“I was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go.”

Latvian and American dancer, choreographer, and actor

Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov is a Latvian and American dancer, choreographer, and actor. He was born in 1948 and became the preeminent male classical ballet dancer of the 1970s and 1980s. He later worked as a dance director and is also known for his work as a choreographer and actor. His public reputation rests on a long career in classical ballet and on the broader range of performance work that followed.