Top 100 Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotes
#1. Perfection is a theory. You cannot be a perfect human being, perfect artist. You cannot be a perfect husband, you cannot be a perfect father probably and probably I am not. But go through your daily routine with hope you will be a little better in all respects, and do something meaningful
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#2. Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#3. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#4. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#6. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#7. I think art education, especially in this country, which government pretty much ignores, is so important for young people.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#9. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#11. 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?'
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#12. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#13. Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum, every movement on stage, in words is virtually impossible.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#15. You can be totally involved, you could admire just the shape of or you could be totally emotionally mushed up into the dance.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#16. Be. Good. To yourself, to other people, to everything you do. It's a norm of life by which people should try to live. Don't waste time. Be interesting and interested.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#17. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#18. I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#19. In '74 it was really a very gloomy atmosphere, I would say, to put it mildly.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#22. Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#23. You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#24. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#25. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#26. Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries - the body has a stronger memory than your mind.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#27. What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#28. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#30. My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#31. When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#32. I want to do exactly what I want to do. I'd rather gamble on the box office than beg for a grant.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#35. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#36. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#37. Divinity of art, it's such a mystery. How to convince people that no matter how much money you can spend on education and art education especially, that it implants, it directs a young person for the rest of their lives, and always in the most humane and positive and dignified manner.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#38. In any art form, in Hollywood or in music, there is a handful of people who really, you know, move the envelope.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#39. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#41. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#43. No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#44. It doesn't matter how high you lift your leg. The technique is about transparency, simplicity, making an earnest attempt.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#45. Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#46. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#48. I gave away a lot of works for benefits and then people would also give me back.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#49. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#51. I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#52. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#54. We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#56. I want to see people dance, and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for their pasta.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#57. Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#60. The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#61. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#62. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#63. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#64. When I'm alone, I work sometimes with music, sometimes without and sometimes just listening to NPR.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#65. I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#67. I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#68. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#69. I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#70. I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#72. Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#75. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#76. He is a male butterfly without the wings - the same kind of grace of a very young horse, so angular.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#77. I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#78. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#79. I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#80. I get speeding ticket like everybody else. If the restaurant is full I'm waiting in line like everybody else.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#82. The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#83. I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world ... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines ... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#84. You cannot be happy with your family while being personally unhappy with your work. It's a Catch-22 kind of thing.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#85. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#88. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#90. 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!
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#92. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#93. 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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#94. I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#97. Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#99. People of art should never get married and have children, because it's a selfish experience.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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