Years ago, when Mikhail Baryshnikov, the great ballet dancer who defected from Russia, performed a two-week run at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., a ballet enthusiast who attended every performance wrote the following:
When Baryshnikov comes on stage there is electricity. You can feel it all over. Just perfection in dancing. On opening night the audience stood and cheered and applauded for fully twenty minutes. I have never seen anything like it. Fantastic! But as the two weeks went by I realized that something more amazing than the dancing of Baryshnikov was happening. A young woman, Gelsey Kirkland of the New York City Ballet, had been chosen by Baryshnikov to be his partner. Up to this time she had been regarded as a good dancer, but not an outstanding dancer. In fact, several articles had been written about some of her problems as a ballerina. “A lack of confidence . . . too much preoccupation with herself at times,” the critics were saying. But…
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