Word: gelsey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...matter of physique, nature did not deal Gelsey an ideal hand, but she trumped every disadvantage. Her facial features seem to have been intended for a slightly larger head. So? What big blue eyes she has and what an alluring Gioconda half-smile, all the better to be seen clearly from the third balcony. And those long arms and legs: Should they not be attached to a bigger body? In motion, Gelsey's torso seems to lose what little substance it has. Mass is translated into a continuum of grace...
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 Copp�lia 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...
...Gelsey has been dancing various roles in The Nutcracker for nearly 17 years, but her performance in the Baryshnikov version had special significance. It was her first triumph after a period of physical and emotional travail. While rehearsing the part, immersed in the light-heartedness of make-believe girlhood, Gelsey began doing something that her grim lockstep toward perfection had never allowed before: enjoying herself...
...this happen? Gelsey explains: "I guess it was because?forgive me, Mother?I would like to have remembered my childhood like that, but it wasn't anything like my childhood. It was such fun to go through a childhood like the one in The Nutcracker. Christmas was a big deal for us, but I never saw things this way. I never had the kind of dreams that Clara does. I was so busy working at making my dreams come true that they were never really dreams. They were aspirations...
Nobody stood over little Gelsey with a knife and forced her to have aspirations. All accounts agree, including hers: she did it to herself. John Clifford, director of the Los Angeles Ballet company, knew the young Gelsey and was not entirely charmed. "Gelsey was born mad at the world," he says. "She was born ready to kill." Former Dancer Meg Gordon, one of Gelsey's few close friends, remembers the same thing in softer focus: "Even when we were little, her mother used to joke about it, saying, 'You must have come out of your mother's womb marching...