“I never celebrate my birthdays,” Mikhail Baryshnikov says straight off when I show up to discuss his 75th. But this year the legendary dancer-actor has reason to remember—and to make something of it. On Sunday, June 25, on the idyllic grounds of the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, in the Hudson Valley, he is hosting a reception for his latest painterly photographs of dancers, followed by a plein-air concert that features a handful of his famous friends: singer-songwriters Laurie Anderson and Regina Spektor; the Russian rocker Boris Grebenshikov; jazz chanteuse Diana Krall; Silkroad flautist and taiko drummer Kaoru Watanabe; and Baryshnikov bestie Mark Morris, not dancing but crooning. The entire event doubles as a fundraiser. “The money,” he says, that’s needed for the Baryshnikov Arts Center, on West 37th Street in Manhattan, “does not pour in like it used to. There is not ‘Please take the money!’” The dancer assumes a beggarly posture, back comically hunched, hands cupped pathetically before him as if pleading for, not offering, alms. “Our main work,” Baryshnikov emphasizes, “is invisible: to provide the mechanics for theater directors, choreographers, musicians, composers, to be private—to be left alone. That’s the best thing you can do for an artist.” And the best thing you can do? Come to the party. And donate. —Apollinaire Scherr