Mikhail Baryshnikov quotes

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself. (Mikhail Baryshnikov)
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
Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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
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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Dancing is my obsession. My life.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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
Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
It's what's left in life, to work with interesting people.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
I think art education, especially in this country, which government pretty much ignores, is so important for young people. (Mikhail Baryshnikov)
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
I am not the first straight dancer or the last.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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
I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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
The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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)
To walk across the street is a risk.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Working is living to me.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
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.
Mikhail Baryshnikov