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Not Baryshnikov. The school is very demanding, the students working from 9 in the morning to 10 at night. Misha studied fencing, makeup, French, Russian and Western literature as well as classical dancing. The Kirov is famous for its instruction in acting, particularly mime. Still, it is not solely or even largely this grounding that makes Baryshnikov grateful for his school years. What made them unique was Pushkin's presence.
"I was his last pupil. I will never find the kind of pedagogue I had in Pushkin," he says. "He was such a pure and simple character that it is hard to talk about him in simple words. He was like somebody who stepped out of an icon. Pushkin had an ability to infect you with such a love for dance that you almost became obsessed with it. It is almost like a disease." Like all great teachers, he had an inspired ability to simplify. Says Baryshnikov: "He taught the most logical series of steps and movements that I have ever seen."
Baryshnikov entered the company at the end of his third year of study—and not as a humble member of the corps. He started as a soloist, and in his first week danced the peasant pas de deux in Giselle. Visiting dancers and critics from abroad noticed him at once, and word began spreading in the West that the Kirov had a new discovery. By 1970, when he was 22, Baryshnikov was enjoying his first Western triumph in London. A little later he was suffering the first signs of official disapproval back home. His preference for clothes—and chicks—from the West had been duly noted, and he believed that his mail was being censored. He might have tolerated such minor harassments, but artistic confinement was another matter. Like Nureyev and one of his current partners, Natalia Makarova, he began to need the challenge of new choreographic ideas. That was the main reason for self-exile from Russia. "We had to come to America," he says, "because the standards of dancing are the highest and the choreography beyond anywhere else."
He is at pains to point out that his was not a political defection: "If only the Kirov had permitted me to perform with other companies in the West. If only they had asked foreign choreographers to compose works for us in which the Western contemporary approach to ballet is being explored." The actual escape in Toronto was typically daring. Baryshnikov could have walked out of his hotel room. Instead, he waited until after his last performance, then dashed through a crowd of well-wishers. He was nearly run over but made it safely to a waiting car a couple of blocks away.