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Mikhail Baryshnikov
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Mikhail Baryshnikov performing with the Bolshoi Ballet Mikhail Baryshnikov Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova
Mikhail Baryshnikov's commencement speech at Northwestern in 2013
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Mikhail Baryshnikov performing with the Bolshoi Ballet
Mikhail Baryshnikov performing with the Bolshoi Ballet Mikhail Baryshnikov (foreground) and the dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet performing Rhapsody, 1980.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Soviet-born American actor and ballet dancer
Also known as: Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov
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Mikhail Baryshnikov (born January 27, 1948, Riga, Latvia, U.S.S.R.) is a Soviet-born American actor and ballet dancer who was the preeminent male classical dancer of the 1970s and ’80s. He subsequently became a noted dance director. The son of Russian parents in Latvia, Baryshnikov entered Riga’s opera ballet school at age 12. The success that he achieved there convinced him to devote himself to dancing. In 1963 he was admitted to the Vaganova ballet school...

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