I went to the NY times interview w/ Mikhail Baryshnikov this weekend and it was as amazing as I thought and hoped it to be! He was intriguing, made some great points and just discussed his ballet career and what he is doing now and what is good and bad about NY.
*He discussed what it was like coming here from Russia in '79 and how open NY was to him and kind and how thrilled he was to be working with such choreographers
*Mikhail will always be a better dancer in rehearsal than he will ever be on stage and he prefers rehearsing to performing, he gets bored doing the latter
*The reason for his new center, the Baryshnikov Center, is for young artists coming to NY. In his opinion, ballet and the arts were so amazing in the 60's and 70's because NY was so open and accepting and inviting for young artists - it was an atmosphere the arts could truly flourish in. Now he thinks that NY is much tougher, harder, and not considerate to the new artists trying to make something of themselves, let alone survive in NY at all. So there is less creativity, less amazing works, less for all to experience because the opportunities are not there. So that is the purpose of his center, to allow the young dancers coming to NY to have a place to come where they are welcome to learn and grow and experiment and perform.
It was a wonderful hour and I truly enjoyed getting to learn more about such an amazing person. The Q&A time at the end showed how inspired the audience was by him as a person and him as a dancer. We were all just in awe of this little man who is such a humanitarian.
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