Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotations

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.

Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life.

I like to go to anybody else's birthday, and if I'm invited I'm a good guest. But I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don't care.

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.

You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph.

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than lifes daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.

I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people. In the '90s, it became kind of a hard and unwelcoming city in many ways. It became conservative, like the whole country.

I get speeding ticket like everybody else. If the restaurant is full I'm waiting in line like everybody else.

I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.

I adored my mother, and I will always have extraordinary memories about her and remember her, and she opened the doors for me to appreciate arts.

Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries - the body has a stronger memory than your mind.

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices. Want to or not, you're thinking about what you're doing in life-in my case, dancing.

My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.

No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that's my real vocation, and I have to serve it.

Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.

I'm an impatient person in many respects. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. It forces me to deliver.

People of art should never get married and have children, because it's a selfish experience.

I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure.

Your heart is very much connected to your mind.

You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.

When I see people on the street, I look at how they walk. It's like a signature, a fingerprint.

Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great.

I am a performer. I go on stage and make a fool of myself.

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.

My life has been immensely enriched by gay mentors, colleagues and friends, and any discrimination and persecution of gay people is unacceptable.

I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.

In the second part of life you get rid of stuff you've accumulated.

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms.

I know when I am on stage and I'm kind of on the right track - hopefully most of the time. But a lot of time I'm not.

Nothing is ever too expensive if it furthers the repertoire and artistic standards of a dance company.

I've always said, 'I am a selector, I am not defector' - the first few phrases in English I learned. I said I hate 'defector'; something defective about the people. It's a bad word.

I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people.

I was always interested in photography and other forms of art.

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company.

I have some Russian friends. But probably only 10 percent. I don't hang out usually in the big Russian communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey.

I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.

I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience.

We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in two little - my brother and me and my parents. It was hell, but it was a common thing. My father was not general or admiral, but he was colonel. He was teaching in military academy military topography.

Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.

I spend at least a couple hours a day in the studio, every day, whether I'm dancing or not.

I go a lot to see young people downtown in little theaters. It's great. If you start somebody's career, it's so exciting.

In '74 it was really a very gloomy atmosphere, I would say, to put it mildly.

Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud.

When I'm alone, I work sometimes with music, sometimes without and sometimes just listening to NPR.

I think art education, especially in this country, which government pretty much ignores, is so important for young people.

A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought.

Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?'

I don't drink milk, and I don't eat bread, pasta or rice. But I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish and salads.

The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.

I am not trying to do material which I cannot do full out.

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.

Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.

Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights.

I'm a product of Russian culture, but I never felt it was my country.

You cannot be happy with your family while being personally unhappy with your work. It's a Catch-22 kind of thing.

Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.

I want to do exactly what I want to do. I'd rather gamble on the box office than beg for a grant.

To walk across the street is a risk.

I am teaching more. That is what I do best.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography.

I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.

I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived.

In any art form, in Hollywood or in music, there is a handful of people who really, you know, move the envelope.

Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.

I - you know, I'm not an actor.

I don't go to a gym, I don't do yoga. I don't do personal training.

It's what's left in life, to work with interesting people.

Everything I do, it's a bit painterly. I like being surrounded by objects, mostly on paper. I like the images. I like the painting. I like good photography. It's something that makes me an emotional connection, and I feel comfortable around it.

My father was a Party member and he was a pretty high rank military officer under the colonel, junior colonel, I don't know the term. He was a total Stalinist. A bit with a streak of anti-Semitism and very shrewd man, a very kind of nervous man.

In opera tradition, when opera die-hard fans, there is a replacement of singer or singer wasn't at his or hers vocal best, doing something, they boo. Especially now that they pay hundreds of dollars for the ticket.

Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.

I cannot draw to save my life, and I'm not a big art scholar, but I worked with many designers throughout my career - in theater, in dance, costume designers, set designers, and I have a lot of artist friends and I do photography, and I think it's kind of in my life.

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.

I was kind of amused, and shocked. At first I was watching it with my children. Then I said 'Children, OUT!

I can see one guy doing what we call an 'air flare' ... and I'll see 30 other individuals do the same move in a competition. Not one of those b-boys did anything to try to twist it and make it their own.

I was never like, "collect, collect," like people who go to auctions. I never spent a serious amount of time because I don't have any time!

I gave away a lot of works for benefits and then people would also give me back.

What people will do to get away from boredom!

I always had a kind of strange relationship with New York City, with total love affair in the beginning then retreat during the kind of conservatives of politics and real estate and business came, and then I am again kind of fighting for the justice to the city, to open the city for the artists.

You invest into the future, and that's how young people become human in best sense of it - through the great experience of listening a Müller symphony or to see a great play by Tennessee Williams, experience something in a ballet, in a film.

A theater is such a revealing form of art, such a transparent and good actors, they're such powerful individuals. I always kind of dreamt that one day I will open my mouth on stage.

You cannot dance physically certain things. But look at tango dancers or flamenco or Japanese classical theater. You can, if you're smart enough and you collaborate with the right choreographers, you could really dance your age.

I read Russian literature a lot.

Acting is not my language at all.

I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.

I don't try to dance better than anybody but myself.

Running a company is pretty demanding.

I cannot stand authority.

You can be totally involved, you could admire just the shape of or you could be totally emotionally mushed up into the dance.

He is a male butterfly without the wings - the same kind of grace of a very young horse, so angular.

What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance.

Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun.

People dance at any age.

Dancing is my obsession. My life.