The whole story behind Mikhail Baryshnikov’s resignation

On the night of June 29, 1974, while performing with a traveling Bolshoi Ballet troupe in downtown Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov, noticing a crowd of fans, ran out of a plane door and began running.

Baryshnikov, who was about 26 and already one of ballet’s brightest stars, had made the momentous decision to leave the Soviet Union and pursue a career in the West. That rainy night, he had to avoid KGB agents – and target market people asking for autographs – as he hurried to meet a group of Canadian and American friends waiting in a car a few blocks away. Is.

“That car took me to the free world,” Baryshnikov, 76, recalled in a recent interview. “It was the beginning of a new life.”

His cloak-and-dagger variety helped make him a cultural superstar. “Soviet Dancer in Canada Disrupts Bolshoi Tour,” The New York Times announced on its front page.

However, the issue of interest in his decision to let the Soviet Union go has repeatedly strained Baryshnikov. He said he did not like how the word “defector” sounded in English, which conjured up an image of a traitor who had committed top treason.

“I am not a turncoat – I am a chooser,” he said. “That was my choice. I chose this life.”

Baryshnikov was born in the Soviet city of Riga, now part of Latvia, and in 1964, when he was 16, moved to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, to meet the famous teacher Alexander Pushkin. When he was 19, he joined the Kirov Ballet, now called the Mariinsky, and for a time became a celebrity on the Russian ballet stage.

Close to his defection, he moved to New York and joined the American Ballet Theater (which he ran as inventive director) and the nearby New York Town Ballet. The leading male dancer of the seventies and ’80s, his renowned energy helped elevate ballet into a broader tradition. He has worked as an actor, on stage and in several films, including “The Turning Point”, as well as the television series “Sex and the City”. And in 2005, she founded Baryshnikov Arts Middle in Long Island, which offers dance, song and alternative programming.

In recent times, Baryshnikov, who has American and Latvian citizenship, has become extra vocal about politics. He met former President Donald J. Criticism of Trump has compared him to the “dangerous authoritarian opportunists” of his early years. He has also spoken out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accused Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of creating a “world of fear”. He is the founder of true Russia, the feet supporting Ukrainian refugees.

In an interview, Baryshnikov reflected on the fiftieth year since his defection; He left his father in the Soviet Union (his mother died when he was 12); the pain he feels over the Ukrainian war; And the challenging conditions Russian artists have been facing recently. Those are edited excerpts of the dialogue.

What are your memories of that June year in Toronto?

I believe seeing some very nice faces in the runaway car afterwards felt a sense of sympathy and security. However I was also afraid that it would result in something else – that at any moment, it would break down and turn like a rogue cop movie. I was beginning an ancient day, something completely unknown, and it was my choice and my responsibility. This was the pace of growing up for me.

You’ve got It has been told Your defection as creative, no longer political, saying that you wanted more inventive democracy and the possibility of working abroad more often, which the Soviet government would not allow.

After all, from a distance this was once a political choice. But I really wanted to be an artiste and my main concern was my dancing. I was 26 years old. It’s a hearty day for a classical dancer. I wanted to learn from western choreographers. Paes was working out once.

nearest again You said: “What I have done is called a crime in Russia. But my life is my art, and I realized that destroying it would be a big crime.

Did I say it that clearly? I don’t think about it. Maybe someone has fixed it with correct grammar. However I still believe it to be true. I knew early on that I was a successful dancer – that’s all I can do, and that’s what it’s all about.

You fear that your defection might endanger your father, who was once an army officer in Riga and taught army topography at the Breeze Drive Academy.

I knew that Ok.GB services would interview him and ask him if he was worried, and if he would write me a letter or something. He didn’t do anything. I have to say, “Thanks, Dad. Thank you for not giving in.” They refused to send me a letter asking me to come back happily.

Did you ever correspond with him again?

I sent him two or three letters saying, “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I hope everyone at home is healthy.” He never replied. And later, in 1980, he gave up the ghost a little too early.

You began learning dance at the age of 7, and a few years later enrolled at the Riga Choreography Faculty, Status Ballet Academy. What did your parents remember about your dancing?

They were amazed that at the age of 10 or 11 I belonged to a largely proficient faculty. Although my father always said, “You have to go to a real school and learn math and literature, and get good grades.” I used to be a really evil scholar. He said, “If you don’t succeed in real school, I will send you to military school, like Suvorov, and they will straighten you out.” Actually he was bluffing once. I already loved theater very deeply, deeply, deeply. I loved this situation – the idea that I belonged to this enormous beautiful circus.

Did you feel you needed to create an ancient identity when you came to the West?

I felt a great sense of democracy. While you don’t have power over yourself, you start to have disturbing concepts about yourself: “Oh, I’m like Tarzan in the jungle now.” Although it was once too many. I advised myself: “You have to be an adult already. You have to do something serious.” I knew I could dance and I already had a few performances in my repertoire.

Are you continuing to dance?

Dancing is probably a chore, although theater directors repeatedly ask, “Are you comfortable if I ask you to move?” I say completely. I welcome it. Although I don’t forget being on stage in a dancer’s gown.

You have stayed away from politics for most of your career, although recently weighed in On many problems, including the war in Ukraine. Why discuss now?

Ukraine is a different story. Ukraine is our good friend. I danced Ukrainian dances, listened to Ukrainian songs and singers. I know Ukrainian ballets like “The Forest Song” and I have performed in Kiev. I am a pacifist and anti-fascist, that’s clear. And that’s why I’m into this aspect of war.

You were born 8 years after Latvia was forcibly annexed into the Soviet Union; Your father was once one of the important Russian staff sent to teach there. How does your experience growing up there influence the way you view this war?

I spent the first 16 years of my life in Soviet Latvia, and I know the other side of the coin. I used to be the son of an encroacher. I knew there was a need to live up to the profession. The Russians treated it as their territory and their land, and they said that the Latvian language was nonsense.

I don’t need Putin and his army to go to Riga. In any case Latvia has real freedoms, and they are doing well. My mother is buried there. I believe that after coming to Riga I am coming home again.

you wrote one manifest letter In 2022, Putin said, he has created a “world of fear”.

He is a real imperialist with a sense of unconditional extraordinary energy. Yes, he speaks my mother’s tongue, the same way she spoke. However that no longer constitutes real Russia.

What has changed for you since the resignation of the Soviet Union 50 years ago?

I am a very lucky person. I really don’t know. I need to write a pleasant rough sentence. However, this is not exactly the pace of excellent punishment, when someone like Alexei Navalny was sent to prison and destroyed for his true heyday.

Would you ever go to Russia again?

Wrong, I don’t think so.

Why not now?

The theory does not in any way reflect my views. I don’t have any solution for you.

i miss you again and again believe or dream About your speed there.

after all. I keep discussing the Russian language from time to time and keep learning Russian literature bit by bit. That is my mother’s language. She was once a very ordinary woman from Kstovo, near the Volga River. I learned my first Russian words from him. I consider her accent, precise Volga patch broadly lyrical. His voice. Hero.” Her voice.

Some Russian artists, just like the big names of the Bolshoi Ballet Olga SmirnovaWho is now in the Dutch National Ballet, having left Russia because of the war.

I saw her dance at BrandNew York and met her later at the show. She is an amazing dancer, a beautiful woman and really very courageous. Later moving to the Netherlands to become principal soloist of the Bolshoi is an important exchange. And yet she was in a very good environment and showed great joy in working with a company that followed her. I am supporting him.

Are you surprised to see fellow artists once again resigning from Russia over concerns of politics and repression?

There is an appellation in Russian that refers to refugees and the society that moves: Bezentsi. This applies to the society which is fighting this war with bullets and bombs. There are some Russians – dancers and possibly athletes – who run more gracefully than others. In my very elegant way, I want to back them up. Despite everything, we all run away from something or the other.