The first year with ABT I learned 13 new roles. Most were lengthy ballets, more complicated than I was used to. I have suffered from tendinitis since I was 13, and it flared up again until the pain was paralyzing. There were times I prayed I'd be sick so I wouldn't have to go on.

After these two intensely graphic autobiographies Gelsey Kirkland and her husband/co-writer collaborated on one more book--a children's book called "The Little Ballerina and Her Dancing Horse" in 1993. Johnna wound up quitting professional ballet in 1983 two years after breaking her foot (a career-ending injury) and because the company Gelsey Kirkland was then dancing with (the Los Angeles Ballet which Gelsey Kirkland co-founded) ceased to pay the dancers' salaries. Kirkland joined the New York City Ballet in 1968 at age fifteen at the invitation of George Balanchine.

She left the ABT in 1984. 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.