Mikhail Baryshnikov was born of Russian parents, in Riga, Latvia, where he began studying ballet. He was accepted by the Vaganova School in Leningrad and studied under the renowned teacher Alexander Pushkin.

At 18, he entered the Kirov Ballet as a soloist and remained with the company from 1968 to 1974, when he left Russia. From 1974 to 1979, he danced with ballet and modern companies around the world. He was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet from 1979 to 1980, and from 1980 until 1989 he was artistic director of American Ballet Theatre. From 1990 to 2002, Mr. Baryshnikov was director and dancer with the White Oak Dance Project, which he co-founded with choreographer Mark Morris.

His most recent awards are the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, the Commonwealth Award and Yale University's highest honor, the Chubb Fellowship. He has starred in several films and has appeared in television and on Broadway. Presently, he is involved in creating the Baryshnikov Arts Center, scheduled to open in January 2005 in New York City.

David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. He had been a staff writer at the magazine since September, 1992, and has written over a hundred pieces for the magazine. Subjects have included such people as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Shimon Peres, Ralph Ellison, Katharine Graham, Pope John Paul II, Michael Jordan, and George Stephanopoulos.

Mr. Remnick joined The New Yorker after ten years at the Washington Post. In 1988, he started a four-year tenure as a Washington Post Moscow correspondent, an experience that formed the basis of his 1993 book on the former Soviet Union, “Lenin's Tomb.” In April, 1994, “Lenin's Tomb” received both the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism.

In February, 1997, Random House published “Resurrection,” Mr. Remnick’s book on the struggle to build a Russian state from the ruins of the Soviet empire, and the first book to cover the recent elections in Russia.