Preparation for a role

Great singers and dancers have approached the actual manner of presentation differently.  Some had to get inside the skin of the character, to prepare internally before going on stage.  Chaliapin could stand in the wings smoking and chatting one minute and stun the audience with his tragic figure of Tsar Boris the next.  For Maria Callas, full control meant that a performance must be linked to personal identification with the role, whether it was Norma, Violetta, or Medea.  The same was true of Anna Pavlova.  Maya Plisetskaya could dash about the shops right up to the beginning of a performance, then, barely warming up, go out on stage as the dazzling Odette.  Nijinsky is said to have seemed sleepy before the curtain went up.  He would wake up in his role, giving rein to his complexes, then retreat again behind his indifferent mask when the curtain fell.

Baryshnikov: from Russia to the West by Gennady Smakov.  1981.  Page 125.