Star Performers

Just three weeks ago, Gelsey Kirkland, 22, stepped onstage at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center. She was dancing her first Giselle, the role that is the ultimate test for a ballerina. When the curtain came down, Kirkland was established as America's newest prima ballerina. She evoked memories of Makarova's lyrical lightness and the authority of Plisetskaya. But her speed is her own. Gelsey on points flies like a swallow.

Offstage, she is a piquant rag doll with huge blue eyes fringed with black lashes. Her face reflects the determination to survive in a profession that allows no respite: "If I miss one day of dancing, I can feel it." At age 15, after she had entered George Balanchine's New York City Ballet, Gelsey developed tendinitis. By the time Mr. B. selected her to dance in Firebird two years later, dancing had become unbearably painful. "I had forced a great deal." She almost gave up. Instead, in an effort comparable to Rubinstein's retraining himself at age 45, Gelsey re-evaluated her technique. When Mikhail Baryshnikov (TIME cover, May 19) joined the American Ballet Theater last summer, she was Balanchine's major star. Still, when "Misha" asked her to be his partner, she was stunned: "Obviously, I said yes, but I can't even remember the words."

Leaving Balanchine for the rival A.B.T. was a wrench, but Gelsey has matured fast. Immersing herself in long romantic ballets has made her stage personality stronger. But what really gives Gelsey's dancing the sense of surprised delight is her energy. That was what first brought her to Balanchine's attention. Surveying a class of eleven-year-olds, he told them to do a step "with great energy." Gelsey was so sprung she fell flat. "That's right," beamed Mr. B., and he skipped her a whole division.

France, too, has an emergent superstar. Isabelle Adjani, 19, is "the only actress who has made me cry in front of a television screen," said Director Franc,ois Truffaut after seeing her in Giraudoux's Ondine. Truffaut signed her for an epic role, the doomed daughter of Victor Hugo in The Story of Adele H, to be released this fall. "I wanted to do a film with her very quickly," he explained, "because I thought I could steal from her those precious things--the way her face and body express everything."

Isabelle's face is mirror clear, a pale oval with limpid blue eyes and the mien of a Corot model. Her simplicity suggests genius: a fleeting idea or nuance of feeling sets her trembling; she offers intimations of grand passions, great dreams and intense drama. Ever since she was a schoolgirl in the Paris suburb of Gennevilliers, people have wanted to make her a star. At 17 she was made one of the youngest members in France's oldest acting ensemble, the Comedie Franc,aise. In her first season, she played Agnes in The School for Wives. When Jean-Loup Dabadie, one of France's leading screenwriters (Cesar and Rosalie) saw her in 1973, he wrote a comedy of the generation gap, La Gifle (A Slap in the Face) for her. When it opened last fall in Paris, Isabelle as a teen-age scamp stole the show from Co-Stars Annie Girardot and Lino Ventura.

Adjani is singleminded: "My private life is my professional life." Early next year she starts filming a musical comedy with Yves Montand. Exults La Gifle Director Claude Pinoteau, "After Morgan, Bardot and Moreau, we have waited 15 years for a new young leading lady. Now we have one."

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