Four Who Brought Talent Reveling in Freedom, They Enrich the Land with Their Creative Gusto a Dancer Seeks Choice and Finds

By Martha Duffy

It was just eleven years ago that Mikhail Baryshnikov slipped away from a touring troupe of Soviet dancers in Canada for a new life in the West. He was instantly acclaimed as a once-in-a-lifetime performer of genius. Who could miss his radiant classicism, his ardent romantic style, his deportment as a diffident young god? Never presenting himself on- or off-stage as "a star," he had a solitary air that his huge blue eyes only underscored. In fact he was starting out with only schoolboy French, no English, no clear idea of where to settle or which dance company to join.

Today his style is still pure, and his commitment to ballet as strong. But his life has fleshed out. For one thing, he has embraced America with gusto. Now he runs his own company, American Ballet Theater. He speaks bravura English, full of vivid slang and the silly puns that Russians seem to love. "Let's see, how American am I?" he asks. "Well, I'm not a Yankee fan or a Forty-Niner, and I don't like Coca-Cola or pink shirts. But I love television, fast cars and corn. That's pretty American."

Baryshnikov left the cosseted life at Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, where artistic challenges were rare and cultural politics strangulating. "I didn't have the patience, and I'm not smart enough," he says. "I love that country and those people, but I am an individualist, and there it is a crime."

If freedom means choice, then Baryshnikov reveled in it, pursuing myriad options. He has worked with a dozen or so choreographers. With Twyla Tharp's brilliant Push Comes to Shove (1976), his flair for comedy burst out. In 1977 he became a Hollywood star, playing a famous dancer in The Turning Point. (Another film, White Nights, will be released at Christmas.) The lorn Petrouchka began to seem like a Slavic Jimmy Cagney.

Home turned out to be New York City, a haven for someone with Baryshnikov's quick, efficient intelligence. "It's mesmerizing to be here," he says. "The speed, every day's information, even the anger of the place." When he became artistic director at A.B.T. nearly five years ago, he dove into a Sargasso Sea of arts administration and emergency fund raising. He has survived and has strengthened the troupe. "It's been tough but worth it," he says. "I've seen all the existing companies, including the Russian ones, and I am very proud."

At 37, he appears to be relaxing his pace a bit. Says a friend who has known him since 1975: "This is one immigrant who took immigration very seriously." He has applied for American citizenship and has no thoughts of returning to the Soviet Union. "I have an American child," he says, speaking of Shura, 4, his daughter with Actress Jessica Lange. "It still amazes me that she talks without a Russian accent. I thought it was genetic."