On the evening of June 29, 1974, after a performance with a touring Bolshoi ballet company in downtown Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov walked out the stage door, past a crowd of fans, and began to run.
Baryshnikov, then 26 years old and already one of ballet’s brightest stars, had made the momentous decision to defect from the Soviet Union and build a career in the West. That rainy night, he had to evade KGB agents (and audience members seeking autographs) as he ran to meet a group of Canadian and American friends waiting in a car a few blocks away.
“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 escape helped turn him into a cultural celebrity“Soviet Dancer in Canada Defects on Bolshoi Tour,” the New York Times declared on its front page.
But the attention paid to his decision to leave the Soviet Union has sometimes unsettled Baryshnikov. He said that he does not like the sound of the term “deserter” in English because it evokes the image of a traitor who has committed high treason.
“I am not a deserter, I am a selector,” he said. “That 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 age 19, he joined the Kirov Ballet, now known as 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 led as artistic director) and then the New York City Ballet. A prominent dancer of the 1970s and 1980s, his star power helped elevate ballet in popular culture. He has worked as an actor, appearing on stage and in several films, including “The inflection point”, as well as the television series “Sex and the city.” And in 2005 he founded the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan, which features dance, music and other programs.
In recent years, Baryshnikov, who has both American and Latvian citizenship, has been more outspoken about politics. criticized former President Donald J. Trump, comparing him to the “dangerous totalitarian opportunists” of his youth. He has also spoken out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, accusing Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of creating a “world of fear.” He is founder of The real Russiaa foundation to support Ukrainian refugees.
In an interview, Baryshnikov reflected on 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 over 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 some very friendly faces in the getaway car. But I also felt scared that it could end up the other way, that at any moment it could fall apart and turn into a bad crime 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.
Have described His defection was artistic, not political, saying he wanted more creative freedom and the chance to work more frequently abroad, something the Soviet authorities would not allow.
Of course it was a political decision, from a distance. But I really wanted to be an artist and my main concern was dancing. I was 26 years old. That is middle age for a classical dancer. I wanted to learn from Western choreographers. Time was running out.
At that time you said“What I have done is considered a crime in Russia. But my life is my art and I realized that it would be an even bigger crime to destroy it.”
Did I say that so eloquently? I don’t think so. Maybe someone corrected it with the proper grammar. But I still agree with that. I realized very early on that I’m a competent dancer, that’s what I could do and that’s it.
You were worried that your defection might endanger your father, who was a military officer in Riga and taught military surveying at the air force academy.
I knew that the KGB services would interview 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 to him: “Thank you, Dad. Thank you for not bending over.” He refused to send me a letter and asked me to come back.
Did you ever communicate with him again?
I sent him two or three letters telling him: “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I hope everyone is well at home.” She never responded. And then he passed away shortly after, in 1980.
You started studying dance at the age of 7 and a few years later you enrolled at the Riga School of Choreography, the state ballet academy. What did your parents think of your dancing?
They were amused that at the age of 10 or 11 I was going to some kind of vocational school. But my father always said, “You’ll have to go to a real school and study arithmetic and literature, and get good grades.” I was a really bad student. He said, “If you don’t succeed in a real school, I’ll send you to a military school, like Suvorov, and they’ll whip you into shape.” Of course, he was lying. I was already deeply, deeply, deeply in love with the theater. I was in love with the atmosphere, with the idea of belonging to that big, beautiful circus.
Did you feel you had to forge a new identity when you came to the West?
I felt a huge sense of freedom. When you have no 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 said to myself: “You have to be a grown man now. You have to do something serious.” I knew I could dance and I already had some repertoire in my luggage.
Are you still dancing?
Dance may be a loud word, but theater directors sometimes ask, “Are you comfortable if I ask you to move?” I say absolutely. I welcome you. But I don’t miss being on stage dressed as a dancer.
He has avoided politics for much of his career, but recently… heavy on on a variety of topics, including the war in Ukraine. Why talk now?
Ukraine is a different story. Ukraine is our friend. I danced Ukrainian dances, listened to Ukrainian music and singers. I know Ukrainian ballets like “The forest song“And I have already performed in kyiv. I am a pacifist and anti-fascist, that’s for sure. And that’s why I’m 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 of growing up there affect 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 was the son of an occupier. I knew that experience of living under occupation. The Russians treated it as if it were their territory and their land, and said that the Latvian language is garbage.
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. I feel that when I arrive in Riga I return home.
You wrote a open letter Putin in 2022, saying he had created a “world of fear.”
He is a real imperialist with a completely foreign sense of power. Yes, he speaks my mother’s language, as she used to speak. 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 really don’t know. I want to compose a nice sentence. But it is not exactly the time for pleasant sentences, when a person like Aleksei Navalny was sent to prison and destroyed for his honest life.
Would you ever return to Russia?
No I dont think so.
Why not?
That idea doesn’t even cross my mind. I have no answer for you.
I imagine you sometimes think or dream about your time there.
Of course. I speak Russian from time to time and often read Russian literature. It is my mother’s language. She was a very simple woman from Kstovo, near the Volga River. I learned my first words in Russian thanks to her. I remember her voice, the kind of music specific to the Volga region. Her sounds. Her “o”, her vowels.
Some Russian artists, such as the Bolshoi Ballet star Olga Smirnovawho is now part of the Dutch National Ballet, left Russia because of the war.
I saw her dance in New York and met her after the show. She is a wonderful dancer, a lovely woman and very, very, very brave. It is quite a change to go to Holland after being a principal soloist at the Bolshoi. And yet she was in excellent form and showed great pride in performing with a company that adopted her. I am rooting for her.
Are you surprised to see artists leaving Russia again due to political concerns and repression?
In Russia there is a word that refers to refugees and people who are fleeing: bezhentsy. It refers to the people who flee from bullets and bombs in this war. There are some Russians (dancers and perhaps athletes) who run more gracefully than others. In my own way, I try to support them. In the end, we all run from someone.