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Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Performance

Date confirmed in “OC Weekly” (archived) (“Aug. 5, 1993”)

Matt Coker, attendee of the performance, “OC Weekly” (June 25, 2009) (archived)

His entrance into the Performing Arts Center's Segerstrom Hall threatened to overshadow legendary dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov's first appearance on an Orange County stage on Aug. 5, 1993. All the blue, dyed-black and assorted other hairs turned their heads to face Jackson, in his usual royal coat with shoulder epaulets, as he slowly moved to a seat near the orchestra, just to the left of the middle of the stage. He had a blonde on one side and a middle-aged man on the other. It was later revealed they were his dermatologist and nurse—and years later the same nurse would bear one of his children.

The commotion lasted for a few minutes before the lights dimmed and the performance began. Baryshnikov, the former Kirov Ballet principal dancer and ex-artistic director

of American Ballet Theatre, owned the crowd's attention thereafter. Making his local debut as a modern dancer with the White Oak Dance Project, a collaborative venture Baryshnikov

formed in 1990 with choreographer Mark Morris, the then-45-year-old with taped knees gamely danced two solos: Morris' “Three Preludes” (to music by Gershwin) and Twyla Tharp's “Pergolesi.” He also joined other members of his troupe for Morris' “Mosaic and United” (music by Henry Cowell).

The audience ate it up. So did Jackson, or at least he appeared to be enjoying it from what I and everyone else could make out in the dark. He stood with the rest of us for the standing O. Then he was gone. I believe he returned to OCPAC again with Elizabeth Taylor for a function that raised money to battle AIDS/HIV, or at least that's my memory. I didn't snag a free press invite to that one, like I had for the White Oak.

The audience ate it up. So did Jackson, or at least he appeared to be enjoying it from what I and everyone else could make out in the dark. He stood with the rest of us for the standing O. Then he was gone.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet performer, “The Washington Post” (June 27, 2009) (archived)

"I don't know who you could really put next to him," said ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov, reached yesterday in Madrid. "To imitate somebody like Michael Jackson is impossible. Why bother? You just relax and admire."

Jackson was a perfectionist, and could relate to other perfectionists. Baryshnikov got to know him through Elizabeth Taylor, who would "drag him to see me dance," Baryshnikov said, when he was at American Ballet Theatre and later when performing in the White Oak Dance Project, his modern-dance company. They would talk about ballet—Jackson had a lot of questions, he recalled, "like a 12-year-old"—and he would ask about working with choreographers. He told Baryshnikov that choreographers would suggest ideas to him, but that he created his own dances. What Baryshnikov remembers most about Jackson, he said, was "not even his turns or his grabbing his crotch. Just his simple, bouncy walk across the stage, that was what was most beautiful and arresting, swinging his hips, kicking his heel forward. That's to me what he is: that superior confidence in his body as a dancer. You wanted to say, 'Wow, this guy, what a cat; he can really move in his own way.' "