Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotes
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My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.
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I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people.
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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.
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No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.
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When a dancer comes onstage, he is not just a blank slate that the choreographer has written on. Behind him he has all the decisions he has made in life. Each time, he has chosen, and in what he is onstage, you see the result of those choices. You are looking at the person he is, and the person who, at this point, he cannot help but be Exceptional dancers, in my experience, are also exceptional people, people with an attitude toward life, a kind of quest, and an internal quality. They know who they are, and they show this to you, willingly.
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I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.
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You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.
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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.
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If your only dance experience is the Nutcracker, it will be a shock; hopefully shocking in a good way.
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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.
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You invest into the future, and that's how young people become human in best sense of it - through the great experience of listening a Müller symphony or to see a great play by Tennessee Williams, experience something in a ballet, in a film.
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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.
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He Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.
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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.
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The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.
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Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.
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Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun.
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I am teaching more. That is what I do best.
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Dancing is my obsession. My life.
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I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.
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People dance at any age.
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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.
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I gave away a lot of works for benefits and then people would also give me back.
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I cannot stand authority.