Word: misha
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Paradoxical? "Misha" is more than that. He is an enigma compounded of moody shyness, bold theatricality, post-adolescent intellectual pretense and a sweetness that makes him melt at the sight of an appealing house pet. But that is how it should be for the newest, brightest star in an art that is itself a series of paradoxes. What other discipline demands of its practitioners that they train like athletes and sweat like stevedores in order to achieve romantic effects of the most ethereal nature? What other art places such emphasis on tradition, yet depends on such unreliable resources-the kinesthetic...
...dancers. It is less than a year since he broke away from a Soviet touring company in Toronto, but the public has already made him a superstar and calls him by his nickname. To discourage long lines last winter, a ticket outlet in Manhattan put up a sign saying "Misha tickets all sold...
...example, is a coltish kid in love with the idea of love, touchingly unable to comprehend that, as a nobleman, he just cannot have this terrific peasant girl. He excels at shrewd, straightforward comedy. In Frederick Ashton's Les Patineurs, the dancers appear to be on ice skates. Misha seems about to fall over backward at times-a mime performance that Marcel Marceau might envy. Perhaps his greatest tour de force so far is Roland Petit's Le Jeune Homme et la Mart. The ballet is a cartoon of existential angst, but, leaping over bed, chair and table...
Baryshnikov's life echoes Gene Kelly's refrain, "Gotta Dance." It does not require much stimulation to get Misha's blood stirring. If anything, he has an excess of high-voltage energy. It has been there as long as he can remember. Both he and his mother, a dress fitter in Riga, Latvia, recognized it when he was a child, and they spent a great deal of time trying to channel it. "I was interested in everything," he says, "football, fencing, gymnastics. I even sang in the children's choir. I was also very...
...school was attached to a conservatory, and the musical atmosphere was different from anything that Misha had ever known. "By the end of the year, it was difficult to tear me away. All my other activities became secondary, then disappeared. I would leave for school in the morning and not return until night...