Viktoria Tereshkina

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 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 is married to Artem Shpilevsky (former soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet) and they have one daughter named Milada born in 2013.

Career

Following her graduation in 2001, Tereshkina immediately joined the Mariinsky Ballet where she became a soloist in 2005 and a principal in 2008.

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 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".

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..

Awards

The awards received by Viktoria Tereshkina include: