Word: ballets
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...most promising students in the School of American Ballet were tapped to join the corps of Balanchine's New York City Ballet, and the hope of catching Mr. B's eye spurred every young dancer on. "You cared more than anything in the world how you were impressing him," says Gelsey. When she was 15, Gelsey danced in a school production of Bournonville's Flower Festival. Dancer Villella was among the many who were impressed: "Already she was capable of making her own comment on the choreography, which usually takes many years to do." She joined Balanchine's company...
...created a lot of friction within the company," Gelsey recalls. "I had to do it on my own without anybody's approval and with everybody's disapproval." Far from punishing her, Balanchine continued to give Gelsey the run of City Ballet's unparalleled repertory. She danced lead roles in his Symphony in C, "Rubies" in Jewels, Harlequinade and Concerto Barocco and in Robbins' Dances at a Gathering, Goldberg Variations and Scherzo Fantastique. She became a stellar member of one of the world's great companies...
...star. The City Ballet means Balanchine; company dancers, however superb, are the embodiments of his imagination. Says one Balanchine-trained performer: "It's like a painter who needs red, blue and yellow. Gelsey was red. She was the material for his choreography." After six years under Balanchine, Gelsey felt that she could do more. Says she: "I knew that I could not extend myself in the New York City Ballet." The question was, how to make the break...
Then came Baryshnikov. Gelsey had met him briefly on a 1972 tour with the City Ballet in Russia, and he had seen her perform there. During the summer of 1974, she went to Toronto to see Baryshnikov dance. At a supper afterward they hit it off. Sizing her up, the 5 ft. 6˝ in. Baryshnikov remarked, "Hhmm, good partner, right size." A few days later Gelsey was back in New York, working at the barre, when she got a phone call from a member of Baryshnikov's entourage. Misha had just decided not to return to the Soviet Union...
Gelsey's own defection from Balanchine soon followed. She joined Baryshnikov at the American Ballet Theater, a company that showcases luminous dancers rather than a single choreographic vision. Purists were appalled and left with a tantalizing question: Would Balanchine have made a masterpiece for Gelsey had she stayed? But Baryshnikov's offer was a plum that few ballerinas could have resisted. Keeping up with him was hard enough. And the glare of publicity that followed his grand jeté to the West offered his partner the brightest, whitest arena in which to succeed or fail...