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What would be the biggest wish of a choreographer about to start a company? There’s something even more valuable than a blank check: the support of Mikhail Baryshnikov. And this month two choreographers are lucky enough to have it.


When Stefanie Batten Bland, whose dance lineage includes performing with Bill T. Jones and Pina Bausch, decided that she wanted to return to New York after living and working in Europe, Mr. Baryshnikov asked her a simple question: What do you need?


“I said, ‘A home,’ ” Ms. Batten Bland recalled. “He said: ‘O.K., you have a home. Now what do you need?’ I didn’t really know what to say next. I often don’t know what to say in front of him. It’s terrible.” Even worldly dancers have trouble separating Mr. Baryshnikov, the person, from the figure who works tirelessly to give dance a prominent place in culture. Beginning Thursday the Baryshnikov Arts Center will present two budding companies, led by Ms. Batten Bland and John Heginbotham, a longtime member of the Mark Morris Dance Group. Both are part of his center’s esteemed, if under-the-radar, residency program, which provides space and time (roughly three weeks per artist) to develop work. Generally there is no stipend.


In an interview at his center in Midtown, Mr. Baryshnikov spoke about the obstacles choreographers face in forming companies. “It’s not a secret that the first year is probably the most difficult,” he said. “Both John and Stefanie are very interesting people and highly experienced, and I thought we must support emerging companies like that. Their pedigree is kind of impeccable. That’s how people start to choreograph.


“What would Merce have been without working with Martha? Or Paul?” he asked. Or Martha Graham without Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis?


Mr. Baryshnikov’s passing-the-baton references were to Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor and Graham, and Ms. Batten Bland and Mr. Heginbotham’s leading-dancer status is part of the reason Mr. Baryshnikov programmed them under the same umbrella.


“It is a huge task, you know?” he said of starting a company. “They have to build their board of directors. They have to do their fund-raising. They have to hustle. Although it’s the most exciting part of the emerging company: just to start. Because there’s such adrenaline going, and they are so fired up. They need this help.”


Within the center’s multidisciplinary residency program, which supports up to 30 artists a year, Ms. Batten Bland and Mr. Heginbotham are also recipients of an award from the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential Works Program. For Mr. Heginbotham and Ms. Batten Bland, the partnership with the foundation has resulted in two years of support, including the residencies, public showings and $10,000 per award. After their first residencies in 2010 they presented new works in an intimate studio setting at the center. This year they will show their dances in Jerome Robbins Theater. Mr. Heginbotham, for one, is flabbergasted.


“And it’s Misha,” he said of Mr. Baryshnikov. “I’m sure everybody says that all the time, but it’s still surreal. I remember when I saw ‘Turning Point’ in the den of my friend’s house in Alaska. I remember all of us going to see ‘White Nights.’ I remember watching ‘Dance in America.’ So now that’s the person who is the reason that I have all of these opportunities? How is that possible? It is surreal and beautiful, and I appreciate it so much.”


Both choreographers will show the dances they created in their first residency (“Terra Firma” for Ms. Batten Bland and “Closing Bell” for Mr. Heginbotham), along with two new works. In “A Place of Sun,” Ms. Batten Bland explores ideas about how entities adhere to stressed environments and either move forward or perish. The work for six incorporates egg-shaped sculptures by the visual artist Benjamin Heller that are large enough for the dancers to slip in and out of.


“There’s something so comfortable and uncomfortable about being inside of them, and I think that’s a great experience we go through in life,” she said. “There are a lot of things that comfort us and might keep us where we are. But you have to leave at some point and move on.”


Mr. Baryshnikov is drawn to Ms. Batten Bland’s flamboyance. “She’s very showy but full of excitement and love for what she’s doing and brings a little of that European sensibility about theatricality,” he said. “She likes to do a piece about something, not that it’s necessarily narrative.”


He called Mr. Heginbotham a “gentle soul” who projects a friendly and funny personality on the surface but underneath exudes seriousness. And neither does he shy from theatricality in “Twin,” Mr. Heginbotham’s latest dance set to music by Aphex Twin. “I did do a little research on twins,” Mr. Heginbotham said. “I don’t want to do a piece about that Diane Arbus photograph, and I don’t want to do a piece about ‘The Shining.’ But I am attracted to creepy material, and twins are creepy. There’s a phenomenon called a vanishing twin, where essentially one twin, a dominant twin, consumes the other. That’s somewhere in this piece.”


The spirit he is hoping for is, as he put it, is “dark, funny and a little bit sick.”


In terms of the residency program not all of the works developed in the studios end up on its stages. But during the spring season, 6 out of 13 artists whom the center presented — including Young Jean Lee, Pontus Lidberg, Nelly van Bommel and Daniel Zippi — have or will accomplish both. Since 2005, when the program began, participants have included Elevator Repair Service, Sarah Michelson, Annie-B Parson, Miguel Gutierrez and Rashaun Mitchell. Last year there were 26 participants; this year 14 are scheduled through July, with more coming in the fall.


“We don’t have a specific policy” on how residencies are granted, Mr. Baryshnikov said: “We take each case individually. I think it’s more humane.”


Applications are continually accepted. And, yes, Mr. Baryshnikov watches videos too. “Of course,” he said. “For hours, for hours. But, you know, that’s what it is.”


For the time being the residency program is what it is too. Mr. Baryshnikov has no ambition to turn residencies into producing opportunities for the center. “It does not matter,” he said. “In fact we are providers more than we are producers. There’s nothing wrong with that.”