“What happened was that I found myself at an artistic crossroad, and every artist must train himself to self-evaluate at such moments. By the time I reached Toronto I had got myself into a tremendous emotional state. I realized finally that if I didn’t take advantage of all the opportunities that came my way and that I felt capable of, I would remain unsatisfied for the rest of my life.” — Mikhail Baryshnikov, on his reasons for defecting from the Soviet Union, July 1974
Soviet dance troupes travelling the world under the banner of the Bolshoi Ballet were having a rough time in June 1974. A long engagement in London, England, faced a boycott from the likes of Judi Dench, Laurence Olivier, and Harold Pinter over the Soviet government’s refusal to allow former Kirov Ballet dancers Valery and Galina Panov to emigrate to Israel. In Toronto, another Kirov alumnus who received glowing reviews from Canadian critics, Mikhail Baryshnikov, had decided the time was right to defect.
Though the dance company that travelled across Canada in mid-1974 was promoted as the Bolshoi Ballet, it was a mixed collection of lower-rank performers boosted by two Kirov Ballet stars (Baryshnikov and Irina Kolpakova). The program consisted of pieces from several ballets, including Faust and Swan Lake, an approach many critics felt was too fragmented.
The tour began at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on June 13 and made stops across the country over the next month. Throughout the tour, the troupe faced protests from a range of groups angry over the imprisonment of Jewish dissidents in the Soviet Union and the treatment of the Panovs, who had been expelled from the Kirov two years earlier. According to one source, it was during a stop in Montreal that Baryshnikov began musing about defecting; he asked a friend how it might be done. Ultimately, it was determined that the best place to escape would be Toronto, where the troupe was scheduled to perform at the O’Keefe Centre (now Meridian Hall) from June 24 to 29.
Ad for the tour's stop in Vancouver from the June 22, 1974, edition of the Vancouver Sun.
Reviewing the troupe’s Toronto opener, the Toronto Star’s Urjo Kareda praised Baryshnikov and Kolpakova for their performance of a pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty but deemed the rest of the company “bargain-basement.” The next night, while most of the audience cheered their performance, Baryshnikov and Kolpakova were booed by protestors in the audience over the Panovs. (It’s possible the protests on both sides of the Atlantic finally had some impact, as the Panovs received permission to leave that week for Israel.)
Over at the Globe and Mail’s Front Street office, dance critic John Fraser was about to write his review; he planned to praise Baryshnikov and criticize the other dancers. As he sat down, he received a message indicating that it was “extremely urgent” that he contact Trish Barnes, whose husband, Clive, was the New York Times’s dance critic. Though his deadline was only an hour away, curiosity drove Fraser to make the call.
After verifying that Fraser couldn’t speak Russian, Barnes told him that it was “absolutely critical” that he pass on a message to Baryshnikov that she’d failed to share with the dancer in Montreal. He was told to write down a New York phone number and get Baryshnikov to call it. Fraser noticed that her voice grew more authoritative even as she refused to confirm whether a defection was planned. Barnes gave him the names of three of Baryshnikov’s friends and said the dancer must reach out to them. “Just remember the names,” she told him. “And the phone number. And do be very careful. There may be some nasty people around him.”
“Now, just try to write a review in 30 minutes after a conversation like that,” Fraser later recalled.
National Arts Awards 2005: Mikhail Baryshnikov
In that review, published on June 26, Fraser noted that Baryshnikov’s performance in an excerpt from Don Quixote had been “12 minutes which redeemed the previous 90.” Fraser felt that “he provided the very definition of his art which had remained noticeably unarticulated by most of the members of the Bolshoi.”
Fraser decided to act quickly, as it was possible the troupe’s touring artistic director, Alexander Lapauri, might not allow anyone to talk to him once the negative review had been published. Fraser sensed that his best opportunity would be a post-performance reception in the foyer of the O’Keefe Centre. His plan was to write the phone number on a sticker, place it on his ring, then shake hands with Baryshnikov with the sticker facing outward so that it would stick to the dancer’s palm.
Photos of Christina Berlin, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Jim Peterson from the July 4, 1974, edition of the Toronto Star.
He arrived as the party was in full swing and noticed that Baryshnikov appeared “tired, bored, and frustrated,” though Fraser came to learn this was not an unusual expression for the dancer when he was stuck at such events. Fraser used a Canadian senator’s communication problems with the conductor as an excuse to lure Lapauri away from Baryshnikov. After spending a few moments trying to work out which language would work for both of them, they settled on broken French. Fraser mentioned the three names he’d been told to pass along. “His face lit up with the most wonderful amazed smile,” Fraser observed.
But there was a hitch: the sticker had attached itself too well to Fraser’s ring. When he got it off, the number was nearly unreadable, although Fraser could just make it out. The men scrambled to find a pencil — Baryshnikov managed to scribble down the number just before Lapauri and National Ballet founder Celia Franca approached the table.
Plans for the defection were set in motion. Baryshnikov was put in contact with Toronto lawyer Jim Peterson (the brother of future Ontario premier David Peterson and later a federal cabinet minister under Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin). Peterson contacted federal immigration officials on June 27. Baryshnikov wrote a letter to Kolpakova that explained his decision.
Mikhail Baryshnikov (stock footage / archival footage)
While the final performance was taking place on June 29, Tim Stewart was supposed to wait in a car outside the Tom Jones Steak House near the King Edward Hotel, prepared to whisk Baryshnikov away afterwards. Problems arose, though, when the performance was delayed 15 minutes due to curtain issues. When the show was over, Baryshnikov received numerous curtain calls. As time dragged on, the escape team grew nervous. Once he was finally off the stage, Baryshnikov was told by a KGB minder that he had to leave immediately with the rest of the company for a civic reception.
A group of autograph seekers saved the day: they inadvertently blocked a clear passage to the two vehicles waiting for the troupe, giving Baryshnikov the opportunity he needed. “He moved slowly through the people, trying to make his way to the edge of the sidewalk,” the Globe and Mail reported. “As he neared the waiting cars, he made a sudden turn and headed up the darkened street at almost a run.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov and American ballerina Gelsey Kirkland (Maclean's, January 1975); Baryshnikov and Christina Berlin. (New York Daily News, July 12, 1974)
Several troupe members called out his name, but he ran north through a parking lot, where he met a contact at the corner of Wellington Street and Leader Lane before heading up to the getaway car. Nobody appeared to follow them up Church Street while they were en route to a rendezvous house. Baryshnikov switched to another car, where his friend Christina Berlin was waiting (the two had met on a trip to London in 1970, and the press speculated they were in a relationship). They were then driven up to Stewart’s family farm in Caledon. Once there, everyone relaxed with food supplied by the Petersons. Several phone calls and complex negotiations were required to get the King Edward Hotel to agree to seal off Baryshnikov’s room to safeguard his luggage.
Metro Toronto Police weren’t concerned when the production team filed a missing-person report. “In this case we don’t believe any crime is being committed,” a police spokesperson told the Globeand Mail. Federal Minister of External Affairs Mitchell Sharp anticipated that any asylum request would receive a “sympathetic hearing.” After an interview at the farm, Baryshnikov was granted a special six-month permit to stay while his landed-immigrant status was sorted out. “He’s just like any other guy in the country looking for a job right now,” an immigration spokesperson told the Globe and Mail.
Initial reports after the defection indicated that the rest of the troupe weren’t mourning his loss, as he had received all the ovations, while they’d been criticized in the press. Kolpakova said he was “too much of an egotist. He only loves himself.” David Bines, who was managing the tour for a Montreal-based company, told the media that Baryshnikov’s departure didn’t make a difference. “He’s just an ordinary dancer. He’s not the star of the show. We have no stars.” He later dismissed the incident as being no different than a dancer being out due to illness or injury. (Bitter feelings may have also been fuelled by the terrible reviews they received at their next stop, in Vancouver: the Province’s James Barber called their performance a “third-string effort,” while the VancouverSun’s Max Wyman “saw an evening of dull and antiquated dance.”)
Soviet-embassy spokesperson Victor Mikheyev claimed that Christina Berlin had kidnapped the dancer: “Baryshnikov was a poor boy at home and I’m sure his adductors promised him that he would earn more money performing under private enterprise.” Baryshnikov was “not a criminal, he is immoral,” he told the Toronto Star. “It’s not fair to drop his friends in the middle of his work and go away. We would have pity on him, but we’re not angry.”
At a July 3 press conference, Peterson provided details of the escape. He emphasized that the decision to defect was professional, not political, as Baryshnikov “felt that in Russia he had achieved a plateau in his professional career that would be difficult to go beyond.” Peterson promised that, once the dancer had fully recovered from his ordeal, he would talk to the public. While in hiding, Baryshnikov kept in shape through daily workouts, fishing, swimming, and waterskiing. Media outlets tried to figure out where he was — some sent photographers to snoop around the outskirts of Toronto. Fraser later claimed that the Toronto Star had broken into his apartment to discover the dancer’s whereabouts.
Photos from John Fraser's interview with Mikhail Baryshnikov in the July 6, 1974, edition of the Globe and Mail.
Fraser received an exclusive first interview when Baryshnikov was ready to talk to the press. He later said that his editor had been obsessed with the notion of a love affair between Baryshnikov and Berlin and that “protracted negotiations were required simply to explain that the romance was over.”
In the interview, published on July 6, Baryshnikov thanked Canada “for its humane treatment toward me.” He reiterated that it had been a professional decision and said he was grateful for the training and opportunities he had received in the Soviet Union and hoped his defection wouldn’t place any further strain on Canadian-Soviet relations. “I have to take upon myself the burden of never again seeing my friends, my theatre and my public. I will miss them a great deal and in fact I already miss them. But my life is my art and I realized it would be a greater crime to destroy that.”
Photo of Mikhail Baryshnikov in rehearsal with the National Ballet of Canada from the July 10, 1974, edition of the Toronto Star.
In Fraser’s view, the Soviets were handling the incident with remarkable restraint: the troupe was allowed to finish its tour, and there were promises that there wouldn’t be any reprisals against Baryshnikov’s father in Latvia. In a January 1975 Maclean’s article, Stewart’s wife, Nalini, speculated that Baryshnikov’s courtesy and the anguish he described over leaving the Soviet Union — and hints he made that he might return someday — may have played a role in a letter he received soon after, which retroactively gave him permission to remain in North America.
Baryshnikov soon emerged from hiding. On July 10, he was spotted practising with the National Ballet of Canada for a guest appearance over two performances of La Sylphide at Ontario Place in August. The company botched its chance to have him join on an ongoing basis — when presented with the opportunity, artistic director David Haber said he would “take it under advisement,” leaving other company officials fuming. (This was one of several factors that led to Haber’s replacement soon after.)
Baryshnikov’s official Western performance debut came during a CBC television special that aired on July 26. The special was assembled over two weeks and relied on some lucky circumstances — the network was able to secure a studio on short notice and hire Lorne Greene to narrate, as it turned out he was visiting Toronto. The special included footage of the Bolshoi tour shot by Radio-Canada and of rehearsals for La Sylphide. The CBC deemed the special so important that it decided not to carry ongoing live coverage of impeachment proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives against President Richard Nixon over the course of the hour.
Article about Mikhail Baryshnikov's CBC special from the July 23, 1974, edition of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.
The next night, Baryshnikov was in New York, performing as a guest in the American Ballet Theatre’s production of Giselle at Lincoln Centre. Tickets sold out within hours, and audience members included Paul Newman and Jackie Onassis. The Stewarts were also in attendance. “The man we had come to know as a sometimes humorous, sometimes edgy, sometimes brooding individual,” Nailini Stewart observed, “was transformed, over the footlights, into a creator of magic movement, a presence, a star.”
Despite fears that a transit strike would scare people away, 14,500 people attended the first of the Ontario Place Forum shows on August 14. With free attendance, the prime seats were quickly snapped up. “An hour or so before the actual performance the crowd’s anticipation could almost be felt,” the Globe and Mail’s Lawrence O’Toole observed. “Every second word had to do with Baryshnikov. Anyone just walking along the fringes of the crowd couldn’t have missed the expectancy and the sense of urgency.” What Fraser called a “mighty performance” resulted in a 20-minute standing ovation. The Toronto Star’s William Littler noted that Baryshnikov had “an impeccable sense of proportion and line, and in his dancing, even the slightest flaws assume a prominence that would go unnoticed in many dancers.”
Over the next few years, Baryshnikov immersed himself in the North American ballet scene, working with elite choreographers ranging from Jerome Robbins to Twyla Tharp across a variety of genres to expand his range and repertoire. He periodically visited Toronto, helping to establish an endowment fund for refugee scholars at the University of Toronto in 2000.
Mikhail Baryshnikov in conversation with Ian Brown
Contrary to what many people might have expected, Baryshnikov felt a sense of shame years after defecting. “It’s always a bit embarrassing,” he told the Globe and Mail’s Simon Houpt on the 25th anniversary of his decision. “It shouldn’t have happened in a civilized world … There’s something below the dignity of human being, something — even the word, ‘defector.’ It’s a military term. It’s a spy who can defect, or on a battlefield.” Houpt noted that “a fierce sadness” crossed the dancer’s face and that his gaze was “almost pleading for understanding.”
Sources: Private View: Inside Baryshnikov’s American Ballet Theatre by John Fraser (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988); the June 26, 1974, July 2, 1974, July 3, 1974, July 4, 1974, July 6, 1974, July 27, 1974, August 15, 1974, and May 15, 1999, editions of the Globe and Mail; the June 26, 1974, edition of the Hamilton Spectator; the January 1975 edition of Maclean’s; the July 2, 1974, and July 3, 1974, editions of the Province; the June 25, 1974, July 2, 1974, July 4, 1974, July 10, 1974, and July 15, 1974, editions of the Toronto Star; and the July 3, 1974, edition of the Vancouver Sun.
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