Word: baryshnikov
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When the curtain goes up on Once Upon a Time, Twyla Tharp's new dance for American Ballet Theater, Mikhail Baryshnikov is alone onstage. He is elegantly dressed in pleated, '30s-style trousers, the kind that Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn used to wear in the movies. This attractive, provocative first glance recalls Tharp's triumphant Push Comes to Shove (1976); that ballet began with Baryshnikov's sidling out in a vaguely Slavic tunic and a sassy bowler hat. No doubt about it, Tharp understands this Russian-American firebird better than any other choreographer. She sees...
...soupy Glazounov waltz tunes. That is no easy job, since this muse is coltish and blithely selfabsorbed. Three more young women (Elaine Kudo, Nancy Raffa, Amanda McKerrow), wearing costumes that suggest old-fashioned pinafores, glide in and out. At the end, his red-geranium partner's having vanished, Baryshnikov is hypnotized by the retreating figure of McKerrow...
Once Upon a Time is Tharp's most romantic piece. She sees what choreographers usually see in Baryshnikov: a performer who extends the boundaries of male virtuosity, in that sense the most modern of ballet dancers. But in the clarity and fastidious detail of his technique, as well as his warmth and amplitude, Baryshnikov evokes nostalgia-for the perfumed legends of Nijinsky and the Diaghilev troupe that first ignited the passion for ballet in the West. It is no small feat to capture this double image in a twelve-minute work, but Tharp has done...
...mundane level this Misha seems a bit tired, with his loosened tie and distracted air. It does not take much imagination to see this overworked chap as the head of a big dance company, which of course happens to be Baryshnikov's situation as artistic director of A.B.T. Develop the dancers, search out inspiring choreography, get out there and sell tickets with your own bag of tricks: that is a day's work...
...everyone with her smoky vulnerability. And so, with two of the most highly praised performances of the past year, she is an odds-on favorite to garner two Academy Award nominations next month, the first double designate in four decades. Back on the arm of her longtime beau Mikhail Baryshnikov, 34, Lange finds that her most challenging current role is warding off rumors that she has become a temperamental star. "I wish all the people so up in arms and offended by my behavior had met Frances," says Lange. "She tore people to pieces. I'm like a lamb...