The “baby ballerina” phenomenon of the 1930s was an adjunct to the flood of child performers who inundated vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood during the decades between World Wars I and II. In 1931, three Russian girls: Irina Baronova and Tamara Toumanova, each 12, and Tatiana Riabouchinska, 14, were discovered by George Balanchine in the Paris studios of former Imperial ballerinas Olga Preobrajenskaya and Mathilde Kschessinsakaya. Like their teachers, the three girls had fled the Bolsheviks, spirited out of Russia by their parents under perilous circumstances. The three girls already had some performing experience, and Balanchine now chose them to star in a new company, the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, where he was to be chief choreographer. (During the 1920s, he had similarly promoted the teenaged Alicia Markova in Diaghilev’s company; Balanchine’s need for complete control undoubtedly found fulfillment in the unquestioning dedication of talented young protégés.) The baby ballerinas were uniquely talented and they made dance history, but theirs was a phenomenon that really should not have happened, as is made clear by Ms. Baronova’s autobiography, “Irina: Ballet, Life and Love.”

By the time the babies were in their early 20s, they had clocked up more uninterrupted weeks of dancing and spent more time on the road than many dancers twice their age. There were long seasons in European capitals, short stands at cities all across America, and almost no downtime.In “Irina,” Ms. Baronova, now 87, describes her life as a teen-aged prima ballerina: After one-night stands in American cities, she and her colleagues would go to a local drugstore for a quick bite, then to a rented hotel ballroom to rehearse new ballets. They would then return to the train awaiting them, sleeping from dawn until afternoon when the Ballets Russes arrived at its next destination. It is no wonder that in her mid-20s, Ms. Baronova was diagnosed with “an enlarged and strained heart” and ordered to rest for six months.

“Irina” is an engrossing account of her travels, adventures, friendships and romances, but it offers very little artistic analysis or reflection. It may have been a calculated decision on the part of either herself or her editors that such information was of interest only to the aficionado, but at times her casualness makes the book less, rather than more, accessible to the general reader.

For instance, Ms. Baronova explains that, in preparation for legendary choreographer Mikhail Fokine’s 1937 “Le Coq d’Or,” she read and re-read the Pushkin poem on which the ballet and Rimsky-Korsakov’s music were based. But she never discusses the plotline of the poem or the ballet, giving almost no description of the magnificently (if amateur footage of the time can be trusted) choreographed and performed role Fokine made for her as the mythical, seductive, and effervescently diabolical Queen of Shemakhan. Indeed, Ms. Baronova shares almost no advice or direction given her by any of the great choreographers who created roles for her. Nor is there more than the most perfunctory description of her own ideas about any role she danced. This saddened and disappointed me because many years ago I interviewed Ms. Baronova, and I know that she is perfectly capable of discussing these things, in depth and at length.

“Irina” is more successful in recounting Ms. Baronova’s troubled and complex relationship with her parents. Her father Mikhail was a young officer in the Czar’s navy, her mother Lydia a product of the upper tiers of Petersburg society. After escaping Russia and relocating in Romania with their infant daughter, however, they were reduced to dire poverty. Irina’s mother vented her frustration on her only child, often hitting her during the day when her father was at work. Irina was thus forced into the terrible trauma of seeking to disguise the abuse. Though she enjoyed a much warmer relationship with her father than with her mother, Ms. Baronova’s account makes it clear that both father and daughter were traumatized and bewildered by Lydia Baronova’s behavior.

Lydia, who had wanted to study ballet in St. Petersburg but not been allowed by her haute bourgeois parents, decided that her daughter would do what she had been denied. “My mother’s dream, her love, her passion, was ballet,” Ms. Baronova writes. Forced into ballet lessons at age seven, “It seemed that I was really only a lottery ticket clutched in Mother’s hand — it was yet to be seen if she clutched a winner.”

“Irina” is also the story of an artist who never lost her love for her art, but did lose the drive and dedication necessary to pursue it. Her career as a ballerina was virtually over at 23 when she took what she thought would be simply a leave from American Ballet Theater, (then called Ballet Theatre).She had left the Ballets Russes to join the newlyfounded Ballet Theatre at the insistence of her husband, who saw the chance for an executive position at the company. But when she fell in love with another Ballet Theatre dancer, Yura Skibine, her estrangement from her husband made it impossible to work under the same roof. She never went back to Ballet Theatre nor had any permanent affiliation with any ballet company ever again.

After leaving Ballet Theatre, she performed at the Roxy movie theater, in plays, movies, and a Broadway musical, as well as two stints as guest ballerina, including one in South America in 1946 with the by-then tattered Ballets Russes.

After another divorce and another whirlwind courtship, she married British theatrical agent Cecil Tennant, acceding to his demand that she leave entertainment and submit to a virtual de-balletification: She was not allowed to see any of her former colleagues for the first five years of marriage. Tennant’s behavior may have been typical of the conventions of his time, but in today’s context he appears domineering to the point of tyrannical, as well as simply selfish.

But these are attributes Ms. Baronova does not choose to acknowledge. She does write that she initially resented his ultimatum, but eventually accepted it as the price she would have to pay for children and a stable home life after years of itinerant living. (Certainly, juggling ballet with family was in those days much less common than it is today.) She writes glowingly about their lives together raising three children in a London suburb, but doesn’t tell us enough about Tennant or what she loved in him.

“Irina” ends with the shocking and heartbreaking account of her husband’s death in a car accident after 18 years of marriage, leaving her with three teenaged children to raise alone (although in true Russian fashion, her mother lived with her for 40 years after her father’s death in 1952.) The years since 1967 “have held some moments of joy — given to me by my children — and a great deal of stress and worry,” she discloses, and she’s chosen not to write about them.

Today living in Australia with her younger daughter, Ms. Baronova says,”I count my blessings.” She, of course, has a right to omit an account of the years since her husband’s death, but her book suffers by withholding how she has reached the satisfaction she enjoys today. Ms. Baronova has assumed the diva’s prerogative to write “Irina” the way she wanted to, but it is a shame she did not integrate more artistic substance into her memoir.