“I had no illusions that it was going to be easy. I knew that a lot of it was going to be crying in Midtown.”

Anna Baryshnikov

Mikhail Baryshnikov’s 33-year-old daughter is stepping into the spotlight with Idiotka, an independent comedy co-starring Julia Fox, Benito Skinner, and Owen Thiele

By Carolina de Armas

On June 29, 1974, the shooting star of the Soviet Union’s prestigious Kirov Ballet was on a foreign tour in Canada. After completing a performance in Toronto, the 26-year-old ran, jumped into a car, and said do svidaniya to his home country forever. A month later, he made his New York debut, as Albrecht in Giselle. The world’s most discerning audience for classical dance bent the knee to a phenomenon named Mikhail Baryshnikov.

“I actually didn’t grow up going to the ballet a lot,” says Anna Baryshnikov, Mikhail’s daughter with the dancer Lisa Rinehart. “I think that’s probably why I never aspired to do it myself.”