Word: baryshnikov
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...limpidity, control and abandon, energy and ease. "It's difficult to talk about Gelsey," says Choreographer Antony Tudor, "because she is so right." Many try nonetheless. Rudolf Nureyev commends her: "She has that beautiful fluidity in her movements and an incredible strength for such a small girl." Mikhail Baryshnikov notes that "she advances from performance to performance. Her taste and artistic outlook are constantly developing, and none of us can predict how far she will go." Dancer Edward Villella singles out the essence of a performance: "Those steel-like legs that are doing the most fantastic technical feats, while...
...close she has come was visible last month at her Kennedy Center debut in Baryshnikov's version of Don Quixote. Very close. As Kitri, the spitfire Spanish girl who defies her innkeeper father and marries Basil, the barber of her choice, Gelsey has the kind of high-stepping, scenery-chewing part that can hurl an artist into stardom. Don Q offers some of the great bravura set pieces in the classical repertory, and Baryshnikov has seen to it that the routines spill into each other and positively spatter on the stage, threatening to engulf the aisles and even (somebody call...
Kirkland mugs like a trouper, perfectly attuned to the broad style of "classical vaudeville" that Baryshnikov chose for his tribute to this sturdy war horse of Russian ballet. When she is in the presence of Gamache, the unwanted suitor pressed upon her by her father, her eyes roll in exaggerated disdain. She transforms her snapping fan into an épée to prod this fopling across the stage and out of her sight. Her face flares in coquettish outrage at brash Basil's proffered kisses; she singes and melts at the same time. When she is onstage with the demented...
With her waiflike face and small person (she does quite graze 5 ft. 4 in.; she weighs around 93 lbs.), Gelsey is an enchanting soubrette, delightful as Swanilda in Coppélia or, more recently, as Clara in Baryshnikov's A.B.T. production of The Nutcracker. Gelsey enters in a swirl of other young people and first steps out of the crowd as a shy spectator of party festivities. At bedtime her tiny frame is swallowed up in a pink nightdress. Later, amid the wondrous dream parade of snowflakes and exotic entertainers, the girl-woman Clara stands out as the most ethereal...
...part is interwoven into Baryshnikov's life. He danced the wedding pas de deux at his graduation recital at the Kirov Ballet school in Leningrad. Basil was his first full-length role, one he danced often. Playing it, he says, taught him a great deal: "Technical control, mime, how to use a cape, how to give a flower to a girl, how to be funny, touching, a lover . . . a lot." He is giving those gifts now to the A.B.T. dancers and, one suspects, a profligate present to the company at the box office as well...