Mikhail Baryshnikov: Greatness and modesty

Baryshnikov doesn't like interviews – he prefers to let his feet do the Talking. But, With His Company In London Next Week, He Gives In. What, Wonders Nadine Meisner, do you ask the greatest male ballet dancer you've ever seen?

Mikhail Baryshnikov does not like interviews. As he sits down, his body tenses and the familiar blond face, more handsome with its 54-year-old furrows, shuts down. He had been so relaxed before, unrecognised by other Spanish hotel guests, circulating among the breakfast tables occupied by members of his company, the White Oak Dance Project; or later, in sunglasses and baseball cap – a true naturalised American – chatting over a cup of coffee. Maybe he's self-conscious about speaking. His mind is a flick knife and his voice a pleasant baritone, but after all these years – his defection in 1974 was the biggest blow to the Kirov since Nureyev – the Russian accent is still peppered with dodgy grammar. Or maybe he's just bored answering the same tired questions, now so predictable that he could simply circulate a list of written statements instead.

"No, I did not suddenly switch to contemporary dance because I was over the hill for ballet," one statement might go. "The transition started long before White Oak's launch in 1990, when I was still wowing ballet audiences." So what do you ask the greatest male ballet dancer you have ever seen? Let's start with the programme for London, which includes Erick Hawkins's long ensemble piece, Early Floating (1961). Hawkins famously became the first male dancer in Martha Graham's company, as well as her husband (they divorced in 1954) and died in 1994. His choreography, Baryshnikov believes, was seriously underrated. "Like a lot of American choreographers, he struggled. He lived in an extremely modest way, and I would say he was a poor man. But the dignity of his work impressed me so much, and artists of extraordinary talent collaborated with him."

Hawkins always insisted on live music, but Early Floating will be performed to a recording this time. The first reason is that finding anyone able to play his second wife Lucia Dlugoszewski's score for "prepared" piano would be difficult; the second is that Baryshnikov can't afford musicians at present.

The programme also includes pieces by Lucinda Childs: a solo called Largo and a company piece, Chacony. Baryshnikov dances both and I remark that he is more prominent than on previous visits. "It's not up to me to choose how much I will dance. The programme comes together – and you're in the piece, or you're not. Lucinda could have said, I don't need you in Chacony."

Well, if I were Mikhail Baryshnikov and paying the fee, I say, I would stamp my feet. "Are you crazy?" he laughs. "No, you never do that to choreographers. I might ask a very close friend, but otherwise never. When Katherine Duke staged Early Floating, she suggested that I should do Erick's part and I agreed with great pleasure. But if she'd said, I don't think you should be in this piece, I would have said OK."

Don't large ballet companies specify something of what they want from a choreographer? "Well, the big ballet companies have to deal with dancers, the agents of dancers, the mothers of dancers, the psychiatrists of dancers, etc, etc," he replies. And he should know all about that, having directed American Ballet Theatre for nine fraught years...

He might not like doing interviews, but he seems to enjoy a vigorous discussion. Equally, he might have heard all the questions before, but he answers them courteously and copiously. He has the lean and hard body of a 20-year-old, and is dancing better than ever. "Well, you try to do your best always. I've not had any physical problems in the last few years. It's just that certain pieces fit your skin a little closer. And when you put a programme together, you don't think, oh, how much time will I be in this programme or how will I look. I think about the overall evening, because it's not for me, it's for the audience."

White Oak is not some expensive apparatus massaging Baryshnikov's vanity. But the company is a self-indulgence in another sense. "I work with the people I want – that's the ultimate pleasure," he says. He doesn't have to play safe, like other directors. "I don't have a board that tells me that this or that goes a bit too far. But also I'm not that stupid. I do care what the audience thinks."

This is not meant to be populist programming, but it should still connect with the audience. "Otherwise, what is the performance for? But it has to be on an edge. You know that certain parts will be more familiar, other parts will raise eyebrows, and that's just fine. You don't have to love everything. But you remember why you didn't like it."

Baryshnikov has probably had more works created for him than any other dancer, dead or alive. Early on, the Soviet choreographer Leonid Jacobson made him a long, expressionist solo, Vestris. Ashton – "I loved that man, I had such fun with him" – made Rhapsody, a showcase that only a few successors such as Carlos Acosta have the stamina and technique to perform.

Then have come works from Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, and many more. He performs these, and then drops them for fresh meat, where other performers – think Pavlova and The Dying Swan – stick with old favourites for years. "I don't like to perform the same piece a long time, because I feel I've done it, time flies so fast and I want to do something else."

Then he makes a remarkable admission. "I'm a much better dancer in the studio than on stage." Why? "Because I have more fun in the studio; it's the freedom, the learning, doing the last stages of a work. I'm much better dancing for a choreographer than for an audience." After 34 years in the profession, he still suffers badly from stage fright. "It upsets me and I try to fight it and it still gets worse." So maybe the ultimate luxury would be to refine a piece in a studio and not perform it? He smiles. "Or maybe to do a project for a very small audience. Then I wouldn't care that much because it would be for my own little personal pleasure, using very challenging material."

This total immersion in his material has long been at the core of his artistry. He is a choreographer's dancer, not a massive ego waiting to erupt on stage. True, when he first started out as the Kirov's new wonderboy, he was stage-struck and, for a while, pushed for sensationalism. "Being young and not very smart, I tried to impress myself and the audience and critics in the wrong way. I would go completely over the top. Everything was overstuffed with dramatics and technical details. But then you realise, oh, this is ridiculous, cool down, this is not what dance is about. It should be simpler and plainer."

What then became unique about Baryshnikov was an artistry almost self-effacing, yet completely compelling. He didn't need thunder and lightning to assert himself because the astonishing prowess and finesse of his dancing did it for him.

"Less is more," he says. "This is what works, but you have to know how." He has the humility to know that he exists to serve the dancing moment, not the other way round. That is what White Oak is about. "If you want to see me in this and me in that, don't come and see this show. I think every dancer should absorb themselves in a choreographer's work. It's up to the choreographer to decide what colour you should add. If they're not happy, they'll tell you – trust me – because they care about their work, all of them."

The White Oak Dance Project is at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London EC1, 9-13 October (020-7863 8000)