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[betsuni]

4. From Michael Langlois' "B Plus, Dancing for Mikhail Baryshnikov at American Ballet Theatre":

"The Gelsey Kirkland I knew was a continual source of amazement for me and frustration for Misha. He was driven nearly mad by her desire to repeat a phrase in rehearsals until she felt she'd gotten it right, but there was never really any 'getting it right.' It was commonplace in those days that if you were called to a rehearsal with Gelsey, you would never finish the ballet. This happened so consistently, I used to wonder how she ever developed the stamina to weather an entire performance, but somehow she idd, always by the skin of her teeth, everyone on the edge of their seats wondering if she was going to fall flat on her face, collapse, or sail off into the orchestra pit. Whatever Gelsey was, no one could deny she was a brilliant dancer and tireless in her investigation of movement. No one was as obsessed with trying to get at the energetic basis of ballet, and no dancer was as successful at illuminating the results of that investigation as Gelsey Kirkland. And it truly was a scientific investigation."