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Dancing on My Grave |
List Price: $17.95
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Product Info |
Reviews |
Rating: Summary: Dancing on my Grave review Review: This book written brilliantly by Gelsey Kirkland and Greg Lawrence is positively a book that I would recommend to all dancers like myself as well as anyone that is intregued by the effects of the dance world. In this book Gelsey takes us through a journey of chaos and problems. When you read this book you travel through the abusive effects of drugs as well as more dancer prone problems like eating disorders and self-image. You also see the beutiful side of the ballet world and it helps you relize how much work ballet dancers put into their passion and how little they get out of it. Gelsey and Greg did a great job at showing the reader dancer or not how hard and sometimes impossible the dance world can be. Over all in my humble opinion I think that this one is a keeper.
Rating: Summary: Fascinating Psyc Case, Frustrating Dancer Review: True,Kirkland should be commended for her ability to tell all; few dancers mention anything in their books to put them in a bad light. Nevertheless, I find her to come across as completely self-absorbed, so much that she can't even really let herself go as a dancer. God forbid, she actually ever let spontinaeity take over! And as far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse for all the trouble she got herself into. The vast majority of professional dancers manage to swim rather than sink, and she could've done the same. Still, it is a fascinating book because of how the workings of her mind are put so blatantly out on paper.
Rating: Summary: amazingly tragic Review: what can i say? well to tell you the truth, i only read this book because at the end of 1998, i was informed that miss kirkland would be joining the full time teaching faculty at my dance school, and i thought that when i have her for class, i could better understand where she was coming from with her teaching method. she is the most amazing, liberated, inspiring person i have ever met, and doesn't let anyone see all the pain that she's been tohrough
Rating: Summary: a horror story Review: When I read 'Dancing on my Grave', I felt like I was in some surreal horror movie. I was nearing the end of my recovery, but while I read the book I felt like I was being dragged back 5 years or so to when my life was hell. The writing was good and so compelling that I could not put the book down, but I was miserable for every minute of it, and depressed and drained when the book finished. Gelsey delves deeply into her self-loathing, and the problems incumbent - anorexia and drug addiction. You feel like you are inside her tortured and despairing head. It's awful. But she never really comes to any conclusion. At the end of the book, she meets a wonderful man, flies away with him and says they are going to recover together. But although she sounds hopeful, she doesn't give any direction to the reader who might be going through the same hell. She leaves you in limbo and you just have to hope desperately that it all worked out. (In real life, I don't know if this happened. Two addicts cannot recover together.) I really don't think this book is helpful to anyone who reads it, except someone completely removed from either dance or eating disorders who wanted some insight.
Rating: Summary: Was there Review: While many people view Gelsey as self absorbed and self serving, I see her as a product of a world which cast her in this role. Her demanding and alcoholic father ( a famous writer himself) always put her sister first and made Gelsey feel like the ugly duckling. It was this inner turmoil which led her to acheive what she did because her competitive spirit, and need to prove herself to her father, drove her to not only accomplish what she did but to reach the depths that she to which she plummeted. I travelled with her during the ABT tour of 1983-84 and found her to be a driven and tortured soul who, despite her air of assurance on stage, was merely a lost child without guidance. When she met Greg Lawrence her life began to take shape as both they helped to lift each other from the morass of drugs and negativity in which they were mired. The book captures, in an unglamorized version, what happened to her during this time. It is a book of redemption and ultimate triumph.
Rating: Summary: Captivating, Riviting, Truthfull, ect.! Review: Wow! This book was simply Amazing! The way Gelsey just opens up her heart and tells her story is beautiful! I loved how she told the truth about her partnership with Misha and showed that he wasn't the perfect man, which many have thought. Also, she brought out the true colors of Balanchine. I'm a younger dancer and had looked up to these men as gods in the ballet world, but my mind has some what changed. I could defintly re-late to her obsessiveness about the "perfect body" and becoming attached to the mirrors. I have read this book over and over and each time I learn something new. The only thing I wish is that I could have seen her perform! She is defintly my favorite dancer of all time and always will be! This is a MUST read for any dancer! Non-dancers will enjoy it too and it will give you a look in to a dancers world. The only thing is, you might have trouble with some of the ballet terms :)
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