Biographie

Maria Kochetkova was born in Moscow, Russia and trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School. Maria danced with The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet before joining San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer from 2007 to 2018. From 2013 to 2017, Maria danced with American Ballet Theatre as a principal dancer and from 2020 to 2021, she performed with Finnish National Ballet.

Maria is in great demand as a guest artist and has danced with the Bolshoi, Stanislavsky, Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky Theatres, American Ballet Theatre, Rome Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Tokyo Ballet, National Ballet of Cuba, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Finnish National Ballet, Teatro Colon, Hong Kong Ballet, Dresden Semperoper, Staatsoper Berlin, Norwegian National Ballet and English National Ballet.

Maria’s repertoire is extensive and she has danced many principal roles including Sylvia, Medora in Le Corsaire, Golden Cockerel, Nikiya in La Bayadère, Kitri in Don Quixote, Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante and Kenneth MacMillan’s Winter Dreams. She has created a number of lead roles in ballets including David Dawson’s Anima Animus, Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella and Alexei Ratmansky’s From Foreign Lands.

Maria is an accomplished dancer and has been featured in a video for fashion designer Julien David, the official music video for The Cathedrals’ Unbound (2014) and Spirit of Van Cleef & Arpels (2014) video. She performed the role of Juliet in the film of Helgi Tomasson’s Romeo & Juliet as part of the inaugural season of Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance.

In 2009, Maria won the gold medal on NBC’s Superstars of Dance. She also won Ballerina of the Year at Premio Positano 2017, a Prix Benois de la danse in 2018, the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for her performance of Giselle, International Ballet Competitions in Korea, International Ballet Competition of Luxembourg in 2003, a silver medal at the Varna International Ballet Competition in 2002, a silver medal at the Prix de Lausanne and a bronze medal at Moscow International Competition in 2001.

Most recently, Maria presented her first solo project Catch Her if You Can at the Joyce Theater in New York City where she commissioned works by William Forsythe, Marcos Morau, David Dawson, Jerome Bel, Drew Jacoby and Sam Spiegel.