A native of Riga, Mikhail Baryshnikov was born in 1948 and began studying ballet at the age of nine. As a teenager, he entered the school of the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, graduating from student to principal dancer in 1969. Baryshnikov danced with the Kirov Ballet for five years, earning acclaim for his technical brilliance, his gravity-defying leaps, and his dramatic interpretations of classical roles. In 1974, Baryshnikov, disheartened by the artistic stagnation and limited challenges in Soviet ballet, defected to the West at age 26. He settled in New York City as a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre.

In 1979, Baryshnikov moved from American Ballet Theatre to work with master choreographer George Balanchine at New York City Ballet. There, he broadened his repertoire, learning more than 20 new roles in only 15 months with the company. In 1980, he returned to American Ballet Theatre, serving for 10 years as artistic director and nurturing a new generation of dancers and choreographers. During his tenure with the troupe, he also staged and choreographed four full-length ballets.

During his illustrious ballet career, Baryshnikov danced more than 100 different works, from the classics Giselle and Don Quixote to Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove and George Balanchine’s Apollo, and he was a leading guest artist on the world’s greatest stages. From 1990 to 2002, Baryshnikov was director and dancer with White Oak Dance Project, which he co-founded with choreographer Mark Morris. White Oak was born of Baryshnikov’s desire “to be a driving force in the production of art,” and, indeed, it expanded the repertoire and visibility of American modern dance. In 2003 and 2004, he toured a program of solo works by noted American and European choreographers to benefit the Baryshnikov Art Center (BAC), which opened its doors in 2005.

In addition to his career in dance, Baryshnikov has pursued acting, starring in five films, including his Oscar-nominated performance in The Turning Point. He has been on numerous television shows, among them three Emmy Award–winning specials. In 1989, he appeared on Broadway in Metamorphosis, earning a Tony nomination and a Drama Critics Award. He was most recently seen as the star of JoAnne Akalaitis’s acclaimed Beckett Shorts at New York Theater Workshop. Among his awards are the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of the Arts, the Commonwealth Award, the Chubb Fellowship, the Jerome Robbins Award, the Liberty Award, and the Arison Award.

Baryshnikov began taking photographs as an avocation in the mid-1980’s, and since then, his photographs have been exhibited in a variety of museums and galleries all over the world, including Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; Latvian National Opera House, Riga; St. Petersburg History of Photography Museum, St. Petersburg; Cortona Festival del Sole, Cortona, Spain; Metropolitan Opera House, New York; Movado Gallery, New York; Gibbes Museum, Charleston, South Carolina; Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York; and J Johnson Gallery, Jacksonville, Florida. A book of Baryshnikov’s photography, Moments in Time, was published in 2005.