Word: baryshnikov
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...curious gliding step that seemed to send his feet on ahead of him, Mikhail Baryshnikov skimmed across the stage of Lincoln Center's State Theater and leaped high in the air like an uncoiled spring. The audience gasped as he bounded higher and higher, the perfect picture of a desperate Prince trying to dance all night before the cruel Queen of the Willis and save his soul. When the curtain finally came down on the American Ballet Theater's production of Giselle last week, the Manhattan audience threw flowers at the latest runaway genius from Leningrad...
...year-old Russian dancer's first appearance since he slipped away in Toronto during a guest tour with the Bolshoi company and asked Canada for refuge. His performance as Albrecht proved that Baryshnikov is ultimately a premier danseur noble - and a star likely to outsoar the shadow of cold war night that made his debut a faintly political occasion...
Thirteen years ago, Rudolf Nureyev, the first Kirov refugee, astonished Western audiences with his heroic bursts of explosive movement, animal magnetism and sheer showmanship, not to say showboatery. Baryshnikov is a dancer of equal authority but far different style. He is short, and his slightly chunky body seems to belong to a superb athlete as well as an artist. He floated Makarova overhead as though she had no more substance than a chiffon gown. His phenomenal double turns in air and grands jetês were done with a breathtaking ease that did not call attention to itself...
Characteristically, Baryshnikov worried about whether his greatest technical feat, the showstopping, leg-beating skitter across the stage called a brisê, was dramatically justified. "Do you think it made a bad impression?" he asked after the show. "The interpretation is mine, but the step is in the ballet. It's the last gasp of a soul...
...Baryshnikov wears his new badge on the right of his miner's dress uniform, opposite his "Order of Lenin" (for outstanding production achievements), his "Medal for Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War," and two other medals. He knows the miner's medal was not given to him without a purpose. Recently, a Pravda editorial warned, "Stalin's solicitude for the miner must be responded to in deed...