A biography for Mikhail Baryshnikovhasn’t been written yet.
“No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.”
“Running a company is pretty demanding.”
“I'm a news junkie.”
“When I'm alone, I work sometimes with music, sometimes without and sometimes just listening to NPR.”
“I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.”
“I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.”
“It's what's left in life, to work with interesting people.”
“You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph.”
“When I see people on the street, I look at how they walk. It's like a signature, a fingerprint.”
“I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.”
“To walk across the street is a risk.”
“In the second part of life you get rid of stuff you've accumulated.”
“I spend at least a couple hours a day in the studio, every day, whether I'm dancing or not.”
“Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?'”
“I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived.”
“I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.”
“Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.”
“I have the life of seven cats.”
“Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.”
“Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.”