Meet the two Americans who joined the Mariinsky Ballet in the 2025-2026 season. Yana Peneva, who hails from Florida, and Alexei Orokhovsky, a Mississippi native, both began their training in the USA, flourished in the YAGP competition circuit with multiple gold medals in their names, and then travelled to Germany to polish their training at the John Cranko Academy in Stuttgart.

Both were hired and joined the Mariinsky at the start of the 2025 season. A series of debuts then followed at dizzying speed, one after the next: The Nutcracker, Don Quixote, Pharoah’s Daughter, Corsaire and many others. Both dancers have been given soloist billing and are performing the core repertoire of Petipa classics alongside modern works. They also continue to guest inside and outside of Russia, combining a touring schedule with a constant list of premieres in Saint Petersburg.

After gold medal wins at the Moscow International Ballet Competition in June 2026 both were immediately promoted to First Soloist — one rank below principal — at the Mariinsky. Despite their youth — both are still in their late teens at the time of this interview– they display incredible maturity, grace, and gratitude for the opportunities they have had and the experiences that have formed them.

If you haven’t yet seen it, please visit the Vaganova Today Youtube channel at vaganovatoday2989 to see the interview with them. And stay tuned to this site for reviews of their coming debuts!

When the White Nights Festival opened in May 2026, one particular debut hinted at a very bright future for one ballet soloist. Maria Bulanova reprised the role of Odette/Odile a second time in early July, and the results proved spectacular.

At 175 cm, this frank, hard-working ballerina might not have been the typical choice for “Swan Lake”. With long limbs, an easy jump, and a penchant for quick, plentiful turns, Bulanova is perhaps best described as a “tall Kitri”, filled with spice from her Armenian-Azerbaijani parents, and grace from years, of course, at the ballet barre. She is an iconic Gamzattii, a refined Lilac Fairy and her endless balances mean that legato roles, despite not being her preference, are nonetheless roles at which she excels. For more on her background, see our interview with her here.

The White Nights Festival –two months saturated with performances that run daily on 3 stages simultaneously– offers viewers their choice of ballet, opera or symphonic works. It opened this year with “Swan Lake” featuring the remarkable debut of rising soloist Maria Bulanova (see our interview with her here), and in the opera world, the premiere of the new version of “Boris Godunov” by Bulgarian Orlin Anastasov, an experienced former opera singer in his own right who knows the work inside and out, and now brings his experience to the director’s chair.

Though only half the festival has passed, the ballet stage has already unveiled a fresh mixed bill: “Les Sylphides”, Leonid Jakobson’s “Brilliant Divertissement”, and Roland Petit’s famed “Le Jeune Homme et La Mort“. The latter two are stage premieres, with “Homme“ revived especially for the Mariinsky after a lapse in rights. Luigi Bonino rehearsed the casts first in silence—true to the original—then with Bach’s Passacaglia in C Minor. Happily, the new agreement secures a five-year run, giving local audiences ample opportunity to see this landmark work.

The ability to give 110% to a performance even amidst the more challenging sides of the ballet profession — overwork, urgent rehearsals, injury, fatigue — is one sign of true artists, those who place dedication above personal preference and infuse sheer grit into the process when perhaps not much else is left.  While far from a desirable situation (for safety reasons, if nothing less), sometimes the profession demands just that: determination and strength, mental perhaps more than physical. We always help that those times are few and far between, how much easier ballet would be if casting were always evenly distributed, opportunity plentiful, time more forgiving, and injury absent. Theatre life however, is not this way. On May 23rd, a top level “Bayadere” cast graced the Mariinsky stage with true art. Yes, it was the usual high-caliber delivery, but against the backdrop of exceptional circumstances, and nonetheless drawing a full hall of faithful viewers and loud applause.

Having joined the Vaganova Academy in the tumultuous 1990s in Russia, Alexei Nedviga has witnessed the shifts of several generations of dancers in St. Petersburg. This experienced dancer has performed in works ranging from Forsythe to the entire Petipa repertoire, and 7 years ago returned to his roots – at the Vaganova Academy – where he began teaching the next generation of young male dancers. Now dividing his time between giving company class at the Mariinsky, monitoring rehearsals, and racing to the Academy to teach younger students the “ABC”s of the classical canon, Nedviga is a little-known well of talent in the country’s northern capital. VaganovaToday sat down to learn the details of his story which we’re sure you too will find inspiring. The Russian original of this interview can be found here.

As someone blessed with near-ideal traits for classical ballet, the first question is, do you come from a ballet family?
It’s actually interesting, because my family isn’t balletic at all. My mother is a doctor and my father was in the military. He didn’t serve in St. Petersburg, but beyond the Lake Baikal. When I was six years old, he began attending the Military Academy here, and my family moved. I have a younger sister, she was born just before we moved.

In childhood I was a very active boy. It seems to me that at that time all children were that way, were were constantly in motion, always outdoors. Once my mom lost me and she came looking for me at the construction site, holding my sister in her arms. It was a typical childhood – before today’s “gadgets”.

February 2026 brought with it a flurry of new productions in both opera (Idomeneo, Boris Gudonov) and ballet (Khorovody to music by Rodion Schedrin, choreographed by Slava Samodurov), but one event in particular created a fury among balletomanes and Mariinsky followers worldwide.

In honor of what would have been the late Vladimir Shklyarov’s birthday on February 9th, the Mariinsky held a performance of “Don Quixote” dedicated to him, featuring his long-time partner, prima ballerina Viktoria Tereshkina.  The cast also included  a debut by new second soloist Alexey Orokhovsky who hails from the USA, graduated from the John Cranko School last year, and holds a series of awards from various international ballet competitions.

This move was considered controversial for several reasons: placing a relative newcomer in an evening dedicated to a world ballet star, placing him alongside a tenured and beloved prima ballerina, and doing so on the historical stage, are all points that ballet circles discussed locally in the days prior to the performance.

As it turned out, the decision proved to be the right one: an evening filled with off-the-charts electricity and energy, not just from the performers but from the audience, honored the memory of Vladimir Shklyarov in one of his signature roles.  Prima ballerina Viktoria Tereshkina brought palpable flirtation and an extra expressive sultry nature to her role as Kitri, supporting her onstage counterpart with verve and spice.

Alexei Orokhovsky, tasked with one of the most virtuoso roles in the classical repertoire, did not disappoint. Blessed with an effortless jump that achieves great height seemingly with no preparation, he performs the most technical combinations with great ease.

How a young man trained in Siberia became a principal dancer with Eifman Ballet and is now an in-demand choreographer in his own right. Read on for his inspiring story and click here for the Russian language version of this interview.

Do you come from a family of dancers?
In my family, unfortunately, no one was connected with the dance world. My mother is a biology teacher, and my father served in the military engineering troops, he was a sapper by profession. He was sent to the Siberian Military District in Novosibirsk to work. At that time, I was still very young and went to kindergarten there and then secondary school. My mother was always drawn to art, and when I was 6 years old, she sent me to the children’s choir at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater.  It was my first acquaintance with the theatrical world, first of all with opera, where children participated in many performances, such as “Boris Godunov”, “Khovanshchina”, “Tosca”, etc.

07 December 2025

The number of small production groups in Russia has grown over the past decade, and increasingly contemporary or modern works draw audiences eager to see something new. This is part of the billing strategy for the “Two Sisters” production company who created a one-act dance drama based on Lev Tolstoy’s “Anna Kareninfa”. The performance, called “The Train Will Leave in…” debuted at the Kamenostrov Theatre in Petersburg the first weekend in December. It uses the marketing theme of a departing train, and a black-and-white colour palette with onstage ceramic figures to present a myriad of deep-seated emotions that leaves most viewers spellbound.

Performed by two Honored Artists of Russia, former Mariinsky principal dancer Daria Pavlenko, who has ventured into exploratory contemporary dance forms in recent years, and active Bolshoi principal Vladislav Lantratov, a popular audience favorite in Moscow and abroad,  “The Train Will Leave In…” uses abstract symbolic representation of passion, freedom and longing. Yet the core emotions – love, despair and loss – are palpable mainly through Pavlenko’s expert embodiment of Anna.

In 2017, Camilla Mazzi made history by becoming the first Italian female to join the Mariinsky Ballet. Having studied in her native Italy and polished her mastery in Moscow, Camilla quickly won the hearts of the Petersburg public and is now a leading soloist. Delve into her inspiring story below. For the Russian version of this interview, please click here.

What led you to ballet?

I started dancing when I was 9 years old because I had a small curvature in my spine and the doctor said I needed to either swim or take ballet classes. I swam, but to be honest I didn’t like it because it was boring, so I decided to try ballet and I immediately fell in love with the art form.

Slowly I started to take more and more classes, and then a few years later I decided I wanted to become a ballerina. I was born in Turin, in the north of Italy, but there are no large ballet schools there. I studied in a small school and later I was lucky to learn that there was a good pedagogue in the city named Oksana Kichenko. She had studied at the Moscow State Choreographic Academy and worked at the Bolshoi Theatre.