Polina Semionova Will Guest Perform With Birmingham Royal Ballet in SWAN LAKE

Birmingham Royal Ballet has announced that Polina Semionova, Resident Guest Principal Artist with the Berlin State Ballet and former Principal Artist with The American Ballet Theatre in New York, will guest perform the iconic dual lead role of Odette and Odile in the world's best-loved ballet, Swan Lake, with BRB next year. This will be a rare chance to see one of the greatest ballerinas of our generation perform in the UK, in BRB's home city at the Birmingham Hippodrome for two nights only on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 February 2023.

Birmingham Royal Ballet's Director Carlos Acosta said "Polina is a ballerina of such quality and grace, the kind of dancer that makes everything she does so special, a great role model to follow. She has cultivated a string of awards and an extensive career that has led her to perform with the major opera houses of the world. I'm thrilled that she will dance with Birmingham Royal Ballet and that British audiences will have a rare chance to see her dance live. Having her in BRB's Swan Lake will enrich the perspective of our dancers and ultimately will inspire them."

Birmingham Royal Ballet revives Peter Wright and Galina Samsova's glorious journey into Swan Lake with this lavish production, with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia performing Tchaikovsky's superb music live alongside BRB's spectacular dancers. This romantic fable of ill-fated passion has bewitched audiences for generations and will tour to Southampton Mayflower, Birmingham Hippodrome, The Lowry, Salford, Sunderland Empire, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Edinburgh Festival Theatre from January - March 2023.

Prince Siegfried is out hunting one night when he happens upon a flock of graceful swans. When one of them turns into a beautiful woman, the Prince is utterly smitten - but Odette explains that she has fallen under an evil spell cast by the evil Baron von Rothbart, which keeps her in swan form from dawn to dusk. Can Siegfried's love break the spell? Find out in this exquisite production of a true ballet classic.

About Polina Semionova

Born in Moscow, Polina Semionova received her ballet education at the Bolshoi Ballet School and was engaged as Principal Dancer at the Ballet of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden immediately after graduating at the age of 17. Since September 2012 she has been Principal Dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, Principal Guest at the Mikhailovsky Theater St. Petersburg and at the Bavarian State Ballet Munich.

Polina Semionova dances almost all major parts of classical ballet: Odette/Odile (Swan Lake), Nikia (La Bayadère), Marie (The Nutcracker), Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Swanilda (Coppélia), Kitri (Don Quixote), Giselle and Myrtha (Giselle), Tatjana (John Crankos Onegin), Sieglinde and Brünnhilde (Maurice Béjart's Ring around the Ring), Manon (title role), Julia (in Kenneth MacMillan's, Leonid Lavrowski's and Nacho Duato's versions of Romeo and Juliet), Michail Fokin's Scheherazade and Les Sylphides, the title roles in VLADIMIR MALAKHOV's Cinderella, Roland Petit's Carmen or Frederick Ashton's Sylvia. Her neoclassical repertoire includes Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, George Balanchine's Ballet Imperial, Diamonds, Apollon musagète (Terpsichore), A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tchaikovsky-Pas-de-deux, Theme and Variations and Symphony in C. She also interpreted William Forsythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and Herman Schmerman, John Neumeier's Nutcracker, Lady of the Camellias and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Jiří Kylián's Return to a Foreign Land, Antony Tudor's The Leaves are fading and Nacho Duato's White Darkness.

Choreographers such as Mauro Bigonzetti, Nacho Duato, Patrice Bart, Renato Zanella, Uwe Scholz, Alexei Ratmansky, Giorgio Madia, Twyla Tharp and Christian Spuck worked with her and created roles for her. Invitations have led Polina Semionova to the Milan Scala, the American Ballet Theatre, the Bavarian State Ballet, the Mikhailovsky Theater St. Petersburg, the Dresden Semperoper Ballet, the English National Ballet, Tokyo Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Vienna State Ballet, Zurich Ballet, Ballet of the Mariinsky Theater St. Petersburg, Bolschoi Ballet Moscow, Stuttgart Ballet and the Ballet of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.

The appreciation of her work finds expression in numerous awards: In 2001 she was awarded the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition in Moscow, in 2002 the First Prize of the Waganowa Ballet Competition St. Petersburg and the Junior Prize of the International Ballet Competition Nagoya Japan. In 2004 she was honored with the Berlin Audience Award Daphne, in 2005 with the Deutschen Kritikerpreis as well as the Deutschen Tanzpreis Zukunft. In 2007 she was named Dancer of the Year by the German ballet magazine tanz and received the Heinz Spoerli Prize in 2008. In 2014 she was awarded the most important prize in the ballet world, the Benois de la Danse. In April 2017 she was finally appointed Berliner Kammertänzerin by the Berlin Senate. In 2013 Polina Semionova was appointed the youngest honorary professor at the Staatliche Ballettschule Berlin.

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