Mikhail Baryshnikov’s new “anti-ballet”

I started studying ballet at the age of three and continued through high school. I eventually stopped to pursue other sports and academic interests, but I grew up rather alone as a young boy with an immense appreciation for — borderline obsession with — Mikhail Baryshnikov.

I vividly remember sharing in elementary school that Baryshnikov was my idol, while others talked of Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson, but it was usually just a source of ridicule, which I was used to. I'm in my thirties now and have always felt saddened by not having the chance to watch him perform as he retired about the age I started appreciating the greats in ballet. I ultimately married a (now retired) ballet dancer and we share the love for the art, though she more closely follows the female performers, understandably.

I have to share that I always felt a bit embittered when friends who watched Sex and the City would talk about his character because they never knew who he really was – one of the greatest male ballet dancers to walk this earth. I will say, though, that I got a kick out of getting a chance to tell them. As an adult, my former life as a dancer is far more appreciated, especially when we'd go out to a club, and most certainly after I met my wife.

I'm really excited to hear about this performance and I want to thank you for sharing. I will find a way to go, just to see him in the flesh.

No clue why this showed up on HN but it's welcome. Most HN readers probably know Baryshnikov, a titanically gifted dancer who defected from the then-Soviet Union in the 1970s. Soviet ballet was matchless technically but hidebound. He was a free thinker, so, yeah... that didn't work. He flourished in the West. I think he's also an underrated actor, administrator (hey, that means a lot in the art world) and choreographer. This dance is about his friendship with Joseph Brodsky.

Brodsky was a poet with something of the same background, also a Soviet defector. To my mind he is one of the greatest poets in English of the 20th century; like Nabokov he was extraordinarily gifted in more than one language. He in his mid 50s about 20 years ago. I imagine this is one of the more interesting of Baryshnikov's works because they seemed like two birds of a feather. I miss Brodsky terribly and I didn't even know him. Baryshnikov at 67 probably has some dance magic left in him for this performance.

Can someone point out a video of Baryshnikov's dance that is so impressive? Perhaps it's a lack of training or interest in dance, but I just looked at a few videos on Youtube, and none of them seem all that amazing, just consisting of what seem like standard ballet moves.

Very happy we got to see him perform a brief experimental work in 1998. Movement that would be brushed off as a special effect if kids saw it today. Seeing it live was astonishing.

Although your significant other might complain you don't like, nor get the ballet; deep down inside they don't really care. And if given a choice--the're glade you don't know all the ballet trivia, and wear a black turtleneck.

Source: last girlfriend. She had other gripes about my character, but my ballet appreciation, or lack of, was not one of them.