DANCE

Although definitive toxicological tests won’t be ready for weeks, Hudson County (N.J.) Prosecutor Paul M. DePascale said Thursday that dancer Patrick Bissell appeared to have died from a cocaine overdose. The assessment was based on the preliminary results of an autopsy of Bissell, who was found dead in his New Jersey apartment Tuesday morning. Bissell’s family said the 30-year-old dancer, a principal performer with the American Ballet Theatre for nearly 10 years, couldn’t handle the pressures of the highly competitive New York dance world and had a history of turning to drugs. “Of course Patrick’s death was a drug overdose--he never knew what hit him,” Bissell’s mother, Patricia, told the New York Post on Wednesday. “He told me he’d been shooting cocaine into his veins since he was 14.”