Baryshnikov light and dark.

From heartthrob to heartbeat, Baryshnikov is still going strong.

With a name that is to many synonymous with dance, Mikhail Baryshnikov has dominated our dance consciousness since his defection from the Soviet Union to the West in 1974. He's a dance phenomenon who seems to have attempted everything (including, reluctantly, choreography) when necessity demanded it. A supreme exponent of virtuosic classic style, as a soloist he's remade famous roles in his own image, bringing profound pathos to Petrouchka, brilliance to "Rubies" from Jewels, and power and humility to The Prodigal Son. He's been mischievously charming in Coppelia, insouciant in Push Comes to Shove, and tragic in Roland Petit's Queen of Spades. In movies he became a star in The Turning Point, jazzed around with Gregory Hines in White Nights, and costarred with Gene Hackman in Company Business; on Broadway in Kafka's Metamorphosis, he was turned into an insect. He led American Ballet Theatre, first as its star, later as its artistic director, and danced for Balanchine at New York City Ballet. He's starred in TV specials with Twyla Tharp and Liza Minnelli; sung duets with Nell Carter; danced in galas for Martha Graham and Paul Taylor; guested with Trisha Brown, Dana Reitz, and Mark Morris; and performed Cunningham and Hawkins. He's even launched perfume and dancewear enterprises that bear his name.

It's a career that hasn't faltered since he burst upon Western awareness in 1966 by winning a gold medal at Varna. And always, in everything he does, he has continued his endless search for perfection.

Inevitably, media coverage has slackened from the early years, when even gossip columnists, chronicling his life from the rigors of his childhood in Riga to the disciplines of his workday, had treated him like a rock star. But now Baryshnikov has made headlines again. The reason? His solo appearance at Manhattan's City Center for five performances last January. The renewed attention was due in part to the demanding challenge of such a program (with musical interludes by the White Oak Chamber Ensemble) and to his including works by some relatively unknown choreographers. Much of the media's attention, however, was due to his having reached a personal turning point. "At 50, Taking the Stage (and a Risk) Alone," said one headline. Another proclaimed, "Dancing at 50, Baryshnikov Goes Solo as He Gracefully Ages."

Other headlines disputed that gracefully. "Cranky Dancer" topped the New York Observer's Transom column in which Baryshnikov was asked if he contemplated retiring. "It's not your business, okay?" he had snapped. "Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already. I want to see people dance and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for [their] pasta." Questioned by another writer on how many dogs he owned, he curtly replied, "You also want me to give out my checking account number?"

Turning fifty is a totally insignificant milestone to this artist, who has packed more career moves into his life than Madonna has. Age is something to be ignored. Sitting at a massive marble table in his Central Park West office-apartment, dressed in street clothes of somber hue, he tells me, "I never celebrate my birthdays--except maybe with a quiet family dinner." He was resigned but not particularly enthusiastic about this interview, one of many he'd agreed to give preceding his City Center appearances. "To sell tickets you have to do a couple of advance stories," he says glumly. Questions he dislikes he answers in a tone of voice that makes you feel that you couldn't tell a plie from a brise.

Yet he can be surprisingly frank, as when he laments the touring that, for months at a time, takes him away from his family--former ABT dancer Lisa Rinehart and their two daughters and a son--and the Hudson Valley home he's lived in for the last sixteen years. He observes, "Gore Vidal said, `People in the arts should never have children. They make terrible parents.' In a way I agree with him. It's an extremely selfish position to be in, because to achieve some of the depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices. Want to or not, you're thinking about what you're doing in life--in my case, dancing. It's always there, no matter what you're doing with your children--picnic, family travels, vacations. With dancing and touring, you're stealing this time from your family to achieve something, to be happy, and that happiness must spill back to the family. Because you cannot be happy with your family while being personally unhappy with your work. It's a catch-22 kind of thing. A lot of sacrifice has to be made being a family man. Dancing is my obsession. My life.

"I don't put any goals in front of me. It's day by day, and that's the way it is with the White Oak Dance Project. Yes, we make decisions and we really seriously think ahead and plan. [But] priorities shift, new ideas surface, and if you make concrete plans for two years ahead, you will live with contradictions with your immediate plans vis-a-vis your long-term plans. That's why I'm trying to keep horizons open, so I can breathe much better."

He gazes up at a photograph that he had taken of the late Howard Gilman, one of a number of photos displayed on the wall. Baryshnikov was still in mourning for Gilman, a millionaire chairman of a paper company and a longtime supporter of the arts, who had befriended, advised, and supported him over the years in many ways. "I regarded him not just as a friend but as an older brother, a family member," Baryshnikov says. And it is to Gilman that he dedicated his solo recitals.

It was at Gilman's 9,000-acre White Oak Plantation in Florida that Baryshnikov developed the dance project that bears its name. This is the instrument that Baryshnikov, the prophet of the new, uses to present little-known choreographers, albeit on progams mixed with works by such well-established ones as Mark Morris and Jerome Robbins. The group of eight to twelve dancers is independent and financially solvent and tours with its own chamber orchestra throughout the U.S. and abroad.

In between these stints, Baryshnikov has elected to present himself solo--something that any other dancer at fifty might well deem risky. Preparing for these demanding performances requires hours of physical therapy for his old knee injuries, more hours on warmups and rehearsals, and then the performances themselves. Does he still take ballet class? "Of course," he says, "a few times a week I do my own. Sometimes with the generosity of City Ballet I use some space in the Rose Building." These days he has added to his schedule by occasionally coaching a men's class at the School of American Ballet, something he plans to continue on a more regular basis when he has time.

The solo program he takes on the road varies from date to date to make it more interesting. At City Center, it ranged from a 1942 Jose Limon solo, Chaconne, to HeartBeat: mb, in which the "score" is his own electronically amplified heartbeat. Although the choreography is credited to Sara Rudner, there is considerable improvisation by Baryshnikov himself. "I cannot give myself credit as a choreographer, but there's more of my input than when I usually work with choreographers," he allows.

Critics agree that he danced with exceptional brilliance and precision for an awestruck audience, and reviews were universally favorable. Roslyn Sulcas in these pages congratulated him on his "chiseled focus and nuanced clarity [and the] dancerly intelligence that goes beyond the psychological need to remain onstage" [April, page 94].

Always an intellectual, Baryshnikov has a preoccupation with perfection that has progressed from the honing of his formidable ballet technique to the assimilation and promotion of modern and avant-garde dance. Even while he was thrilling ballet audiences with his Albrecht or Prince Desire at ABT, he was also commissioning works by Twyla Tharp and David Gordon.

These days, as artistic director of White Oak, he carries the burden that many artistic directors complain of. "I wish I could have more money to do choreographic workshops," he says. "Every year, it's more expensive. It would be real fun to play with a couple of million dollars a year, spend it wisely but take more chances. I have a wish list of people I would like to commission works from, some very well known, some totally unknown. But of course everything comes down to money. We've been lucky all these years. We've never been in the red. I can't complain. But to be a little more daring . . . Even a small fifteen- or twenty-minute piece can cost tens of thousands of dollars: rehearsal time, renting studios, bringing in costume and lighting designers, stage time, accommodations for people involved, this and that--it's an enormous amount of money for a sometimes very modest project.

"We at White Oak cannot fund-raise because we are a commercial entity. We produce ourselves . . . but we are open for sponsorship, as it was with Lexus cars some years ago. Usually we're a 99 percent gamble. Sometimes we coproduce, as we did with Meg Stuart's project last year [presented during a season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music]. If we don't have money, I put in my own. I knew it would come up at the box office," he said confidently. And so he should. All five of his City Center performances were completely sold out.

Baryshnikov's generosity in sharing his talent at fundraising galas for various companies has paid off. "It works both ways," he points out. "Paul [Taylor] made us a present of one of his works, Profiles. I was touched; a gesture like that is extraordinary." Profiles is included in White Oak's busy year of touring the U.S. and Europe. In addition, Baryshnikov is taking his solo program to South America and possibly to Puerto Rico.

With such a schedule, it seems that he dances to keep demons at bay. If he seems melancholy--as press reports and photographs sometimes suggest--could it be rooted in the fact that he had a stressful childhood? Over the years, more has come to light about his early life. His mother committed suicide when he was twelve, and his father, an army officer, was said to be stern and remote. It was a difficult life, and he channeled all of his considerable energies, talent, and ambition into becoming the finest dancer possible.

Yet, although he has for decades pursued his life with intensity and success, and at times with obvious joy, this privacy-loving man today seems moodier, more austere, even tragic in his premonitions of the future. "I think if I live for the next ten years I'll be happy," he predicted recently. To another writer he gloomily asserted, "It's a bit scary, but I don't think I'm going to hit sixty."

Baryshnikov may believe that now. But listening to his strong heartbeat as he performs (as the public did in HeartBeat: mb) and to his plans for the future, it seems unlikely. Fifty or not, he continues to amaze, making our own hearts beat a little faster.

Hilary Ostlere is a senior editor and theater columnist of Dance Magazine.