Svetlana Lunkina

That year, Lunkina was awarded the Brilliance of the 21st Century award.

During her career, she has performed in such ballets as La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, La Fille du Pharaon, Spartacus and Chroma, and appeared at such theatres as the Berlin and Bavarian State Operas, and the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, among others.

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Lunkina (Светла́на Алекса́ндровна Лу́нькина; born 29 July 1979) is a Russian-Canadian ballerina who is a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada.

Lunkina was born in Moscow and attended the Moscow Choreographic Academy.

Upon her graduation in 1997, she joined the Bolshoi Ballet, where she worked under the tutelage of Ekaterina Maximova.

During her first season at the Bolshoi Theatre, she was chosen to perform the title role in Giselle and thus, at the age of 18, became the youngest Giselle in the history of the Bolshoi.

Over her 15-year career with the company, Lunkina danced many leading roles in both classical and contemporary ballets.

In 2001, she was a Triumph Youth Award recipient, and the following year, Alexander Grant cast her as Lise in the Bolshoi premiere of Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée.

Later, she worked extensively with Roland Petit, who gave her the roles of Liza in La Dame de Pique and Esmeralda in Notre-Dame de Paris in their Bolshoi premieres.

She also performed La Rose Malade, which Petit updated for Lunkina for the first time since Maya Plisetskaya danced it.

In 2002, Lunkina played one of the main characters in the feature film St.Petersburg-Cannes Express, by the American director John Daly; the world premiere screening took place in 2003 in Palm Springs, California.

In 2004, the Japanese portrait photographer Eichiro Sakata, included Lunkina in his photo gallery called Piercing the Sky as an outstanding contemporary personality.

Lunkina is married to Ukrainian-born producer Vladislav Moskalev and has two children: Maxim, born in January 2004, and Eva, born in April 2009.

She was promoted to the rank of principal dancer in 2005.

In 2006, she appeared as Giselle at the Vienna State Opera opposite Vladimir Malakhov.

In 2007, she performed with the Paris Opera Ballet as Lise in Ashton's La Fille mal gardée, opposite Mathieu Ganio, and as Clara in Rudolf Nureyev's The Nutcracker, opposite Jérémie Bélingard.

That year, Lunkina was awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse, sharing the prize for best female dancer with Agnès Letestu.

In 2008, Lunkina received the title Meritoriouos Artist of Russia.

In 2010, she was awarded with the prize Ballerina of the Decade, along with the three other well-known ballerinas: Diana Vishneva, Alina Cojocaru and Lucia Lacarra.

Lunkina joined the National Ballet of Canada as a principal guest artist in August 2013 and as a permanent principal dancer the following year.

With the company her repertoire has expanded to include roles such as Tatiana in John Cranko's Onegin and several ballets choreographed by John Neumeier: Romola de Pulszky in Nijinsky, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and the title role in Anna Karenina, which she danced in the company premiere.

In addition she has performed multiple ballets by George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor and Crystal Pite.

She has also continued to appear as a guest artist.

In 2013, Lunkina became the main attraction and the objet d'art of a European art exhibit, created by the artist Anna Gaskell.

In March 2014, she performed Petit's Le Jeune homme et la Mort at the London Coliseum.

On 18 March 2014, Lunkina publicly expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people following Russia's occupation of Crimea.

That year, she was invited as a guest artist in South Korea, and in April 2015, she performed in Taiwan.

In response to the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine, she gave a charity performance of Giselle at the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater in October 2015.

In 2016 and 2018, she performed with the Asami Maki Ballet Tokyo, starring in Swan Lake and Asami Maki's Asuka. In October 2018, she performed in Singapore.

In September 2016, she returned there to dance Odette-Odile in Swan Lake.

In April 2022, she performed at a benefit gala in Toronto for Ukrainian war relief.

She has also provided material assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Lunkina is the artistic director of the Canada All Star Ballet Gala.

Its first performance took place on 11 February 2017 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, featuring principal dancers from American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi Ballet, Rome Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.

In May 2019, she danced the title role in Neumeier's Anna Karenina with the Hamburg Ballet.

In 2019, collaborating with scientists and programmers, Lunkina developed the 1on1 Ballet Studio app, an interactive training program designed to develop ballet technique and proper form, which uses AI to analyze execution and offer suggestions on how to improve ballet technique.