Natalia Osipova

Natalia Osipova is a Principal of The Royal Ballet, born in Moscow in 1986. She trained at the Mikhail Lavrosky Ballet School from the age of eight before entering the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, where she studied until 2004. She danced with the Bolshoi Ballet and was promoted to Principal there in 2010, before joining the Mikhailovsky Ballet as principal in 2011 and American Ballet Theatre as principal in March 2012. She joined The Royal Ballet as a Principal in autumn 2013.

Osipova is internationally recognised as one of the most electrifying dancers of her era, combining extraordinary technical powers — particularly in elevation and speed — with a deeply personal dramatic intensity. Her portrayals of Giselle, Juliet, Kitri in Don Quixote, Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Manon, and Tatiana in Onegin have been defining performances of the contemporary stage.

Beyond the classical canon, Osipova has built a significant parallel career in contemporary work, creating roles in pieces by Alexei Ratmansky, Arthur Pita, Wayne McGregor, and others, and appearing in Pita's Facada alongside Ivan Vasiliev.

Her many honours include the Benois de la Danse (2008), two Golden Mask Awards (2008, 2009), and multiple Critics' Circle National Dance Awards (2010, 2014, 2022), cementing her status as one of the leading classical ballerinas of the twenty-first century.