A Year Ago…

A year ago I got to meet one of my childhood idols, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and interview him about his art collection. My heart stopped a little bit each time he opened his mouth to say something. It was, and still is, a highlight of my writing life. Here’s the piece that came out of that conversation.

And one of my favorite works from his collection,  Nikolai Lapshin’s Novgorod.

nl-picture-novgorod-blury-tree_1000

Baryshnikov and his Art Collection (for DanceTabs)

In December, I went to see “Art I’ve Lived With,” a small show of Baryshnikov’s art collection. Baryshnikov showed me around himself, and we talked about the paintings. In a way, it was like leafing through a family album; each picture had a story, and captured a moment in time.

Here is the piece I wrote for DanceTabs.

And here is a short excerpt:

“He is no longer the boy with soft blue eyes that graced the bedroom walls of many a girl in the 1980’s, including my own. Somehow, he has grown wirier, tighter, more serious with age; what one senses more than anything is a sharp intelligence, an unwillingness to waste time. With a quick nod, he was down to business. This little collection, he told me, began with a simple purchase in Paris back in 1975, at the Galérie Proscenium on the Rue de Seine, on the left bank. Misha was twenty-seven then, and “the dollar was strong and I had money in my pocket,” he says, nonchalantly.”