Background

Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov was born on 28 January 1948, in Riga, Latvia, to Russian couple Nikolay Baryshnikov, an engineer, and Alexandra Baryshnikov (maiden name Kiselyova), a dressmaker. At that time, Latvia was part of the Soviet Union.

Education

Mikhail Baryshnikov had a difficult childhood as he did not get along well with his father. His mother committed suicide during his early teenage years. However, later Mikhail drew inspiration from his father’s discipline, manners and military habits.

Baryshnikov received secondary education in a local school in Riga. He began taking lessons in ballet dancing at the age of 11 at Riga Choreography School where Juris Kapralis and Valentin Blinov were his mentors.

In 1964, he joined a school of classical ballet named the Vaganova School in Leningrad (currently Saint Petersburg). He got the opportunity to learn from the well-known choreographer Alexander Pushkin.

Later, Baryshnikov has been a recipient of honorary degrees from New York University, Shenandoah University Conservatory, Montclair State University, and the University of Southern California.

Career

The start of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s career can be counted from 1967 when he joined the Kirov Ballet (currently the Mariinsky Ballet) as a principal dancer. Impressed by the unique abilities of the soloist, such notable Soviet choreographers like Oleg Vinogradov, Konstantin Sergeyev, Igor Tchernichov, and Leonid Jakobson composed ballets especially for him. Baryshnikov played the major parts in Gorianka, Vestris, and Giselle.

The conservative policy of the Soviet school towards the progressive Western choreographers didn’t allow the young performer to achieve his ambitions and reach his potential. In 1974 while on tour with the theatre in Toronto, Canada, Mikhail Baryshnikov requested asylum from the local government and stayed in the country first joining the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. At the beginning of the defection, Baryshnikov collaborated with nothing more than thirteen choreographers, including Jerome Robbins, Glen Tetley, Alvin Ailey, and Twyla Tharp. Soon after defection, Baryshnikov was invited to the American Ballet Theatre where he served as a premier danseur for the next four years.

Baryshnikov then shifted to the New York City Ballet for a while where he worked with the notable George Balanchine performing in core roles in Apollo, The Prodigal Son, Rubies, Coppélia, and La Sonnambula. In September 1980, the dancer left the Ballet’s staff and came back to the American Ballet Theater in the capacity of its artistic director to take a nine-year time-out and recover from injuries. However, he performed with the Theater and took part in world tours with ballet and modern dance companies for a while.

In 1990, along with Mark Morris, Baryshnikov established his own dance company called the White Oak Dance Project which main goal was to choreograph for old performers and experiment with modern dance. He directed it till 2002. Three years later, Mikhail Baryshnikov organized the Arts Center named after him and became its artistic director. The Center gathers and supports international artists who represent various art forms.

In addition to an incredible career in ballet and dance performance, Baryshnikov has tried his hand as an actor. The movies he has starred in include The Turning Point, White Nights, That’s Dancing!, and Dancers. At the beginning of the 2000s, he performed a boy-friend of Carrie Bradshaw, a Russian artist Aleksandr Petrovsky, in a TV series Sex and the City.

Baryshnikov has appeared in a number of TV programs at different times, including the specials of the ABC and CBS, Live from Lincoln Center, Great Performances, and the Kennedy Center Honors.

A fan of modern dance, Mikhail Baryshnikov has appeared in several avant-garde theater projects starting in 1989 with the play Metamorphosis based on Franz Kafka's eponymous novel. In 2015, he was invited by the Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis to perform in the one-man show "Brodsky/Baryshnikov" dedicated to the great poet Joseph Brodsky. After the premiere in Riga, it was shown around the world. The same year, Baryshnikov played in Rag & Bone commercial alongside the street dance artist Lil Buck. Apart from "Brodsky/Baryshnikov", Baryshnikov is also touring with one more solo theater project "Letter to a Man".

Mikhail Baryshnikov is also known as a photographer and art collector. He has exhibited in various art spaces, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

Achievements

• 

  Mikhail Baryshnikov is considered as one of the prominent ballet dancers. Combining an incredible talent of acting with strong athletic abilities, he is praised for the contributions he made both for traditional ballet dance and contemporary dance. Convincing and stirring, his leaping capacity is still perceived unmatched.
  
  Baryshnikov has been a recipient of such awards as Varna International Ballet Competition Gold Medal, the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, the Jerome Robbins Award, the Vilcek Award, Nijinsky Prize, and Japanese Praemium Imperiale among others.
  
  In 1973, the dancer was given the title of the Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. In 2017, he was made an Officer of the Legion of Honor. Baryshnikov has been nominated for the Academy Award as the Best Supporting actor and for Golden Globe for the character of Yuri Kopeikine at The Turning Point movie. Other nominations include the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Emmy Award (for the role of the Nutcracker in the TV version of Tchaikovsky's ballet broadcasted by CBS).
  
  An experienced dance performer, Baryshnikov transmits his experience through the Arts Center founded in 2005. The Center has more than 700 artists and 22,000 audience members annually under Baryshnikov’s directorship.
  
  Baryshnikov’s close friend, poet Joseph Brodsky, dedicated a couple of poems to his mate. There is a reference to Baryshnikov in Stephen King’s book ‘Needful Things’ as well.
  
  In 2017, Baryshnikov was included in the list of the hundred most influential people of the century by Forbes.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Baryshnikov at Work

    (The man considered by many to be the world's greatest mal...)

    1978
  • Mikhail Baryshnikov: Merce My Way

    ("Watching Cunningham's dances through the eye of a lens i...)

    2009
  • Baryshnikov: In Black and White

    (The only collection of photographs documenting the last t...)

    2002

• movie

  • Dancers

    (A delicately woven story of love and betrayal, the contem...)

    1987
  • Company Business

    (It's nonstop action and suspense as two spies – one Ameri...)

    1991
  • White Nights

    (A defector (Mikhail Baryshnikov) and an expatriate Americ...)

    1985
  • The Turning Point

    (Two rival dancers who once had to choose between marriage...)

    1977

• photography

  • Untilted #10

  • Untilted #7

  • Untilted #11

  • Untilted #1

  • Untitled #2

  • Untitled #14 Disco

  • Untitled #33 Mark Morris Dance Group in "Grand Duo"

  • Sean Suozzi and Kathryn Morgan in "Why am I not where you are"

Politics

Mikhail Baryshnikov supported Hillary Clinton in her 2016 Presidential campaign. As to Donald Trump, he compared him with a totalitarian opportunist from the Soviet period of his youth.

Views

Mikhail Baryshnikov confesses that he appreciates Russian people and culture but doesn’t miss his life in Russia and has no plans to return. He rejects all the offers to tour around the country.

The artist expressed his negative attitude to homophobia and the discrimination of LGBT community in a special report published on the website of No More Fear Foundation in 2013.

Quotations: "The essence of all art is having pleasure giving pleasure."

"I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient."

"I was always interested in photography and other forms of art."

"Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals."

"When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for a minute, and I'll tell you who you are."

"Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries – the body has a stronger memory than your mind."

"People dance at any age."

"I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself."

"The more injuries you get, the smarter you get."

"I'm an impatient person in many respects. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. It forces me to deliver."

"Perfection is a theory. You cannot be a perfect human being, perfect artist. You cannot be a perfect husband, you cannot be a perfect father probably and probably I am not. But go through your daily routine with hope you will be a little better in all respects, and do something meaningful."

"Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun."

"You ask me what's happened in my life, why and how I did this and that. And I think and tell, but it's never true story, because everything is so much more complicated, and also I can't even remember how things happened. Whole process is boring. Also false, but mostly boring."

"You know, I never planned to leave. I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. You know, I played their game, pretending, of course. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB... Horrifying."

"Children being left, it's not always like books of Charles Dickens. When you lose your parents in childhood, it's a fact of life, and, you know, human beings are extraordinary powerful survivors. My mother commits suicide. I was lucky it was not in front of me. O.K.? Which is the truth, and Father was confused, and we never had any relationship, serious relationship. I never knew my father, in a way. But what? It's made me different? No, I mean. I blame for every fuckups in my life my parents? No. [Pause] I got lucky. I fell in love with dance."

"People of art should never get married and have children, because it's a selfish experience."

Membership

Mikhail Baryshnikov was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999.

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States

  1999

Personality

A close friend of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Joseph Brodsky noticed his untutored intelligence and incredible intuition.

Baryshnikov received Latvian citizenship on April 27, 2017.

Physical Characteristics: Mikhail Baryshnikov is 168 cm tall.

Quotes from others about the person

• "The most perfect dancer I have ever seen." Clive Barnes, New York Times critic

Interests

• Russian literature, fishing

Connections

Mikhail Baryshnikov was in a relationship with American actress Jessica Lange from the middle of the 1970s to the early 1980s. The couple had a daughter named Aleksandra also known as Shura.

Baryshnikov has had also a romantic relationship with a former ballet dancer and video journalist Lisa Rinehart. They registered their marriage only in 2006. The family produced three children named Peter, Anna, and Sofia.

Father:

Nikolay Baryshnikov

Mother:

Aleksandra Baryshnikov

Spouse:

Lisa Rinehart

Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lisa Rinehart at National YoungArts Foundation New York Gala held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018.

Son:

Peter Baryshnikov

Daughter:

Sofia Baryshnikov

Daughter:

Anna Baryshnikov

Daughter:

Shura Baryshnikov

companion:

Jessica Lange

Friend:

Joseph Brodsky

Baryshnikov and Brodsky first met in 1974 in New York City, two years after the poet had been expelled from the Soviet Union. Thier strong friendship lasted until Brodsky's death in 1996.

mentor:

Alexander Pushkin

Friend:

Alexander Minz

colleague:

George Balanchine

Baryshnikov performed under the tutelage of Balanchine at the New York City Ballet from 1978 till September, 1980.

Friend:

Alice Waters

Baryshnikov and Waters met durign the set of one of the episodes of the Sundance Channel's original series Iconoclasts on November 2, 2006.

Acquaintance:

Vladimir Vysotsky

References

• Giants of Art & Culture: Mikhail Baryshnikov An inspiring biography of one of the greatest dance performers of the 20th century.
  2001
• Private View: Inside Baryshnikov's American Ballet Theatre The volume profiles the glamorous yet driven world of the American Ballet Theater and the style and influence of its charismatic and risk-taking artistic director, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and presents a photographic account of the performers.
  1988
• Misha! The Mikhail Baryshnikov Story by Barbara Aria.
  1989
• B Plus: Dancing for Mikhail Baryshnikov at American Ballet Theatre: A Memoir An intimate look at the upper echelons of the dance world as it appeared to a young man, Michael Langlois, who made it to the top of his profession only to discover a vast plateau filled with dancers whose talents and ambitions were often superior to his own.
  2018
• Baryshnikov: From Russia to the West The book reviews the life of the great classical dancer from his childhood through his defection to America at age twenty-one and traces the development of his career since that time.
  1981
• Baryshnikov, a most spectacular dancer A biography of the Russian dancer who, since his defection to the West in 1974, has achieved fame and recognition as one of the greatest dancers of his time.
  1979
• Baryshnikov Arts Center Official Website
• Place A sensational dance film, especially created for world-famous dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov & Ana Laguna by an outstanding international team of artists.
  2013