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As he attempts to reassemble his life, he has at least found comforting surrogate parents in the U.S. They are Mrs. Saunder and Howard Oilman, board chairman of the Oilman Paper Co. A major patron of music and dance, Oilman has lent Baryshnikov a New York penthouse rent-free. Saunder and Oilman have introduced him to musicians like Cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch and Conductor Leonard Bernstein. Baryshnikov has plunged eagerly into an investigation of American culture. He spends his spare time at plays, operas and especially movies. He is a considerable student of television, whether afternoon cartoons or old movies on the late show (he has worked up imitations of Humphrey Bogart's "Hello, sweetheart" and any number of commercial pitchmen). In a more Russian vein, he has begun reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose books fill him with "pain and awe," according to Mrs. Saunder.
At work he is well liked personally, but there are some problems at A.B.T. American dancers cannot help resenting the publicity that Russians seem to get effortlessly. They feel that newcomers are taking roles that they, the company's veterans, have been working toward for years. "Americans have nothing to sell but their dancing," says Cynthia Gregory, 28. "I just feel helpless. No matter how well we dance, we never get that kind of recognition." Ted Kivitt, 32, who has shared a dressing room with Baryshnikov at Manhattan's primitive City Center, says: "The timing has been bad for me. It was my time for getting recognition. It is like taking ten giant steps backward." Adds Deborah Dobson, 24: "We are all starting to get a little inhibited. When you are out there onstage and you are not a star, you feel almost like apologizing."
Baryshnikov has tried to make friends in the company by passing on as much as he can of his peerless training to beginning performers, by teaching his steps to young stars like Fernando Bujones, 20, or simply by breaking rehearsal tension with a rendition of show tunes on the grand piano.
Still, the uniqueness of his talent is bound to set him apart. After he has created a full life for himself here, his sudden shifts in mood may be less noticeable. His abrupt withdrawals from company and into himself may disappear.
He is loosening up. The stereo rig blares, though Misha may interrupt it to recite the Russian poetry — Pasternak, Mandelstam, Pushkin — he loves. Records of Florence Foster Jenkins' haywire coloratura are another new enthusiasm. He enjoyed a recent trip to Paris because "there, people have more time than in New York." He is absorbing the American pace, however. When Gelsey Kirkland stalled at a recent photo session, he nudged her with "Let's go, Gelsey, let's go."
It is hard to imagine him slowing down, easing off. "To relax is difficult for me. I know it is important to have a sensible schedule and not to exaggerate, but I am like a horse used to pulling a great load. I can't begin to think what would happen if I stopped dancing. I have to squelch those thoughts, drive them down. The stage is a form of opium for me — a psychological feeling I must have, I cannot be without."