmonroe #valleyofthedolls which is my mom's first addition copy!! #theneverendingstory which you can see has tape on the spine! #dancingonmygrave I was a ballet dancer #goaskalice which is from my elementary school, I never brought it back! #mermaids one of my fave movies!

Soooooooo boring. Waaaaay too much detail about each & every ballet. Too many pages spent trying to make Baryshnikov look bad. Way too much crying and hysterics.

These are not properly biographies, but I find that I read more memoirs than anything else. Gelsey captures both the light and the dark sides of ballet, more dark in the first, more light in the second. Her textual work translated into the choreography when rehearsing Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet is exquisite. #fridayfunphoto

(I'll rummage a bit and see if I can't find a proper biography)

#FunFridayPhoto my dad gave me this for my 10th Chrustmas. He was well meaning, and yes, a ballet bio was awesome. But. I don't think he realized how much sex, drugs, alcohol were a part of the story. On some level it scared the crap out of me, but it also gave me a glimpse of the not-pretty side of ballet that turned out to be a good thing. And yes, my ten year old self with her college-level reading skills read every single sordid page.