A graduate of the Roman Turczynowicz State Ballet School in Warsaw, she trained there with well-known Russian teachers: Kira Kniaseva, Alla Lenina, Gennady Ledyakh, and Leonid Zhdanov. After leaving school in 1977, at first she was a dancer with the ballet company of the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, but already showed more interest in teaching as a career. In 1978 she passed the entrance exam for a ballet master course at the State Conservatory in Leningrad, where she spent five years on a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art. She graduated in 1982, coming first in the class of Prof. Pyotr Gusev, and returned to the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw as a full-time ballet teacher and coach. She remained in this job for 26 years, teaching daily classical classes, assisting the choreographers, introducing new casts to the theatre’s productions, and handling revivals of earlier repertoire.
In the course of her career as a ballet mistress of Warsaw’s ballet company, she worked with many choreographers and ballet masters on their productions at the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera. They included Pyotr Gusev, John Neumeier, Andrzej Ziemski (Béjart's “Romeo and Juliet – Pas de deux”), Konstantin Sergeyev and Natalia Dudinskaya, Richard Collins (Lichine's “Graduation Ball”), Axelle Arnouts (Béjart's “Don Giovanni Variations”), Lorca Massine, Pierre Lacotte, Irek Mukhamedov, Boris Eifman, Natalia Makarova, Jíři Kylián, Georgette Tsinguirides (Cranko's “Onegin”), Alexei Ratmansky, and Patrice Bart. She was also an assistant to Polish choreographers, including Krzysztof Pastor, Witold Gruca, Teresa Kujawa, Andrzej Glegolski, Emil Wesołowski, Waldemar Wołk-Karaczewski, Ewa Wycichowska, Zofia Rudnicka, Gustw Klauzner, and Jacek Przybyłowicz. In 1990, she was a choreographer for the Warsaw production of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s chamber opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors”.
With the founding of the Polish National Ballet at the Teatr Wielki, on 29 April 2009 the ballet’s director Krzysztof Pastor appointed her the company’s principal ballet mistress. Her responsibilities include organizing the everyday work of the ballet masters, teachers, and dancers of the Polish National Ballet, overseeing the entirety of the current ballet repertoire, scheduling classes, and she also continues to work as an assistant choreographer on new productions. She is a recipient of Silver Medal for Merit to Culture ‘Gloria Artis’ (2015).
photo: Justyna Mielniczuk
