Fifty years after his defection, we’re still living in the age of Mikhail Baryshnikov

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Although his homeland labelled him a traitor, he knew instead he was a symbol of hope for all Russian artists whose spirits long to be free

John Fraser is a former dance and theatre critic for The Globe and Mail and its former bureau chief in both Beijing and London. He is the author of many books, including, and is currently the executive chair of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada.

Along the way, and typical of this extraordinary artist , he is probably most widely known to a mass audience as Aleksandr Petrovsky, the moody Russian émigré artist who stole the heart of Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie in, and it became a major source of fascination for a far larger audience than he’d ever had on the stage. I asked him once what his motivation was for taking on this role in that particular show.

who were ready in New York to help him make his decision. That little act of intrigue won for me a dear, generous and loyal friend for all these subsequent 50 years. All along his postdefection trajectory, he has tried to find those unique moments, one way or another. Although he could have jumped immediately into star status at ABT, he chose instead to become an “ordinary” corps member of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet because he wanted the experience of working with the mighty Russian choreographer.

a dramatic theatrical evening built around the narration of poetry by the late Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Brodsky, who was a close comrade. Thankfully, we live in the age of total media penetration, and so if you want to catch so much of what Misha has accomplished in his lifetime, or at least the gist of it, just spend a few hours scouring YouTube. It’s there particularly you can see in vivid reality the scope of his achievement.

Invasion Misha Artist Toronto Dance School Something ABT Laurence Olivier George Balanchine

 

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