Reading Maketh a Full Man...

Bleah. Why did I want to read this book? I read it years ago when I was interested in Barishnikov's defection from Russia, and also when I was following the careers of ballerinas he danced with. Why I was struck to read it again is beyond me.This is a pitiful story. Gelsey Kirkland was a gifted dancer, but from the beginning lost and insecure. The daughter of an older alcoholic father (he had 5 marriages and 5 heart attacks), she spends the rest of the book seeking for someone to love her. She is immature, foolish, and destructive at an age when most people have grown up. She falls into eating disorders then cocaine drug use. Her rage at the doctors who treat her in the mental institution is terrible to see.And the end? She does grow up some and see her own responsibility for the mess she has become, and she tries to make amends with many of those who had helped her and she hurt or used them. But in doing additional reading, I find that the husband she had found at the end of this book is no longer her husband.I give her credit for the honest and open view she gives into the world of ballet. I give her credit also for writing about the things that she has done which were terrible. I also give her credit for wanting to try to make things better. How sad for her that she wasted her dancing, wasted relationships with other dancing professionals (her relationship with Barishnikov was almost irreparably damaged by her very foolish treatment of him), and now has wasted a marriage she had written about as "saving" her. So she ends up as she began.... lost and insecure.