Dance: Apollo of Ballet
Rosen, Lillie F.
DANCE Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famed premier danseur, has stated that if Soviet authorities had only permitted him to develop artistically by dancing in guest appearances with Western companies, if...
...Baryshnikov almost transcends the limits of his physique...
...Also there was and is in him that indefinable mix of youthful playfulness and somber temperament...
...by 10, he is in class, which is followed by rehearsals until 5 or 6 p.m., and then his evening performance, either in a full-length ballet or in two or three shorter works...
...Comparisons between Nureyev and Baryshnikov are inevitable, but despite their common Kirov background, these two dancers are markedly different...
...Why, then, would this young man, considered by many to be the most formidable technician ballet has ever produced, leave family and homeland and defect while on a 1974 tour in Canada as guest of the Bolshoi Ballet...
...His appearance borders on the ordinary, but blue eyes, a jut of chin, high cheekbones under a pale, taut skin, and slightly tousled blond-brown hair add up to an interestingly irregular face which tops a chunky, five-foot-seven body...
...Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Nutcracker the stodgy lumbering productions of old classics plus disappointingly few fairly new works like Gorianka, Creation of the World, and Hamlet these provided the roles he danced...
...An audience," Baryshnikov has said, "must be made to feel the stage isn't big enough to hold the dancer...
...Further, unlike Nureyev, Baryshnikov disdains flamboyance and the intrusive personal assertiveness that blares "super-Rudi" across the footlights in every Nureyev role...
...Powered by some unique internal fire and displaying an unbelievable interplay of joints, bones, and muscles, he combines daring that intrepid will to risk with an elegant breadth and depth of phrasing...
...Dancing is a difficult, dedicated life, particularly when complicated by adjustment to a new country, language, and mores...
...Despite its huge rewards, Baryshnikov must feel the oppressive weight of fame, the constant striving for perfection, the Damoclean threat of serious injury that in seconds could terminate his career, and the inexorable velvet assault of time...
...Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov, born on January 27, 1948, in Riga, Latvia, did not begin ballet studies at the Riga Opera Ballet school until he was twelve...
...At eighteen he was made a Kirov soloist, by-passing the corps de ballet in the usually inflexible Russian dance hierarchy...
...His reputation preceded his defection and was, of course, augmented by the glamour surrounding every famous refugee...
...Yes, he acknowledges, he would enjoy dancing in more Balanchine works than just Themes...
...Intensively alive, vital, immediate, moving like a beautiful, lithe cat, he arrows up in higher, lighter bounds, lingering in weightless exhilaration at the apogee before returning to the stage, or leaps in a white dazzle of legs scissoring space or in stunningly articulated double cabrioles and velvety smooth, triple tours, with never a distortion of placement or purity of line...
...He was well known even before 1974, having won the Varna gold medal in 1966 at age eighteen, and another gold medal in the Moscow quadrennial competition of 1969...
...To say, as some do, that it is unmanly is just not intelligent...
...DANCE Mikhail Baryshnikov, the famed premier danseur, has stated that if Soviet authorities had only permitted him to develop artistically by dancing in guest appearances with Western companies, if only there had not been a shortage of suitable Russian ballerinas, if only Western choreographers had not been barred for "patriotic" reasons from working in Russia (his own company, the Kirov Ballet, needed more versatile choreographers), if only he could have danced more frequently and in more contemporary works, "I never would have defected...
...Nureyev makes the effort involved in his virtuoso feats deliberately visible, while Baryshnikov dances with exultant, seemingly effortless ebullience...
...His Petrouchka, the tale of the straw puppet with a human heart, twists one's own body into sympathetic attitudes of hopelessness and despair...
...It is paradoxical that one of the greatest ballet training systems ever devised should have offered this Wunderkind (and other great Russian dancers) so little opportunity...
...His prodigious technique is now the exemplar for all other gifted male dancers...
...Looking back on his incandescent performance, I can only marvel at the modesty with which Baryshnikov greeted the numerous curtain calls, the balletomanic shrieks and showers of flowers that crowned this newest and greatest dance star...
...My moods shift...
...One is also overwhelmed by the sheer explosion of energy he generates in Glen Tetley's Sacre du Printemps...
...In each case, the dancers were seeking wider artistic freedom...
...Ballet and its audiences the world over are the gainers...
...Baryshnikov's virtuosity is subordinated to stylistic purity and thoughtful interpretation...
...Though he is personally likeable, Baryshnikov's high status in the American Ballet Theatre (his principal Lillie F. Rosen reviews dance for Dance News, American Dance Guild, andEastside Courier...
...In a post-defection interview, Baryshnikov admitted it was not easy: "Not to be able to return to my motherland, to my home, is very hard and painful...
...A Merited Artist of the USSR, he was partner to the exquisite Irina Kolpakova, a premier danseuse noblesse...
...She also writes criticism and analysis for Dance Scope, Dance Eddy, and other art publications...
...In 1964 he entered the Kirov Ballet school in Leningrad, becoming first a pupil and then protege of the late, world-famous teacher, Alexander Pushkin...
...Although he had not yet attained his full vigor, he was already exhibiting the signs of a rare artist clean, precise footwork, beautifully stretched, pointed feet, impeccable line, musicality, intelligence, and strongly supportive, self-effacing partnering...
...I am melancholic, yes," he says...
...The denunciation that followed exposure of his deception crumbled his princely arrogance, stunningly mimed, so that in Act II we saw an Albrecht, his face etched with grief, in a shattering portrayal of absolute Tightness...
...It was a Spartan regimen compared with some of the new roles and choreographic styles he has added to his repertoire in this country since 1974: Sir Frederick Ash-ton's Les Patineurs, Roland Petit's Le Jeune Homme et la Mori (revived solely to display Baryshnikov's formidable talents), La Fille Mai Gardee, Antony Tudor's Shadowplay (a commentary on the thin veneer of civilization overlying primitive instincts), John Butler's Medea, Fokine's Petrouchka and Spectre de la Rose, John Neu-meier's Hamlet Connotations, Balanchine's Theme & Variations, Jerome Robbins's Other Dances, and more, down to the off-center eccentricities of Twyla Tharp's Push Comes to Shove, where he indulges in some bubbling kinetic bantering...
...The latter, rated by many as Balanchine's finest creation, is perhaps an appropriate choice, for Baryshnikov, at twenty-eight, is Apollo, the young God, who, from among the three Muses in the ballet, chose Terpsichore for his own...
...Yet there is really nothing about his anatomy to prepare you for the alchemy of that body in motion...
...His shading and nuances alter to accommodate the needs and personalities of the various ballerinas who are his partners...
...Unsophisticated audiences who look only to his astounding, gravity-defying flights are blinding themselves to the other important elements of his great artistry...
...His first-act Albrecht was less a philanderer than a prince trapped by circumstances into a required royal marriage, while deeply enamored of Giselle, the peasant maiden...
...Ballet is a great art form...
...Clearly it was a non- political leap, as were the defections of the other Russian dancers who preceded him Rudolf Nureyev, Alexander Minz, Valery and Galina Panov, Natalia Makarova, Gennadi Vostrikov, Alexander Filipov, and Kaleria Fadayechev...
...At Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, where all dancers are equal (some being more equal than others), Baryshnikov enjoyed the comforts and luxuries the Soviet government bestows on outstanding artists a good salary, a fine apartment, a maid, a car...
...These suffocating restrictions led to Baryshnikov's flight and subsequent explosive impact on the current dance scene...
...Opportunities for established talents within the company have diminished because it has employed so many foreign stars, particularly this past season...
...But the Soviet repertoire remains far more traditional than contemporary and reveals a musty decadence (amply demonstrated in the Bolshoi tour last year) that tends to go beyond a wholesome reverence for tradition...
...He has left his definitive stamp on every role he has assumed...
...To Baryshnikov, who savors a fierce exultation in controlled, energetic movement and whose body curls around a kinetic phrase like a curving wave, the mere four or five appearances per month accorded leading Russian dancers were frustrating...
...for in this world you must learn to make decisions yourself____ Sometimes they are wrong ones____" Fateful decisions, however, were far from his mind at eighteen...
...This poetically dramatic conception evoked a sympathy not ordinarily accorded the role...
...Nijinsky's fame, buttressed by time and nostalgia, is secure, but in Spectre Baryshnikov glides, soars, and shimmers in a luminescent glow...
...Aside from his breathtaking technique, what are the qualities that underlie his charisma and magnetism...
...Yet his unique artistry cannot be denied...
...Thick-waisted and with the heavily-muscled thighs that bespeak the good jumper, he is truly outstanding in an elite group that through the years has included Nijinsky, Erik Bruhn, Igor Youskevitch, Andre Eglevsky, Anthony Dowell, and Fernando Bujones (only twenty-one and Baryshnikov's closest current technical rival...
...Tools he had acquired as a student history of music, art and dance, fencing, various styles of dance other than ballet, were hardly being used...
...Baryshnikov's day begins at 8 a.m...
...Apollo of Ballet LILLIE F. ROSEN American base these past two years) and his average earning of $3,000 per performance have created problems...
...But he could not live and work with the paradox of material plenty under an artistic strait jacket...
...But in works like Sacre, Le Jeune Homme..., or Push..., the body is in completely different shapes, with such tremendous physical demands so much depends on how a dancer manages himself...
...If I do only 'easy' ballets like Giselle or Swan Lake, I might go on to forty or forty-five," he says...
...From ancient times" he says, "man has danced...
...Steps and combinations still to be classified in ballet vocabulary are tossed off with ease, spurring even hard-headed critics to seek new definitions and superlatives for what their eyes behold...
...On July 27, 1974, Baryshnikov made his New York and American Ballet Theatre debut with Natalia Makarova, also a Kirov defector, in Giselle often called ballet's Hamlet...
...particularly such masterpieces as Prodigal Son and Apollo...
...Russians are given plenty of food, but not the choice of what they want to eat," he said...
Vol. 40 • December 1976 • No. 12
