A five-foot-five dancer defected and remade ballet
Mikhail Baryshnikov, born 27 January 1948 in Riga, became the defining male classical dancer of the 1970s and 1980s. After rising at the Kirov, he defected in Toronto on 29 June 1974, seeking Western choreography the Soviet system refused him—then remade American companies as star and director.
Ethnic Russian parents—dressmaker Alexandra and engineer Nikolay—raised him in the Latvian SSR. Ballet lessons began at nine; in 1964 he entered Leningrad’s Vaganova School, soon taking the junior top prize at Varna. He joined the Kirov (Mariinsky) in 1967. At roughly 165–168 cm he was shorter than many partners, so casting often kept him secondary, and the company’s nineteenth-century orthodoxy blocked the modern Western repertoire he craved.
Touring with the Bolshoi, he requested Canadian asylum with help from critic John Fraser, who hid phone numbers under a wedding ring. From 1974 to 1978 he was a principal at American Ballet Theatre, partnering Gelsey Kirkland and Natalia Makarova and working with choreographers including Robbins, Tetley, Ailey, and Tharp—thirteen different voices in two years. In 1978 he spent about fifteen months as a New York City Ballet principal under Balanchine, debuting as Franz in Coppélia at Saratoga Springs on 8 July 1978 before tendonitis ended the run.
He returned to ABT as artistic director from 1980 to 1989, then co-founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mark Morris (1990–2002) for older dancers. Screen work brought an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for The Turning Point (1977), the film White Nights, and a late Sex and the City arc. Technique, he insisted, was less about leg height than clarity and making hard steps look easy.
Source: Mikhail Baryshnikov
