MOTION IN POETRY
Ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov brings to life the words of his beloved friend, writer Joseph Brodsky,
As a dazzling Cold War-era Soviet ballet star he leapt to freedom from a Toronto stage. Now, almost 44 years later, Mikhail Baryshnikov, hailed as one of the greatest male dancers ever, makes one of his rare returns to Toronto in Brodsky/Baryshnikov, an intensely personal performance inspired by his long friendship with the exiled Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.
To avoid potential disappointment, Baryshnikov is quick to emphasize that he will not be dancing so much as evoking the spirit of Brodsky’s poetry.
“I can draw on my dance background, but this is more body language than dance,” Baryshnikov says. “Some of it is totally set, some improvised; little bridges between the poems, preludes and postscripts, but not illustrations. There is motion in poetry and this is a poetic journey, a kind of personal conversation.”
During the 90-minute performance Baryshnikov, either live or in recorded form, recites a selection of Brodsky’s poems, from the late1950s on. Occasionally, Brodsky is also heard reading from his work. It’s all delivered in Russian; partly because the original rhyming verse has a musical impulse not easily conveyed in former Brodsky student Jamey Gambrell’s English translation, projected in surtitles.
Even when he is simply reading, Baryshnikov’s body registers physical responses that speak to his own relationship to the words and their author.
The two first met soon after Baryshnikov’s headline-making defection. The dancer had already discovered Brodsky’s poetry while still a student at the famed Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in Leningrad, today’s Saint Petersburg.
While not overtly political, the Jewish Brodsky’s poetry was deemed subversive and officially banned. He was assigned to a mental institution then charged with “social parasit- ism” and sentenced to five years in an Arctic labour camp. Brodsky was effectively forced to leave his homeland in 1972, settling in the United States.
From their first meeting, the two men became fast friends, communicating on a regular, sometimes daily basis right up to Brodsky’s death 22 years later. Brodsky nicknamed Baryshnikov “Mouse,” a phonetical play in Russian on the dancer’s familiar name, Misha.
Sometimes, Brodsky would have Baryshnikov recite his work.
“Poetry needs to be read out loud and Joseph, who hated the way some actors did it, said he liked the way I read.”
As someone initially reared in an art form as intense and even blinkered as classical ballet, the evolution of Baryshnikov’s long performing career is unsurpassed in ambition, accomplishment and scope.
As a ballet dancer Baryshnikov was without peer. He made athletic virtuosity seem effortless and imbued even the showiest choreography with a sense of purpose and significance. As artistic director of American Ballet Theatre from 1980 to ’89, Baryshnikov broadened the company’s repertoire, reflecting his own interest in modern dance and contemporary choreography, and nurtured a new generation of dancers.
With his days as a ballet prince be- hind him, in 1990 Baryshnikov cofounded a contemporary dance company with choreographer Mark Morris and remained as director until 2002. Three years later, he opened the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan’s Midtown West as a sanctuary for emerging and established dance artists to experiment and innovate.
Baryshnikov was always a compelling dance-actor, but not just on the ballet stage. He received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his screen debut as “that randy Russian bastard” Yuri Kopeikine in The Turning Point, Herbert Ross’s 1977 ballet-world-based hit movie. Baryshnikov explored a more challenging acting role in a 1989 theatrical version of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Concurrently with Brodsky/Baryshnikov, he has been touring in another one-man show, Robert Wilson’s Letter to a Man, based on the diary of legendary Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. And, of course, Sex and the City’s gazillions of fans will remember Baryshnikov as Aleksandr Petrovsky, the love interest for Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in the final 2003-’04 season of the hit HBO television series.
The idea for Brodsky/Baryshnikov — which plays a sold-out run Wednesday to Sunday at the Winter Garden Theatre — came from renowned Latvian stage director Alvis Hermanis, for the past two decades head of the New Riga Theatre.
Says Hermanis: “Knowing Brod- sky’s work and also that the two were very close friends, I was curious. It’s not that usual; a great poet and a great ballet dancer. But I also remembered how when reading Brodsky it was as if my whole body was reacting. It was often very sensual and had a strong physiological impact.” Baryshnikov was wary. “Of course I knew of Alvis’s work as a director of theatre and opera, but initially I was skeptical. Then we spent some days together reading Brodsky and he finally convinced me.”
Brodsky/Baryshnikov, arriving in Canada thanks to Russian expatriate Svetlana Dvoretskaia’s Torontobased Show One Productions and Luminato, had its premiere in Riga, Baryshnikov’s birthplace and childhood home, in October 2015. It was since toured internationally.
Performing poems that dig deep into life’s tumult would be challenging enough. When they come from a dear friend, the experience can be draining.
“It is exhausting,” Baryshnikov freely admits. “Some nights you feel it will never end. And it can be so emotional. There are moments I almost choke up.”
The last time Baryshnikov and Brodsky spoke was when the poet called to wish him happy birthday on Jan. 27, 1996. The next day, Brodsky died. As Baryshnikov turns 70 this Jan. 27, memories of that final conversation will surely come flooding in.