Mikhail Baryshnikov: The Life Story Behind the Ballet Legend

When Mikhail Baryshnikov jumped, it looked as if the air itself had agreed to hold him up for a second longer than it held anyone else. He rose, he turned, he hung there with his legs crossed and his arms open, and then he came down softly, without a sound, as if gravity had made a special exception for him. People who saw him dance in the 1970s still talk about those jumps the way other people talk about a great goal or a great song, as a moment they will never forget. He was not the biggest dancer, and he was not the loudest personality in the room, but on a stage he was the most alive person in the building.

He was born on 27 January 1948 in Riga, the capital of Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, and he grew up in a country where ballet was not a hobby but a matter of national pride. The Soviet Union trained its dancers the way other countries trained their athletes: strictly, seriously, and from a very young age. Baryshnikov was one of the best products of that system, a dancer with perfect technique, huge jumps, and a lightness that made the hardest steps look easy. He danced with the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, the greatest company in the Soviet Union, and he was already a star when he was still in his twenties.

Then, in 1974, during a tour in Canada, he did something that shocked the world. He walked away from his company, from his country, and from everything he had known, and he asked for political asylum in the West. He left behind his family, his home, and a career that was safe and honoured, because he wanted the freedom to dance the way he wanted, to work with the choreographers he admired, and to live a life that was his own. It was one of the most famous defections of the Cold War, and it changed his life and the history of ballet.

This is the story of a dancer who was trained to be perfect and who then chose to be free, of a boy from Riga who became the most famous male dancer in the world, and of a man who, when his jumping days were over, kept reinventing himself as an actor, a director, and a champion of new dance. It is a story about discipline and courage, about art and politics, and about what it costs to leave everything behind for the chance to be yourself.

Growing Up in Riga and the Loss of a Mother

Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov was born on 27 January 1948 in Riga, Latvia, which was then a republic of the Soviet Union. His father was a Soviet army officer, a strict and distant man, and his mother was a woman who loved the arts and who wanted her son to have a life that was wider than the one she had known. The family lived in modest circumstances, and the home was not a warm one. His father was often away, and when he was home, he was harsh. His mother was the softer presence in his life, the one who took him to the theatre and who saw that he had a gift for movement.

When Mikhail was about eleven years old, his mother took her own life. It was a tragedy that shaped him for the rest of his days, and he has spoken about it rarely and with great pain. A boy who loses his mother at that age carries the loss with him always, and for Baryshnikov it became a private wound that he did not show on stage. On stage he was light, joyful, and free. Off stage he was quiet, serious, and careful with his feelings. The contrast between the dancer the public saw and the man he was inside is one of the keys to understanding him.

He had begun ballet lessons as a child, partly because his mother encouraged him, and partly because the Soviet system looked for talented children and trained them hard. He was not a natural show-off. He was a serious boy who liked the discipline of the studio, the order of the exercises, and the feeling of his body learning to do something difficult. Ballet gave him a place where the rules were clear, where hard work was rewarded, and where he could escape the unhappiness of home for a few hours each day. That escape became his life.

When he was fifteen, he was accepted into the Vaganova School in Leningrad, the most famous ballet school in the Soviet Union, named after the great teacher Agrippina Vaganova. It was a huge step for a boy from Riga, and it meant leaving home and living in a school where the training was strict and the competition was fierce. He was small for a male dancer, and some teachers doubted whether he would be strong enough for the big classical roles. He proved them wrong by working harder than anyone else, by jumping higher, by turning faster, and by making every step look effortless.

The Vaganova School and the Making of a Dancer

The Vaganova School was a place of extraordinary discipline. Students began their day early, they practised at the barre for hours, they studied music and character dance, and they were judged constantly by teachers who had themselves been great dancers. The Vaganova method was famous for its purity: the arms, the head, the back, and the legs all had to work together in a single line, and a dancer was not allowed to cheat a position or rush a movement. Baryshnikov absorbed that training completely, and it gave him a technique that was clean, precise, and beautiful to watch.

His teachers saw that he had something extra. He had a natural jump, a lightness in the air that could not be taught, and he had a musical sense that made his dancing feel like it was part of the music rather than something laid on top of it. He also had a face and a presence that the audience loved: he looked joyful when he danced, as if the steps were a pleasure rather than a test. That joy was rare among male dancers of his generation, many of whom danced with a stiff and formal manner, and it made him stand out even as a student.

He graduated from the school in 1966, and he joined the Kirov Ballet, the company attached to the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad, which was the greatest ballet company in the Soviet Union. The Kirov was a huge institution, with a famous school, a famous orchestra, and a repertoire of the great classical ballets: Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, and Don Quixote. To join the Kirov was to join the top of the profession, and Baryshnikov was still only eighteen years old. He began in the corps, the group of dancers who dance together, and he rose very fast to solo roles.

In the Kirov he danced the great male roles, and audiences began to notice the young dancer with the extraordinary jump. He was partnered with the company’s leading ballerinas, and he learned how to lift, how to support, and how to make his partner look her best, which is the most important job of a male dancer in classical ballet. He was not only a soloist. He was a partner, and a good partner is a generous dancer, one who puts the ballerina first. That generosity stayed with him for his whole career, and it is one of the reasons the great ballerinas of his time wanted to dance with him.

Stardom at the Kirov and the Hunger for More

By the early 1970s, Baryshnikov was a star in the Soviet Union. He had won the gold medal at the Varna International Ballet Competition in 1966, he had danced the leading roles in the great ballets, and he was known to audiences across the country. He was also known to the authorities, who watched the artists of the Soviet Union closely. Dancers, like writers and musicians, were expected to serve the state, to follow the rules, and to stay loyal to the system that had trained them. Baryshnikov was loyal in the sense that he worked hard and danced beautifully, but inside he was becoming restless.

The problem was not the dancing itself. The problem was that the Kirov, for all its greatness, was a conservative company. It performed the same great ballets year after year, and it did not often let its dancers work with new choreographers from the West. Baryshnikov wanted to dance new works, to work with choreographers like George Balanchine in America, and to explore modern dance, which was almost unknown in the Soviet Union. He had seen films and heard stories about the ballet world outside, and he wanted to be part of it. The Soviet system would not let him.

He also wanted a freer life. In the Soviet Union, a dancer’s life was controlled: where he lived, where he travelled, what he could say, and whom he could meet. When the Kirov went on tour to the West, the dancers were watched, and they were not allowed to wander freely or to make friends outside the group. Baryshnikov was a curious man, and he wanted to see the world, to read, to talk, and to choose his own work. That wish grew stronger with each tour, and each time he returned to Leningrad, the walls felt a little closer.

He began to plan his departure in secret, telling almost no one, because a failed attempt would have ended his career and could have harmed his family. He knew the risks, and he knew what he would lose: his home, his family, his position, and the safety of a life that, however restricted, was honoured and secure. He decided that the chance to be free was worth the loss, and in the summer of 1974, during a tour in Toronto, Canada, he made his move.

The Defection in Toronto and a New Life

On 29 June 1974, after a performance in Toronto, Baryshnikov slipped away from the group and asked for political asylum in Canada. It was a dramatic and dangerous moment, and it was reported around the world. The Soviet authorities demanded his return, his fellow dancers were questioned, and his family back home faced pressure. He was twenty-six years old, alone in a foreign country, with no home, no job, and no certainty about what would happen next. He had traded everything for freedom, and now he had to build a new life from nothing.

The West welcomed him as a hero and as a star. Ballet companies in America and Europe wanted him, and audiences wanted to see the dancer who had jumped to freedom. He chose to go to the United States, where he joined American Ballet Theatre, known as ABT, one of the great companies in New York. ABT was different from the Kirov in almost every way: it was smaller, it performed a wider range of ballets, and it worked with choreographers from many countries. For Baryshnikov, it was exactly what he had wanted: a place where he could dance the classics and also try new works.

He also began to work with George Balanchine at New York City Ballet, the choreographer he had admired for years. Balanchine created works for him, and Baryshnikov danced them with a joy that the New York audiences loved. He was no longer a dancer in a system. He was a dancer who could choose, and he chose widely: classical ballets, modern works, and new pieces made for him by the best choreographers of the time. His fame grew, and he became the most famous male dancer in the world, a household name in a way that no ballet dancer had been before.

The defection also made him a political symbol, and that was a burden he did not always enjoy. He was asked about politics, about the Soviet Union, and about freedom, and he answered carefully, because his family was still in the Soviet Union and he did not want to cause them harm. He was not a politician. He was a dancer who had wanted to dance freely, and he tried to keep his public life focused on his art. The world, however, saw him as a symbol of the Cold War, and that symbol followed him for many years.

American Ballet Theatre, Film, and World Fame

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Baryshnikov was at the height of his fame. He danced the great roles with American Ballet Theatre, including Albrecht in Giselle, Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, and Basilio in Don Quixote, and he partnered the great ballerinas of the time, including Gelsey Kirkland and Natalia Makarova, another Soviet dancer who had defected. His performances were sold out, and people who had never seen a ballet came to see him, because they had heard that this dancer could do things no one else could do.

He also became a film star, in a modest way, when he appeared in the film The Turning Point in 1977, playing a dancer, and later in White Nights in 1985, a film about a Soviet dancer who defects to the West and then finds himself back in the Soviet Union. The film was not a perfect portrait of his life, but it was close enough that audiences understood the story, and it made him famous to people who had never been to a ballet. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Turning Point, which was an extraordinary honour for a dancer.

In 1980 he became the artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, which meant that he was no longer only a dancer but also the man in charge of the company. He chose the repertoire, he hired dancers, and he tried to bring new choreographers to the company. It was a difficult job, because running a ballet company means balancing money, politics, and art, and Baryshnikov was a dancer first and a manager second. He stayed in the job until 1989, and he left the company stronger than he had found it, with a wider repertoire and a new generation of dancers.

He also began to explore modern dance, working with choreographers who were not part of the classical ballet world, including Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris. He danced in works that had no tutus, no pointe shoes, and no fairy-tale stories, and he showed that a classical dancer could also be a modern dancer. That openness was rare among great classical dancers, and it became a hallmark of his career: he never stopped learning, and he never stopped trying new things, even when the new things were difficult and unfamiliar.

Later Years, the Arts Centre, and a Life in Dance

As he grew older, Baryshnikov’s jumping days came to an end, as they do for every dancer, and he faced the question that every great dancer faces: what do you do when your body can no longer do what it once did? He did not retire and disappear. He became an actor, appearing on stage and in the television series Sex and the City, where he played a Russian artist, and he became a director and a producer, creating new works and supporting young dancers. He also founded the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, a place where dancers, musicians, and artists could work, rehearse, and create without the pressures of a big company.

The Arts Center, which opened in 2005, is a fitting legacy for a man who once had to leave his country to find freedom. It is a place where artists are free to try new things, to fail, and to try again, and Baryshnikov has supported it with his time, his money, and his name. He has also continued to perform in small, intimate works, often dancing with younger dancers, and often in pieces that are about age, memory, and loss. Those performances are quieter than the great leaps of his youth, but they are just as moving, because they show a man who has lived a full life and who is still asking questions through dance.

He has also spoken more openly in later years about his childhood, his mother, and the cost of his defection. He has said that he does not regret leaving, because the freedom he found was worth the price, but he has also said that the price was real, and that he missed his home and his family. That honesty makes his story more human. He is not a hero in a simple story. He is a man who made a hard choice, lived with the consequences, and kept working, kept learning, and kept dancing in new ways until the end of his performing life.

Today Baryshnikov is in his late seventies, and he is still involved in the arts, still supporting young dancers, and still remembered as one of the greatest male dancers of the twentieth century. His jumps are on film, his performances are in the memory of everyone who saw them, and his Arts Center continues to help new artists. The boy from Riga who lost his mother, who trained in a strict school, and who jumped to freedom in Toronto became a citizen of the world, and the world of dance is richer because he made that jump.

Sex and the City, Acting, and a Second Career on Stage

In his later performing years, Baryshnikov surprised audiences again by becoming an actor, and by appearing in the television series Sex and the City, where he played Aleksandr Petrovsky, a Russian artist who falls in love with Carrie Bradshaw, the character played by Sarah Jessica Parker. It was a small role, lasting only a handful of episodes, but it introduced him to millions of viewers who had never seen a ballet, and it showed a different side of him: a man who could act, who could be charming and difficult at the same time, and who could hold a screen with the same presence he had held a stage. He was in his fifties when he took the role, and he played it with a quiet dignity, and with a sense of humour about himself, that made the character memorable, even in a show full of memorable characters.

He also acted on the stage, in plays and in dance-theatre works, including a production of The Cherry Orchard, and in solo pieces in which he spoke, moved, and danced, often about memory, about age, and about the life of an artist. Those performances were intimate, often in small theatres, and they were a long way from the great leaps of his youth, but they were just as moving, because they showed a man who had lived a full life, and who was still asking questions about it, through his body and through his voice. He did not need to jump to be interesting. He needed only to stand on a stage, to speak, and to be himself, and the audience listened, because they knew who he was, and what he had done.

My Take:

I think Mikhail Baryshnikov’s story is really a story about what freedom costs, and I do not think most of us understand that cost until we imagine giving up everything we know. He had a home, a family, a job that made him a star, and a country that honoured him, and he walked away from all of it in a single night in Toronto, with nothing but the clothes he was wearing and the hope that the West would take him in. I try to imagine that night, and I feel a kind of fear just thinking about it. What if no one had helped him? What if he had been sent back? What if he had never danced again? He took that risk anyway, because the life he had was not enough for him, and the freedom he wanted was worth more than safety. That is a kind of courage I admire deeply, and it is a kind of courage that has nothing to do with jumping high on a stage.

What I love most about his dancing, from the films and the clips I have seen, is the lightness. He does not look as if he is working hard, even though ballet is one of the hardest things a human body can do. He looks as if he is floating, as if the music is carrying him, and as if the jump is the most natural thing in the world. I think that lightness is not an accident. It comes from years of training at the Vaganova School, where every position had to be perfect, and it comes from a natural gift that no amount of training can create. Some dancers are strong, some are fast, some are dramatic, but very few are light in the way Baryshnikov was light, and that is why people who saw him in the 1970s still talk about him as if they had seen something holy.

I also think about his mother, and how her death when he was eleven must have shaped him. A boy who loses his mother that young learns to keep his feelings inside, and he learns to find a place where he can be safe. For Baryshnikov, that place was the ballet studio, where the rules were clear and the work was honest. I think his dancing has a kind of sadness underneath the joy, a sense that the lightness on stage is a way of escaping a heaviness off stage, and that makes his performances more moving to me. He was not dancing to show off. He was dancing to be free, and to be happy, and to forget, for a little while, the pain of his childhood. That is a very human reason to dance, and it is one I understand.

The defection is the part of his story that I find hardest to judge, because it is easy to call him a hero and much harder to understand what he actually did. He left his family behind, and his family faced pressure because of his choice. He left his fellow dancers, who were questioned and watched. He left a country that had trained him and given him everything he had. I do not think he did it lightly, and I do not think he did it for fame or money, because he was already famous and well paid in the Soviet Union. I think he did it because he wanted to choose his own work, and because he could not live a life in which other people decided what he could dance and where he could go. That is a reasonable wish, and it is a wish that most of us take for granted. We choose our jobs, we choose our friends, we choose where we live, and we do not think about it. Baryshnikov had to give up his home to have those choices, and that tells me how precious those choices are.

I admire the way he used his freedom once he had it. He did not just dance the same ballets in America that he had danced in Russia. He worked with Balanchine, he worked with modern choreographers, he danced in films, he directed a company, and he kept trying new things even when he was already the most famous dancer in the world. A lot of people, once they are free, become comfortable and stop taking risks. Baryshnikov did the opposite. He took more risks, and he kept learning, and he kept putting himself in rooms where he was not the expert. That is a rare quality, and it is the reason his career lasted so long and stayed so interesting. He was not content to be a great classical dancer. He wanted to be a complete artist.

I think his time as director of American Ballet Theatre shows both his strengths and his limits, and I want to be honest about that. He was a great dancer, but running a company is a different job, and it needs skills that a dancer does not always have: managing money, dealing with boards, keeping a large group of people happy, and making compromises. He did good work there, and he widened the repertoire, but it was also a difficult period, and he left after nine years. I do not see that as a failure. I see it as a man who tried a hard job, did his best, and then moved on to the work that suited him better. That is a mature thing to do, and it is better than staying in a job that makes you unhappy just because it is prestigious.

What moves me most about his later years is the Arts Center. Here is a man who once had to leave his country to find a place where he could create freely, and in his sixties he built a place in New York where young artists could create freely without having to leave their homes. That is a beautiful full circle. He took the freedom he had fought for and turned it into a gift for other people, and that gift will outlast his dancing. The jumps will live on film, but the Arts Center is a living place, with real dancers in real studios, making new work every day. I think that is the best kind of legacy: not a statue, but a room where young people can work.

I also think about the price he paid in private, the part of the story that does not make the headlines. He missed his family, he missed his home, and he lived for many years with the knowledge that his choice had caused pain to people he loved. He has spoken about that pain rarely, and when he has, it has been with a quiet sadness that I find very moving. He does not pretend that freedom was free. He knows it cost him, and he knows it cost others, and he has lived with that knowledge for fifty years. That honesty makes him more admirable to me, not less, because a hero who pretends there was no cost is not telling the truth. Baryshnikov tells the truth, in his dancing and in his silence.

If I have a criticism, it is only that he was sometimes too private, too careful with his feelings, and that the public never really got to know the man behind the dancer. I understand why. He grew up in a system where speaking openly was dangerous, and he learned to protect himself by saying little. But I sometimes wish he had spoken more about his mother, about his childhood, and about what it felt like to be alone in a new country at twenty-six. Those stories would have helped people understand him better, and they would have helped young dancers who feel alone in their own lives. He has spoken a little more in recent years, and I am grateful for that, because the man is as interesting as the dancer.

I think young dancers today should study Baryshnikov not only for his jumps but for his choices. He chose freedom over safety, he chose new work over comfortable work, and he chose to keep learning when he could have stopped and rested on his fame. Those are choices that any artist can make, in any field, and they are the choices that keep an artist alive. Talent will get you to the top, but choices will decide whether you stay there, and whether you grow, and whether your work still matters when the jumps are gone. Baryshnikov’s work still matters, because he made the right choices, again and again, for fifty years.

I also think about the way he partnered the great ballerinas, because that is a part of ballet that audiences often overlook. A male dancer in classical ballet spends much of his time lifting, supporting, and presenting his partner, and the best partners make the ballerina look as if she is floating, as if she is weightless, and as if she is doing it all by herself. Baryshnikov was a great partner, and the ballerinas who danced with him, Gelsey Kirkland, Natalia Makarova, and many others, have said that he made them feel safe, and that he made them look their best. That generosity, that willingness to put someone else first, is a rare quality in a star, and it is one of the reasons he was loved by his fellow dancers, not only by his audiences. A star who only thinks of himself is a lonely star. Baryshnikov thought of his partners, and that made him a better dancer, and a better man.

I think about his acting, too, and about the way he took a small role in Sex and the City and made it memorable, because it shows that he was not afraid to be seen in a new way. He was in his fifties, he was a legend of ballet, and he could have refused a television role, saying it was beneath him. He did not refuse. He took the role, he played it well, and he introduced himself to a new audience, who had never seen him dance, and who loved him as an actor. That openness, that willingness to try something new, is a lesson for anyone who has been successful in one field and who is afraid to try another. Baryshnikov was not afraid, and he was rewarded for it, with new fans, new work, and a new chapter in a life that was already extraordinary.

Another thought that stays with me is about the Vaganova School, and about the discipline it taught him. The school was strict, the training was hard, and the teachers were demanding, and Baryshnikov absorbed all of it, and it gave him a technique that was clean, precise, and beautiful. I think about that discipline when I think about my own work, and about the work of young people today, who often want success without the hard years of training. Baryshnikov’s life shows that there is no shortcut. He practised for hours every day, from childhood, and he kept practising, even when he was famous, even when he was the best in the world. That discipline is the foundation of his genius, and it is a foundation that anyone can build, in any field, if they are willing to work.

Finally, I want to say something about the Arts Center again, because I think it is the most important thing he has done since he stopped jumping. A man who once had to leave his country to find freedom built a place in New York where young artists can be free, without leaving their homes, and that is a beautiful act of generosity. The Center is not a monument to Baryshnikov. It is a working place, with studios, with rehearsals, and with new work being made every day, and it will outlast him, and it will help dancers who were not yet born when he defected in Toronto. That is a legacy that is alive, and it is a legacy that matters more than any award, because it is a gift to the future.

In the end, I think his life teaches a lesson that is larger than ballet. It teaches that freedom is not a gift that someone gives you, but a thing you have to claim for yourself, and that claiming it can cost you everything you have. It teaches that discipline and joy can live in the same body, and that the hardest work can look like the easiest thing in the world when it is done with love. And it teaches that a life is not finished when the body can no longer jump. It is finished when you stop creating, stop learning, and stop helping others, and Baryshnikov has never stopped. That is why I admire him, and that is why I think his story will be told for as long as people dance.

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where was Mikhail Baryshnikov born?

Mikhail Baryshnikov was born on 27 January 1948 in Riga, Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. He grew up in Riga, began ballet as a child, and at fifteen he was accepted into the Vaganova School in Leningrad, the most famous ballet school in the Soviet Union.

How did Baryshnikov become famous in the Soviet Union?

He trained at the Vaganova School, graduated in 1966, and joined the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, where he quickly rose to leading roles. He won the gold medal at the Varna International Ballet Competition and became known for his huge jumps, clean technique, and joyful stage presence.

Why did Mikhail Baryshnikov defect to the West in 1974?

He wanted the freedom to dance new works, to work with choreographers like George Balanchine, and to live a life he could choose for himself, which the Soviet system did not allow. During a Kirov tour in Toronto on 29 June 1974 he left the company and asked for political asylum in Canada.

What did Baryshnikov do after he came to America?

He joined American Ballet Theatre in New York, worked with George Balanchine at New York City Ballet, and became the most famous male dancer in the world. He also appeared in the films The Turning Point and White Nights, and from 1980 to 1989 he was the artistic director of American Ballet Theatre.

Did Baryshnikov act as well as dance?

Yes, he acted in films and on stage, and he is well known to television audiences for playing Aleksandr Petrovsky, a Russian artist, in the series Sex and the City. In later years he performed in small, intimate dance and theatre works, often about age, memory, and loss.

What is the Baryshnikov Arts Center?

The Baryshnikov Arts Center is a centre in New York, opened in 2005, that Baryshnikov founded to give dancers, musicians, and other artists space to rehearse and create new work. It is a lasting part of his legacy, supporting young artists who want the kind of freedom he once had to leave his country to find.