Gelsey Kirkland
Height, Weight, Size, Body Measurements, Biography, Wiki, Age

Gelsey Kirkland (born December 29, 1952) is an American ballerina. Kirkland joined the New York City Ballet in 1968 at age 15, at the invitation of George Balanchine. She was promoted to soloist in 1969, and principal in 1972. She went on to create leading roles in many of the great twentieth century ballets by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Antony Tudor, including Balanchine's revival of The Firebird, Robbins' Goldberg Variations, and Tudor's The Leaves are Fading. Balanchine re-choreographed his version of Stravinsky's The Firebird specifically for her. She left the New York City Ballet to join the American Ballet Theatre in 1974.

She is perhaps most famous to the general public for dancing the role of "Clara Stahlbaum" in Baryshnikov's 1977 televised production of The Nutcracker. She left the American Ballet Theatre in 1984.

In 1986, Kirkland, along with her then husband Greg Lawrence, published Dancing On My Grave, an explosive memoir chronicling her artistic transformation from George Balanchine's "baby ballerina" to one of the most acclaimed ballerinas in her generation. The book described in startling detail her struggles with her domestic family problems, anorexia, bulimia, a laundry list of plastic surgeries, drug addiction, her quest for artistic perfection, and her complicated love affairs with ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov and numerous other men, most of whom she encountered in the ballet world.