The Broad Stage Presents the U.S. Premiere of IN PARIS, Featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov, 4/11-21

Broad Stage marks the U.S. Premiere of In Paris, starring ballet legend and avant-garde artist Mikhail Baryshnikov and Anna Sinyakina, leading actress in the Laboratory of director Dmitry Krymov. An exquisite love story that takes place in Paris, the play is also a profound meditation on loneliness and loss.

Based on a story by Nobel Prize-winner Ivan Bunin, In Paris is a dazzling new play set in the 1930s that received its world-premiere in Helsinki, Finland in August 2011. This rare international collaboration-told in French and Russian with English supertitles-unites renowned artists born in Russia for a vivid visual experience in a dramatic tour-de-force of unforgettable impact. There will be an opening night after-party sponsored by Los Angeles Magazine at Tiato. Additional tour dates include: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, April 25-May 13, 2012; Spoleto Festival, Italy, June 30-July 1, 2012; and, Lincoln Center Festival, NY, August 1-August 5, 2012.

Baryshnikov's love of the new and willingness to take chances have fueled his engagement with In Paris, which he describes as a personal project done out of love. Baryshnikov's father was a lieutenant colonel and he has said he drew inspiration for his In Paris character from unhappy memories of his father's military mannerisms. In the play, Baryshnikov speaks Russian onstage for the first time in his career. "He was not a very pleasant man," he said. "I did not have the happiest of childhoods. His mannerisms, his military habits, I put them in my interpretation." (NY Times)

World famous for his ballet dancing, Baryshnikov has long had a parallel career as an actor, earning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his 1977 role in The Turning Point. In 1989, he appeared on Broadway in an adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis; and more recently, teasing his formidable reputation as an "artiste" by playing a self-absorbed Russian artist in the popular HBO series Sex and the City. He defected from the Soviet Union in 1974 to explore the wider creative possibilities offered in the West.

Baryshnikov invested $250,000 in the project and solicited another $250,000 from a close Russian friend in New York. "I did this out of fun," he said. "I'll never get my money back. This is just out of love." (NY Times)

Anna Sinyakina, who plays opposite Baryshnikov, was born in Moscow, and graduated from the Gnesin State Academy of Music, where she studied acting for musical theater in the studio of G. Gurvich. She has been active both on stage and in film, and has been working in director Krymov's Laboratory since 2004. With her soulful beauty and graceful presence, she brings a rich poignancy to the tragic love story at the core of In Paris.

In addition to Baryshnikov and Sinyakina, the cast will feature Maxim Maminov, Maria Gulik, Dmitry Volkov and Polina Butko with Ossi Makkonen and Lasse Lindberg.

Director Dmitry Krymov, a set designer and painter who founded the Laboratory in Moscow in 2005, stages the play as a multi-media event weaving together mime, song, music, video and enlarged images of old Paris postcards to create an austere, black and white atmosphere around the mesmerizing physicality of his two star performers. The piece will include original music by Dmitry Volkov, and the design team will also feature the work of Maria Tregubova (set and costume design), Damir Ismagilov (lighting design), Andrey Shchukin (movement coach), Alexei Ratmansky (choreography), and Tei Blow (audio and video design).

Don't miss the U.S. premiere of Baryshnikov's latest exploration as an artist and the power of movement in compelling, unforgettable human stories.

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