Baryshnikov and Robbins first collaborated in 1976, two years after Baryshnikov’s defection to the West. On that occasion, Robbins created Other Dances, for Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova, who had been Baryshnikov’s dance partner at the Kirov Ballet, and who had defected just a few years earlier. Robbins went on to work with Baryshnikov on several occasions, creating three more ballets for him, each of which revealed a different facet of his personality and dancing. The last was the solo A Suite of Dances, created in 1994, just four years before Robbins’ death. Robbins is perhaps the choreographer who understood Baryshnikov best. In this conversation, we’ll discuss and look at excerpts from these and other dances.
This presentation is part of Marina Harss' Exploring Dance series.
Marina Harss
Marina Harss
Marina Harss is a dance writer based in New York City, with her work featured in prominent publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, Ballet Review, Dance Europe, Tanz and Dance Magazine. In 2023, Farrar Straus and Giroux published her critical biography of choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet.
Harss has been recognized with the Robert and Ina Caro Research and Travel Fellowship, was a fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts in 2019 and is currently a fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Beyond writing, she has moderated and conducted interviews at public forums on dance, both live and online, at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, the National Arts Club and the New York Public Library.
In addition to her contributions to dance literature, Harss is an award-winning literary translator, translating fiction and nonfiction from French, Italian and Spanish. Her translations include works by Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dino Buzzatti, Juan Forn and Élisabeth Gille. In 2012, she received the French-American Foundation translation prize for her translation of Gille’s Le Mirador.
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