Viktoria Tereshkina

Viktoria Valerievna Tereshkina (; born 31 May 1983) is a Russian ballet dancer, who performs as a principal dancer with the Mariinsky Ballet in Saint Petersburg. People's Artist of Russia. Laureate of the highest theater award of St. Petersburg "Golden Soffit" (2005, 2006), and Laureate of the IX International Ballet Competition "Arabesque" (Perm, 2006).

Early life Tereshkina was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia where her father was a gymnastics teacher. From the age of four she was trained in artistic gymnastics in which she performed increasingly well. However, when she reached the age of 10, her parents decided her prospects for an extended career would be better in ballet. As a result, she was sent to the ballet school in Krasnoyarsk. When she was 16, she took part in a ballet festival in Saint Petersburg. She was noticed by Igor Belsky who recommended she should join the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet where he was artistic director. After training for five years in Krasnoyarsk, she therefore spent a further three years in Saint Petersburg in the class of Marina Vassilieva.

Tereshkina has one daughter named Milada born in 2013.

Tereshkina was married to Artem Shpilevsky (former soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet). She is now married to Roman Belyakov, a soloist with the Mariinsky Ballet.

Career Following her graduation in 2001, Tereshkina immediately joined the Mariinsky Ballet where she became a soloist in 2005 and a principal in 2008. She debuted as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake in 2002; it was her first principal role.

Tereshkina has performed in Mariinsky's extensive repertoire of classical and modern ballet. Particularly notable are her Gamzatti and Nikya in La Bayadère, Kitri in Don Quixote, Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Queen Mekhemene Banu in A Legend of Love, and Terpsichore in Apollo. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Sarah Crompton referred to her as a "rising talent", describing her as a "filigree beauty" with "fiendish fouettés".

She created the role of Parasha in Yuri Smekalov's production of The Bronze Horseman (2016), Paquita in Smekalov's revival of the ballet of the same name (2017), and The Mistress of Copper Mountain in the Mariinsky revival of Yury Grigorovich's The Stone Flower in 2016.

In 2010, Tereshkina danced Aurora in Konstantin Sergeyev's version of the Sleeping Beauty when it was presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. She has toured with the Mariinsky to the United States (California, Washington D.C., and New York City) and throughout Europe and Asia.

In 2014, Tereshkina danced Nikiya in American Ballet Theatre's production of La Bayadère.

Repertoire Viktoria has danced ballets choreographed by Marius Petipa, Yury Grigorovich, Alexei Ratmansky, Michel Fokine, George Balanchine, etc.