On the night of June 29, 1974, after a performance with a touring Bolshoi Ballet troupe in downtown Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov walked to the stage door, pushed past a crowd of fans and began to run.
Baryshnikov, then 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. On that rainy night, he had to evade KGB agents – and autograph-seeking spectators – as he rushed toward a group of Canadian and American friends waiting in a car a few blocks away. houses from there.
“That car took me to the free world,” Baryshnikov, 76, recalled in a recent interview. “It was the beginning of a new life.”
His clandestine escape helped make him a cultural celebrity. “Soviet Dancer in Canada Shows Flaws on Bolshoi Tour,” declared the New York Times on its front page.
But the emphasis on his decision to leave the Soviet Union sometimes worried Baryshnikov. He said he didn’t like the sound of the term “defector” in English, conjuring up the image of a traitor who had committed high treason.
“I’m not a defector, I’m a chooser,” he said. “It was my choice. I chose this life.
Baryshnikov was born in the Soviet city of Riga, now part of Latvia, and moved to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1964, when he was 16, to study with the famous teacher Alexander Pushkin. At 19, he joined the Kirov Ballet, now known as the Mariinsky, and quickly became a star of the Russian ballet scene.
After his defection, he moved to New York and joined the American Ballet Theater (which he later directed as artistic director) and then the New York City Ballet. The quintessential male dancer of the 1970s and 1980s, his star power helped elevate ballet in popular culture. He worked as an actor, appearing on stage and in several films, including “The Turning Point,” as well as the television series “Sex and the City.” And in 2005, he founded the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan, which presents dance, music and other programs.
In recent years, Baryshnikov, who has both American and Latvian citizenship, has become more vocal about politics. He criticized former President Donald J. Trump, comparing him to the “dangerous totalitarian opportunists” of his youth. He also spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, accusing Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of creating a “world of fear.” He is a founder of True Russia, a foundation that supports Ukrainian refugees.
In an interview, Baryshnikov discussed the 50th anniversary of his defection; the father he left behind in the Soviet Union (his mother died when he was 12); the pain he feels from the war in Ukraine; and the challenges facing Russian artists today. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What memories do you have of that June day in Toronto?
I remember feeling a sense of comfort and security after seeing very friendly faces in the getaway car. But I was also afraid that things would turn out differently, that at any moment everything would fall apart and become like a bad detective movie. I was starting a new life, something totally unknown, and it was my decision and my responsibility. It was time for me to grow up.
You have describe Your defection was artistic, not political, because you said you wanted more creative freedom and the opportunity to work abroad more frequently, which the Soviet authorities did not allow.
Of course, it was a political decision, taken at a distance. But I really wanted to be an artist and my main concern was dance. I was 26, which is the mature age for a classical dancer. I wanted to learn from Western choreographers. I was running out of time.
At the time you said: “What I did is called a crime in Russia. But my life is my art, and I realized that it would be a greater crime to destroy it.
Did I say it so eloquently? I don’t believe it. Maybe someone corrected the grammar. But I still agree with it. I understood early on that I was a competent dancer, that’s what I could do, and that’s about it.
You feared that your defection could endanger your father, who was a military officer in Riga and taught military topography at the Air Force Academy.
I knew that the KGB services were going to interrogate him and ask him if he was involved and if he would write me a letter or something. He did nothing. I have to say, “Thank you, Dad. Thank you for not bending over. He refused to send me a letter, asking me to come back.
Have you ever contacted 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 responded. And then he died shortly after, in 1980.
You started studying dance at age 7 and enrolled at the Riga School of Choreography, the national ballet academy, a few years later. What did your parents think of your dancing?
They were amused that at 10 or 11 years old I belonged to some sort of vocational school. But my father always said, “You’ll have to go to a real school, study arithmetic and literature, and get good grades.” » I was a very bad student. He said: “If you don’t succeed in a real school, I will send you to a military school, like Suvorov, and they will straighten you out. » He was bluffing of course. I was already deeply, deeply, deeply in love with theater. I was in love with the atmosphere – with the idea that I belonged to this big, beautiful circus.
Did you feel like you had to create a new identity when you came to the West?
I felt a huge sense of freedom. When you don’t have authority over yourself, you start to have crazy ideas about yourself: “Oh, I’m like Tarzan in the jungle now.” But that was enough. I thought, “You have to be a big man already. You have to do something serious. I knew I could dance and I already had a repertoire in my luggage.
Are you still dancing?
Dancing may be a strong word, but theater directors sometimes ask me, “Are you comfortable if I ask you to move?” » I answer yes. I am delighted with this response. But I don’t regret being on stage in a dancer’s costume.
You’ve avoided politics for much of your career, but recently weighed on various issues, including the war in Ukraine. Why speak now?
Ukraine is another story. Ukraine is our friend. I have danced Ukrainian dances, listened to Ukrainian music and singers. I know Ukrainian ballets like “The Forest Song” and I have performed in kyiv. I am a pacifist and anti-fascist, that’s for sure. And that’s why I am on this side of the war.
You were born eight years after Latvia was forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union; your father was one of the Russian workers sent there to teach. How does your experience growing up in that country influence your view of that war?
I spent the first 16 years of my life in Soviet Latvia and I know the other side of the coin. I was the son of an occupier. I had this experience of life under occupation. The Russians treated this region as their territory and their land and they said that the Latvian language was trash.
I don’t want Putin and his army to enter Riga. Latvia finally has real independence and is doing quite well. My mother is buried there. When I come to Riga, I feel like I’m coming home.
You wrote a open letter to Putin in 2022, saying he had created a “world of fear.”
He is a real imperialist with a totally bizarre sense of power. Yes, he speaks with my mother’s language, the same way she spoke. But he does not represent the real Russia.
How have you changed since you left the Soviet Union 50 years ago?
I am a very lucky person. I do not really know. I would like to write a beautiful sentence. But now is not really the time to make nice phrases, when a person like Alexei Navalny was sent to prison and destroyed for his honest life.
Would you ever return to Russia?
No, I do not think so.
Why not?
The idea doesn’t even occur to me. I don’t have an answer to give you.
I imagine you sometimes to think or dream about your stay there.
Of course. Sometimes I speak Russian and I read Russian literature quite often. It is my mother’s language. She was a very simple woman from Kstovo, near the Volga. It was thanks to her that I learned my first words in Russian. I remember her voice, the kind of music specific to the Volga region. Her sounds. Hero.” Her vowels.
Some Russian artists, like the star of the Bolshoi Ballet Olga Smirnovawho currently works at the Dutch National Ballet, left Russia because of the war.
I saw her dancing in New York and met her after the show. She is a wonderful dancer, a lovely woman and very, very, very brave. It’s a big change to go to the Netherlands after being principal soloist at the Bolshoi. And yet, she was in great shape and showed great pride in performing with a company that had adopted her. My heart goes out to her.
Are you surprised to see artists leaving Russia again due to political concerns and repression?
There is a word in Russian for refugees and people who run: bezhentsy. It refers to those who are fleeing bullets, bombs, in this war. Some Russians – dancers and maybe athletes – run more gracefully than others. In my small way, I try to support them. In the end, we are all fleeing from someone.