Baryshnikov the Great
I had the enormous good fortune to see Baryshnikov dance in person many many times, and he fully lived up to all the hype. To this day, I have never seen a more exciting and yet Apollonian dancer – an unusual combination – and I’ve seen many of the greats. Even though the following clip discusses the extreme height of his jumps, in person they were even more impressive, with extraordinary ballon (the ability to appear to pause in the air at the height of the jump). I think some of his jumping ability came from the strength of his thigh muscles in relation to his more slight torso. He could act, too, and had tremendous charm as well as masculinity.
Baryshnikov also had total command of attack, which is the ability to make a movement forceful, quick, sharp, and distinct so that it “reads” very clearly and powerfully all the way to the last row of the audience. It’s a question of timing and emphasis, and takes great strength and musicality.
The video says he was 5’5″, and if you look his height up online some sites even say 5’6″ or 5’7″. But I don’t think he actually was more than 5’4″. I might be wrong, but the reason I say that is that I once stood next to him; we were both in ballet slippers, and 5’4″ is my estimate of his height. At any height, though, onstage he was a giant:
For a time, the airline that I worked for parked their overnight crews at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. It’s located adjacent to the Auditorium where Baryshnikov was appearing. One evening I stepped into the elevator and was joined by the gentleman himself. I introduced myself and he was very friendly and generous. We chatted a bit (he was curious about airplanes) until my floor.
Thats my “Oh hell yes, I know Mikhail Baryshnikov”, story
I have always loved his version of The Nutcracker, with Gelsey Kirkland. Those spectacular jumps! It aired on public television in the late 70s. It’s personal tradition of mine to watch during the holiday season. I have a poor quality DVD version, but noticed that it’s on Amazon Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Baryshnikovs-Nutcracker-Mikhail-Baryshnikov/dp/B07YS1ZSDL/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=625ed26f-771c-4d1a-ad59-49b627af17e5
CV–
Here is a video of Gelsey Kirkland dancing the pas de deux from Don Quixote with Baryshnikov in 1976. She’s not at her best– if you watch her during the close-ups, you can see the effects of anorexia on her body; there is next-to-no body fat beneath the skin on her back and upper arms. I read her autobiography (Dancing on My Grave) some years back; she was quite open about her struggles with anorexia as well as her volatile personal relationship with Baryshnikov.
Given Neo’s comment on Baryshnikov’s height, I could see that Kirkland en pointe is the same height as he is or even slightly taller. As for eating disorders, Neo would know more than I do as to whether male dancers are affected as often as their female counterparts, but I don’t get the impression that Baryshnikov ever had to limit his calorie intake– it’s hard to see how he could have danced as forcefully and energetically as he did if he had been trying to keep his weight down.
Anyway, they were both spectacular dancers in their prime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hph_p_NakOI&t=197s&ab_channel=JohnHall
PA Cat:
Kirkland was a favored partner of Baryshnikov for a long time (originally they had a relationship as well, but that ended pretty quickly) because she was not only a good dancer but also tiny – 5’1″.
Male dancers have less of a problem with weight, although I suppose some of them do. I never got the impression that Baryshnikov had any such problem. A lot of Russian dancers were smokers back then, though.
@ CV > “I have always loved his version of The Nutcracker, with Gelsey Kirkland. Those spectacular jumps! It aired on public television in the late 70s”
I have a very poor quality VHS copy of the program, but it’s been played many times. Maybe I’ll look into getting a new version.
It was an amazing magical experience for a lot of us fly-over folks who didn’t grow up close to the major art centers and only saw occasional short TV performances (not always the best way to appreciate the art), although my home town (30 miles from Kevin Williamson’s despised Lubbock) hosted a series of “community concerts” quarterly that sometimes included a ballet; more often choirs (I saw Robert Shaw’s); sometimes renowned solo musicians; and the like. I think there was a national circuit that the organizers subscribed to.
I didn’t realize until I was much older how unusual that was for the place and time, but we had very forward-looking (NOT “progressive”) movers-and-shakers in my parents’ generation.
How many have seen Baryshnikov’s movies?
I’ve only seen White Knights, which I enjoyed very much.
Wikipedia:
In 1977, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of Yuri Kopeikine in the film The Turning Point. He starred in the movie White Nights with Gregory Hines, Helen Mirren, and Isabella Rossellini, and had a recurring role in the last season of the television series Sex and the City.
I didn’t know this, but it appears he had a talent that may explain why he was such a great actor in his ballets.
Wikipedia:
Baryshnikov is a performer in avant-garde theater. His breakthrough performance in Broadway was in 1989, when he played Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis, an adaption of Franz Kafka’s novel. It earned him a Tony nomination.[27]
In 2004, Baryshnikov appeared in Forbidden Christmas or The Doctor And The Patient at New York City’s Lincoln Center, and in 2007 in Beckett Shorts at New York Theatre Workshop.[28] On April 11 to 21, 2012, he starred in In Paris, a new play directed by Dmitry Krymov. It was presented on the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center’s Broad Stage and co-starred Anna Sinyakina. Baryshnikov then appeared in the stage adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Man in a Case.
AesopFan:
Did you follow the link I put on “stood next to him”?
@ Neo – I confess I skipped that one. My bad!
Great story – you have so many of them, and have been so generous in sharing them with us.
Related…(to everything??)…
“Transcending Fear — Surgeon General of Florida Speaks Out”—
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/09/04/transcend-fear.aspx
Key grafs:
“…Ladapo suffered the effects of traumatic events that occurred in his childhood well into adulthood. It wasn’t until just before the COVID pandemic that he experienced a breakthrough and was able to release old fear-based reactions;
“Releasing old fears allowed him to see through the lies of the pandemic narrative;
“Stress and trauma have the effect of making it difficult to think straight, see the truth and stand against what you know to be wrong. Healing such psycho-emotional wounds will make you more resistant to brainwashing;
“In his book, Ladapo reveals his own experiences with trauma-based fear, his journey of recovery, and how you can address challenges in a way that is consistent with who you actually desire to be…
“…I almost wanted to cry sometimes because it was such an assault on people’s humanity…
“…Prevention is really important and doing things that can prevent the onset of disease is huge….”
He makes it look all so easy. The effortless gliding I can understand but the leaps where he appears to float seems to defy gravity, .
Basketballs Michael Jordan appeared to float but that was an illusion. At the apex of his leap the ball is held near head level and as he descends he lets his body fall away from the ball by extending his arm to keep the ball at its initial height. Followed by a tremendous dunk of course.
I watched that first clip of Baryshnikov a dozen times and can’t determine how the illusion is accomplished. Absolutely amazing.
Baryshnikov was a fantastic dancer, and a fine actor. Could have been competition for Tom Cruise for cute tough masculine guy had he chosen more movies – but unlikely to have been the giant he remains in Ballet.
I really liked The Turning Point, with the reality of decisions made (I said this …17 years ago, too, here on Neo’s blog).
In the trailer
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4143644953/?playlistId=tt0076843&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi
Mikhail looks about Leslie Brown’s height of … 170cm = 66.9 inches. 5-7, but likely just a bit shorter.
Unlike so many male ballet dancers, he was quite a successful womanizer in real life, as in that movie.
It’s so hard to improve from very good to truly great – the best, perhaps the GOAT (greatest of all time). He did so.
AesopFan mentioned ‘flyover folk’ but this lifelong New Yorker was dragged to see Baryshnikov and Makarova when i was too young to appreciate or explain what made this The Best.
I think this true of many New Yorkers. The Best in the performing arts means a level of skill and focus that simply lets the audience be drawn into the work… “making it look easy” makes it look convincing and inevitable, believable. You don’t need to be a connoisseur to “get it”.
OTOH it is relatively easy to identify performances that fall short – when the spell of a performance is broken by distracting technique (good or bad, as Neo has shown us with her examples of inexpressive hyperextension) or lack of direction, focus, or committment by the performers.
“Making it look easy” is a necessary first step to enchanting an audience.
MB has it all. Everything. As a matter of probability theory, someplace there is a guy who has everything MB has except….he has a face Central Casting keeps on hand when you need an extra to be an anonymous bureaucrat.
Got it all.
Tom Grey:
Again, about heights in ballet – see this post, in which I mention how most dancers are quite small and look taller onstage. As for Leslie Browne, she is not 5’7″. During the filming of “The Turning Point,” I saw her nearly every day in the dance class I took. I stood near her many times. I am 5’4″, and she is either my height or maybe one inch taller. Nowhere near 5’7″. I don’t care what some website says.
Also, about the womanizing. It’s true that quite a few male dancers are gay, but quite a few are straight. And the straight ones have a field day, for the most part. Lots of women from which to choose, and everybody lean and lovely.
Yawrate:
It’s accomplished through amazing strength in thighs and butt, and also wonderful timing, as well as the right breathing. Nijinsky used to say this about the process:
That may seem preposterous, but it’s not. It goes without saying that I’m no Nijinsky, but in my own little (very little) way I would try to do the same. I can’t explain it, but I think it has partly to do with holding the breath for a moment and also freezing the motion for a moment, and keeping the same tension, as though you’re freezing for a snapshot.
Note that photos of Nijinsky reveal a similar thigh-to-torso ratio as with Baryshnikov.
Great Person!!
Baryshnikov condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin slamming his “world of fear”. In his letter, Baryshnikov wrote that people of culture who promoted Russian art made more for Russia than Putin’s “not-so-precise weapons”.
@ Neo > “It’s true that quite a few male dancers are gay, but quite a few are straight.”
About 10 years ago, I started taking ballet lessons for the exercise, (had to quit a couple of years later because of plantar fasciitis and then never got back to it).
Our teacher was “retired” from the stage circuit and had been teaching quite a while, so she was probably in her late sixties then, and I don’t remember where all she worked — California and Utah IIRC.
The point of this digression:
I remember her remarking once that, when she started her career, the gay dancers had to pretend to be straight, often with a suitable marriage to carry the illusion; but by the time she retired, “you had to be gay to get a job.”
Another digression, since this is a male dancer post:
At one point, a young man joined our class, which had a large age range — I was among the oldest, but there were also young & middle aged women and a couple of guys who had danced awhile decided they just didn’t want to do that as a career.
Anyway, Matthew had already earned about 5 or 6 black belts in all the martial arts he could find locally, and one of his teachers suggested he take some ballet to improve his balance and flexibility.
He loved it — within the year he was dancing most of the male parts other than the lead (always an imported pro) in our annual “Nutcracker” — at the end of his second year, he became an intern in a Utah dance company.
I didn’t keep up with him after I left the class, but it’s a great example of unusual cross-training.
There is an old story of football teams being sent to the college ballet class for the same reasons, and getting beat into the ground by the regimen.
Different muscle groups and so forth.
There’s an internet post about everything.
https://www.balletbarresonline.com/blogs/news/93291073-why-do-football-players-practice-ballet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQQRvt3ipCU
Football Players take Ballet HD –
Spring 2017: Six football players took 10 ballet classes as a method of injury prevention
And don’t forget the classics.
I went with my teacher to see them in Denver about a year or so before this was filmed.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
TEATRO DEGLI ARCIMBOLDI, LUNEDÌ 26 DICEMBRE 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0MyFrvaxf0
They play a lot of things for laughs, of course, but are really very good.
In a distance shot of a serious passage, it’s hard to realize they are (often quite large) men in tutus.