POLINA SEMIONOVA

Born in Moscow, Polina Semionova received her ballet training at the Bolshoi Ballet School and immediately after graduating at the age of 17 was engaged as principal dancer at the ballet of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Since September 2012 she has been a Principal Dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, Principal Guest at the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich.
Polina Semionova dances almost all major roles 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 Cranko's »Onegin«), Sieglinde and Brünnhilde (Maurice Béjart's »Ring um den Ring«), »Manon« (title role), Julia ( in Kenneth MacMillan's, Leonid Lavrovsky's and Nacho Duato's versions of »Romeo and Juliet«), Mikhail Fokin's »Scheherazade« and »Les Sylphides«, the title roles in Vladimir Malakhov's »Cinderella«, in 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 has also interpreted William Forsythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and Herman Schmerman, John Neumeier's The 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.

Polina Semionova has been invited to La Scala in Milan, the American Ballet Theatre, the Bavarian State Ballet, the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg, the Dresden Semperoper Ballet, the English National Ballet, the Tokyo Ballet, the Finnish National Ballet, the Vienna State Ballet, the Zurich Ballet, the Ballet of the Mariinsky Theater St. Petersburg, Bolshoi Ballet Moscow, Stuttgart Ballet and the Ballet of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.
The recognition of her work is reflected in numerous awards: in 2001 she received the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Moscow, in 2002 the first prize at the Vaganova Ballet Competition in St. Petersburg and the Junior Prize at the International Ballet Competition in Nagoya Japan. In 2004 she was honored with the Berlin audience award "Daphne", in 2005 with the German Critics' Prize and the German Dance Prize Future. 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 what is probably the most important prize in the world of ballet, the »Benois de la Danse«. In April 2017 she was finally appointed »Berlin Chamber Dancer« by the Berlin Senate. In 2013 Polina Semionova was appointed the youngest honorary professor at the Berlin State Ballet School.