On the evening of June 29, 1974, after a performance with a touring Bolshoi Ballet troupe in downtown Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov emerged from 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 build a career in the West. On that rainy night, he had to dodge KGB agents—and members of the public seeking autographs—as he hurried 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 him to a cultural celebrity. “Soviet Dancer in Canada Cuts Bolshoi Tour,” declared the New York Times on its front page.
But the focus on his decision to leave the Soviet Union has sometimes made Baryshnikov uneasy. He said he doesn’t like the way the term “Defector” sounds in English, conjuring up the image of a traitor who has committed high treason.
“I’m not a defector – I’m a selector,” he said. “That was my choice. I chose this life.”
Baryshnikov was born in Soviet Riga, Latvia, and moved to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1964 when he was 16 to study with the famous teacher Alexander Pushkin. When he was 19, he joined the Kirov Ballet, now known as the Mariinsky, and quickly became a star on the Russian ballet stage.
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 preeminent male dancer of the 1970s and 1980s, his stardom helped elevate ballet into popular culture. He has worked as an actor, appearing on stage and in many films such as “The Turning Point“, as well as the TV series “Sex and the city.” And in 2005, he founded it Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan, featuring dance, music and other programs.
In recent years, Baryshnikov, who holds US and Latvian citizenship, has become more vocal about politics. He has criticized former president Donald J. Trump, likening 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 its founder 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 about 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 safety after seeing some very friendly faces in the getaway car. But I also felt a fear that it might turn out differently — that at any moment, it could fall apart and become like a bad crime movie. I was starting a new life, something completely unknown, and it was my decision and responsibility. It was time to grow up.
You have is described Your distance as artistic, not political, saying that you want more creative freedom and the opportunity to work abroad more often, which 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 my dancing. I was 26. That’s the average age for a classical dancer. I wanted to learn from Western choreographers. Time was running out.
Then 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? Do not believe. Maybe someone could fix it with the correct grammar. But I still agree with it. I realized early on that I’m a good dancer — that’s all I could do.
You were worried that your defection would endanger your father, who was a military man in Riga and taught military surveying at the Air Force Academy.
I knew the KGB would interview him and ask him if he was involved and if he would write me a letter or something. Did nothing. I have to say, “Thanks, Dad. Thanks for not bending over.” He refused to send me a letter, asking me to return.
Did you contact him again?
I sent him two or three letters saying, “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I hope everyone is well at home.” He never answered. And then he died very soon, in 1980.
You started studying dance at 7 and enrolled at the Riga School of Choreography, the state ballet academy, a few years later. What did your parents think of your dancing?
They were amused that at 10 or 11 I belonged to some kind of vocational school. But my father always said, “You should go to a real school and 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’ll send you to the military school, like Suvorov, and they’ll straighten you out.” Bluff of course. I was already deeply, deeply, deeply in love with the theater. I was in love with the atmosphere — the idea of belonging to this big beautiful circus.
Did you feel like you had to forge a new identity when you came to the West?
I felt a tremendous sense of freedom. When you have no power over yourself, you start having crazy ideas about yourself: “Oh, I’m like Tarzan in the jungle now.” But it was enough. I said to myself: “You must be a grown man by now. You have to do something serious.” I knew I could dance and I already had some repertoire in my luggage.
do you still dance
Dance may be a strong word, but theater directors sometimes ask, “Are you comfortable if I ask you to move?” I say absolutely. I welcome it. But I don’t miss being on stage in a dancer’s outfit.
You’ve avoided politics for much of your career, but recently weighed on various issues, 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 song of the forest“, and I have appeared in Kyiv. I’m a pacifist and an anti-fascist, that’s for sure. And that’s why I’m on this side of the war.
You were born eight years after the forced annexation of Latvia to the Soviet Union. Your father was one of the Russian laborers sent there to teach. How does your experience growing up there affect the way you see 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 a conqueror. I knew this experience of living under possession. The Russians treated it as their territory and their land, and said that the Latvian language is garbage.
I don’t want Putin and his army to enter Riga. Finally, Latvia has real independence and is doing very well. My mother is buried there. I feel when I come to Riga, I come back to my home.
You wrote one I open a letter to Putin in 2022, saying he had created a “world of fear”.
He is a true imperialist with a completely strange sense of power. Yes, he speaks my mother’s language, as she did. But it 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 don’t really know. I want to compose a nice sentence. But this is not exactly the time for nice sentences, 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.
Why not;
The idea doesn’t even cross my mind. I don’t have an answer for you.
I imagine you sometimes think or dream for your time there.
Of course. I occasionally speak Russian and quite often read Russian literature. This is my mother’s language. She was a really simple woman from Kstovo, near the Volga River. I learned my first Russian words from her. I remember her voice, the specific kind of music of the Volga region. Her sounds. Her “o”. Her vowels.
Some Russian artists, such as the star of the Bolshoi Ballet Olga Smirnovanow in the Dutch National Ballet, they have 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 wonderful woman and very, very, very courageous. It’s a big change to go to Holland after being principal soloist at the Bolshoi. Yet she was in great shape and took great pride in appearing with a company that adopted her. I’m rooting for her.
Are you surprised to see artists leaving Russia again due to concerns about politics and repression?
There is a word in Russian that refers to refugees and people on the run: bezhentsy. This is true of people running from bullets, from bombs, in this war. There are some Russians—dancers and perhaps athletes—who run more gracefully than others. In my very small way I try to support them. In the end, we all run from someone.
