After persuading Mikhail Baryshnikov to play the beetle in his 1989 Broadway production of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Steven Berkoff wrote: "What a coup, to have such a legend grace my production!" It was Baryshnikov's first foray into acting. He was then director of the American Ballet Theatre and at the height of his fame as a performer. But he had reached the vulnerable age of 40, when ballet dancers must move on to something less technically demanding if they are to carry on performing.
"Never was anyone so dedicated," Berkoff wrote of the dancer who sat, silent and composed, observing with intense concentration while the rest of the company were put through their paces. In rehearsal, Baryshnikov often asked them if they would mind repeating a section. For actors, there is not quite the same endless repetition in search of perfection as there is for dancers. But they were proud to be working with "the legend" and, though exhausted, could do little other than smile through gritted teeth.
Ballet is no career for wimps. Unlike actors, dancers will already have done hours of workouts by the time the curtain goes up. Such physical exertion makes for impressive stamina, something that Baryshnikov had to acquire, even in childhood. Perhaps his difficult early life inspired his obsessive drive to succeed at whatever he turned his hand to.
He was born in Riga in 1948. His father, a Stalinist, was by all accounts cold and remote. His mother committed suicide when he was a teenager. In 1997, he returned to Riga for the first time. He visited his mother's grave and danced in the city's small opera house, where he dedicated his solo programme to her memory. Understandably, he was not eager to reminisce about his early life. "As someone put it," he said in an early interview, "there is nothing more horrifying than childhood." He did, however, recall giving his first performance there as a 12-year-old, sitting with his back to the audience playing an Arab boy, a brown stocking with a hole cut in it over his head in order to save make-up.
Baryshnikov trained at the Kirov ballet school and became a member of the company, in which he rose to fame. At 5ft 7ins, he was not a natural candidate for classical ballet. Male dancers are ideally taller than their female partners. "It was upsetting to me that I didn't have that kind of physical presence," he told one journalist, and went on to say that he wanted to look ". . . not like some strange little guy, trying to pull this big number off".
But audiences never noticed Baryshnikov's lack of height. Aside from his bravura dancing, women especially were drawn to his louche physical charm, his piercing blue eyes and his face like a sad angel. He also had that dangerous air of the self- sufficient loner.
In 1974, frustrated by the restrictions and lack of creative openings in Soviet ballet, he defected to the west. "I am an individualist," he declared, "and there it is a crime." A decade later, he starred alongside that other gorgeous Russian, Helen Mirren, in the film White Nights. It was the story of a ballet star who defects to the west only to be accidentally stranded back in the USSR as a result of a plane crash. There he meets an American defector to the Soviet Union - the jazz dancer Gregory Hines. In their duet - one of the highlights of the film - Baryshnikov, incredibly, manages to beat Hines at his own game.
During the late 1970s, Baryshnikov electrified audiences as a principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, and followed this with ten years as the company's artistic director. In the end, though, the demands of being a civil servant became too burdensome, and in 1990 he quit. He later confessed that ballet had never been his exclusive passion. "People say classical ballet is the most refined and difficult thing to conquer. But for me . . . there was dance behind, in front, beside and about." The logical step was to move into contemporary dance. "It's less mannered, more democratic, more transparent and, from my point of view, closer to the hearts of people today." The world's best contemporary choreographers lined up to create work for him. One that suited him perfectly was Twyla Tharp's Push Come to Shove, in which he played an outsider yearning to be accepted yet, at heart, happiest on the outside.
In 1990, he co-founded the White Oak Dance Project with the choreographer Mark Morris. "We don't have any particular philosophy," he said of the company. "We're all mature dancers and we are all more involved with the everyday particulars of the company than most dancers might expect to be. We discuss around a table how long we want to work, what we want to do, where we want to go and how many performances we want to dance. Everybody has a decision." The project resulted in a decade of success, but time was creeping on, bringing with it the fear of fading powers.
"I set a standard for myself," he said. "And once I stop reaching that standard, I can't - I won't - allow myself to do it." Journalists had started asking questions about retirement. But technical prowess is only one aspect of performance; experience can be more intriguing than the bland perfection of youth. These days Baryshnikov, in his early fifties, seems more insouciant than he once was, and those who ask if he's thinking of putting on his carpet slippers are likely to get a brisk answer. Having spent most of his life politely answering the usual trivial questions put to celebrities, Baryshnikov now speaks his mind. To one reporter who probed into his private life, he replied: "I want to see people dance and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for pasta." To another who asked how many dogs he had, he said: "You also want me to give out my checking account number?"
Like all great artists, Baryshnikov remains driven and continues to explore new avenues. He seems to enjoy the creative process almost more than the finished product. Despite his success, he has never overcome stage fright - which perhaps shouldn't surprise us, given that so much more is expected of him than most performers. "I'm a much better dancer in the studio than on stage," he says. "I have more fun in the studio. It's the freedom, the learning, doing the last stages of a work." This summer, he will open the Baryshnikov Arts Centre in New York. Meanwhile, he has taken to the road with his programme "Solos With Piano or not . . .", which is at London's Barbican Theatre this month.
Baryshnikov has dabbled in a number of sidelines, including Misha perfume and Baryshnikov Bodywear, and is now appearing in Sex and the City. I recently found myself tuning in to the programme for the first time, just to see how he comes across as the show's new love interest. There he went, strolling through Central Park with his hands in his pockets, still boyish after all these years, still with a roguish twinkle in his eye. "Chapeau!" as they say in France. Hats off to you, Misha. It's worth sitting through 30 minutes of tedious girltalk just to see you.
"Solos With Piano or not . . ." is at the Barbican Theatre, London EC2 (0845 120 7550) from 17 to 22 February
Wendy Buonaventura is a dancer and choreographer
