Svetlana Beriosova

Svetlana Nikolayevna Beriosova (; 24 September 1932 – 10 November 1998), also spelled Beriozova or Beryozova, was a Lithuanian-British prima ballerina who danced with The Royal Ballet for more than 20 years.

Early life Beriosova was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, the daughter of Nicolas Beriosoff (or Nicolas Beriozoff; 1906–1996), a Lithuanian ballet master. His pupils included Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Alicia Markova; he founded the Zurich Opera Ballet School. Beriosoff was of ethnic Russian descent and emigrated to England. Beriosova came to the United States in 1940, where she studied ballet. Her mother died in New York when she was 10 years old. Nicolas Beriosoff—called "Poppa"—then married a wardrobe mistress from his dance company; after their divorce, he married an Italian surgeon, and after another divorce married half-German Doris Catana, the same age as his daughter, who ran a ballet school in Zurich. She and her husband both had severe problems with alcoholism, which in her case intensified once she retired.

She was a close friend of actress/singer Julie Andrews, and was the godmother to scenic designer/theatre director Tony Walton's daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton.

Beriosova died from cancer, aged 66, in Kensington, London in 1998. She was survived by her stepmother, Doris Beriozoff. In the Financial Times, the eminent ballet critic Clement Crisp wrote that Beriosova was "a ballerina of serene physical beauty and of no less lovely temperament", with "pearl-like radiance", and that to all of her performances she "brought a generous and illuminating sensibility" and was "in everything a ballerina whose understanding of her art and command of its nuances went to the very core of any role she assumed", concluding her to have been "blessed with an extraordinary ability to tell the great truths about theatrical dancing with a heart-stopping sensitivity and dignity".