Baryshnikov at the Turning Point

“I’m just a bottle of nerves,” sighs Mikhail Baryshnikov.

The man regarded by many as the finest danseur in the world speaks his own special language. Fluent, slightly disjointed and disarmingly giddy, it fuses the King’s English and street-smart slang with the structures and strictures of Mother Russia.

The tone emerges breathy, light textured, not unlike that of a good lyric-tenor saving his voice between performances. Baryshnikov is indeed between performances.

He gave two yesterday and will begin another in a couple of hours. Before the week is out he will have done eight.

The performances, each lasting 95 uninterrupted minutes, require a great deal of posing, contorting, creeping, jerking, falling, stretching and flipping, not to mention hanging upside down on the bars of a jungle-gym that functions as a set. The performances also require a great deal of talking.

Baryshnikov-- Misha even to those who don’t happen to be his friends--isn’t on tour with American Ballet Theatre, the company that he serves as artistic director. He isn’t dancing the central role in one of those modern ballets designed to accommodate his injury-scarred limbs and still-charismatic persona. He certainly isn’t directing a ballet production--though he calls his “Swan Lake” “a work in progress”--and he isn’t taking another stab at television or film.

This is a new Misha, a new star at 41. Fourteen years after his defection from the Soviet Union, he has ventured the title role in an unaccustomed saga. Call it Baryshnikov on Broadway. Look at his name on the marquee at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

For several weeks now, he has been playing a beetle. He has assumed the identity of the victim who wakes up one morning to discover himself transformed as a gigantic bug. The nightmare vehicle is Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” as adapted and directed by Steven Berkoff.

The New York press found the play problematic. The notices for the protagonist, however, ranged from respectful to ecstatic.

Box-office records are being broken. Even without much of an endorsement from the New York Times, Misha and Kafka--probably in that order--are attracting audiences that fill well over 90% of the 1,100-seat house. The advance sale before the March 6 opening totaled $1.4 million.

Baryshnikov greets a visitor in his Spartan office in the ancient and bedraggled building downtown that houses American Ballet Theatre. He wears a casual shirt and jeans, exudes cordiality in the face of a frantic schedule, tries to conceal the fact that his eye is on the clock. He wants to take his daily ballet class before going off to the theater.

“Being an actor is very difficult,” he proclaims with a trace of self-mockery. “It takes so much concentration, and the play is so long.”

The bug is off and talking.

“There is no intermission during which one can pull oneself together. This is not like dancing. Different parts of the brain are involved.”

Baryshnikov does not view his theatrical debut as a genuine turning point. At least he says he doesn’t.

“I knew from the start that this would be a wonderful experience for me. I am not looking for another career. It is too late to start anything serious. I am very much attached to ABT. Still. . . .”

The voice evaporates. The notoriously moody divo of the dance says he is very happy in his brave new world.

“This,” he explains, “is very special. The theater gives me enormous satisfaction. Even when I am terribly tired, I can’t wait to get back. I am very much hooked.”

This doesn’t mean, however, that he is complacent. Complacency isn’t Baryshnikov’s forte.

“My performance will get better, I know. I am just scratching the surface. There are still problems of depth, of delivery, of subtlety. I still don’t have a sense of how my voice projects, whether it really reaches the balcony.

“Sometimes I think the performance works. Sometimes not. Every time is different.”

He remains a stranger, he says, in a formidable paradise.

“Actors and dancers do not take the same choices. At first I panicked. The problem is a lack of proper training. I told myself I was trying to do too much, that I was trying something stupid. Then I realized that these were normal insecurities.

“There is lots of craziness here. Everyone is still tuning his performance, even the others, and they are experienced actors. But they are working for the pleasure of acting. They know what they are doing. I try to go with the stream.

“I am not as flexible with English. If they forget a line, they can ad-lib on the spot. I can’t do that.”

Having seen the performance, one suspects the hero doth protest too much.

“It is better now,” he admits under pressure. “It took weeks and weeks of work, of rehearsals, of special work with voice teachers. My voice has dropped an octave down.”

The theatrical challenge seems surprisingly daunting for an artist who has conquered the considerable rigors of “Giselle,” “Don Quixote” and “Push Comes to Shove.”

“One doesn’t do eight ‘Giselles’ in a week,” he counters. “One couldn’t.

“This is more detailed work. One is naked up there. One can actually see the audience, and the audience is very close. There is nowhere to crawl. It is unnerving. There is no orchestra pit between us and those out front. We have no crutches. There is no music to lean upon.”

The physical strains of his latest challenge create unfamiliar problems. “The play is hard on the back. The same pose must be sustained for a long time. But the most difficult part involves speaking all those lines.”

Baryshnikov becomes guarded when confronted with an uncomfortable subject: the generally negative review in the New York Times. In fact, he groans and covers his eyes. An observer can’t quite be sure that this is mock pain.

“I did not read the review,” he insists.

Pause.

“You won’t believe this, but I tried not to read any reviews yet. There was so much emotion backstage that I went to the second performance shaking.”

Pause.

“Then I stopped. This is nonsense, I told myself. I believe in this director. I can’t allow anything foreign to enter my performance now. That’s the way it goes. It is upsetting, but we have to go on.

“Of course the (New York) Times review affected the company morale as a whole. It is difficult enough to go on the stage without this problem. I don’t want to hear about the review. I will read it later, when we have a break.”

Later, in this case, means the period between May 6 and June 12. At that time, the run will be suspended so that Baryshnikov can concentrate on the Ballet Theatre season at the Metropolitan Opera House. He is the only member of the “Metamorphosis” cast who performs without a cover or understudy.

Several critics, including the dreaded observer from the New York Times, thought they detected Marxist overtones in Berkoff’s interpretation of the Kafka story. Baryshnikov refuses to validate any such theory. He shudders a rhetorical rejection.

“What do they know about Marxism?”

Subject closed.

And what do critics know about the physical demands of a role like this? The expert at the New Yorker speculated that none of the feats required of Baryshnikov “are so difficult that they could not have been executed by any reasonably nimble actor.”

Baryshnikov’s grin at the reference lends new meaning to the concept of wryness.

“I think some actors could do it.”

Roman Polanski did it in Paris. It was Polanski’s performance, in fact, that got Baryshnikov interested in the project.

“Roman was wonderful. He did it differently. I do more movement than he did,” Baryshnikov adds, “but not much more. The sets and costumes for the two productions are the same, but the regie is a bit different. Here it is very stylized.”

The director devised the basic choreography for the man-turned-bug. Baryshnikov provided crucial expansion and embellishment.

“Steven Berkoff presented his plan to me. I added some movements and gestures.”

Despite all the blood, sweat, tears, backaches and ink blots occasioned by this beetlemania, Baryshnikov claims to harbor no regrets.

“Everything is worth it. I have learned so much. I can apply what I have learned to other things. This has opened doors for me.”

And what if one of those doors were to lead to another play?

Baryshnikov’s body language suggests that this is the stupidest question ever to assault human ear. “I would love to do it again.” He stresses the verb.

One can take Baryshnikov out of Ballet Theatre, but, he says, one can’t take Ballet Theatre out of Baryshnikov. Not even when Broadway beckons.

“I spend as much time in this office as ever. I spend as much time in the studio as before. Today I spent two hours on the phone talking to my people (on tour).

“ABT is my family. It is frustrating when a dancer makes a debut in a role. I want to be there. But I have a good team now. The productions work without me.”

Does he wear too many hats?

“I know I wear many hats--so many hats. That makes life interesting.”

Sporadically, he has tried on a Hollywood hat. The fit wasn’t perfect. “The Turning Point” won him an Oscar nomination, he has said, “for playing a Russian dancer from the moon.” The encores, “White Nights” and “Dancers,” proved unworthy of his talent.

In the face of retirement rumors, he asserts that he still dances, and still intends to dance.

“I happen to be in good shape right now. My knee is OK. I am working a bit with Martha Graham. We are going to do a gala benefit together in June for our schools. She’s experimenting.”

Many of his old roles no longer interest him. “I don’t want to dance the things that I can’t do as well as I used to. The big bravura ballets like ‘Don Q.’ aren’t for me now. I would rather take another chance and do something that stretches me.

“ ‘What can I do new?’ That is what I always ask. I am talking to Mark Morris. I would like to work again with Jerry Robbins. I am always talking to Twyla (Tharp). We’ll do something together if the knee allows.”

Does that mean we won’t ever get to see him as Romeo?

“I am too old,” he lies. “I look in the mirror, and it tells me no.”

Does that mean he won’t adorn his own production of “Swan Lake”?

He yawns.

What about “Giselle”?

“Well,” he hedges, “that may still be possible. In ‘Giselle’ perhaps I can show a new layer of myself.”

He has mixed feelings about the possibility of showing the new layer to Russia.

“We have not signed anything yet, but it looks like the company will go there at the end of November for Sarah Caldwell’s exchange festival. Funny enough, I don’t feel sentimental about this at all. I am excited for the company, not for me. I am almost ashamed to say this.

“It was different for Natasha (Makarova) when she went back. She hadn’t seen her mother in 17 years. I am very happy for her, thrilled. For myself I feel very cool.”

In the meantime, Baryshnikov can concentrate any available balletic heat on his “Swan Lake.”

“There are a few unfinished situations with the set,” he admits. “There are still some miscalculations. We needed more time to work just with the scenery and the lights before the opening in Orange County.

“But I had a good time doing it. I am happy about the way it came out. It was like pumping iron mentally. After ‘Cinderella,’ this was very difficult for me. ‘Cinderella’ was sort of flop. It didn’t help my confidence.

“The company is getting there. It will be better in a couple of years.”

Although he couldn’t attend, he wasn’t too happy about the recent Los Angeles performances in which guest stars from the Kirov--his alma mater--refused to adapt themselves to his production concept. They even rejected the appropriate costumes.

“It is annoying,” he says, “that they couldn’t be more mature. They are very infantile in terms of their dependency on their own coaches. They are too small-minded to take chances.

“The ballerina (Altynai Assylmuratova) said she was afraid, that she trembled like a little girl. She and her partner (Konstantin Zaklinsky) had had enough time to prepare my version, but I didn’t want to make them doubly nervous by insisting. So I said, ‘Go ahead, do it your way.’ ”

Baryshnikov is pleased that the next ABT season in Los Angeles will not take place in the vast, ungainly and inhospitable spaces of Shrine Auditorium.

“Finally,” he beams, “we can return to the Music Center. Enough already with the Shrine. It was horrible there. That is finished, over.”

Two books have recently expanded the already generous Baryshnikov bibliography. He expresses resigned approval of one.

“ ‘Private View’ by John Fraser I read after it was printed. Everything is true. I am embarrassed about a few passages. But I made a deal and allowed him into my life. Now I pay the bitter price. It is OK.”

And the other book?

“What other book?”

It is titled “Misha: The Mikhail Baryshnikov Story.” The author is Barbara Aria, identified on the dust jacket as “a freelance writer currently living in New York.” Her slender volume, published by St. Martin’s, sells for $16.95 and tells recycled tales.

“I have no idea about that,” says Baryshnikov. “I did not talk to her. I can’t imagine what is in the book.”

The quizzical biographee begins to fidget. He really doesn’t enjoy all this offstage attention. He rises politely, paces a bit. It is time for the barre, almost time for the bug.