Yuriko Kajiya

Early life

Yuriko was born in Nagoya, Japan, and started training with Matsumoto Michiko Ballet when she was eight years old. She moved to China at the age of 10, where she studied with and graduated from the school of the Shanghai Ballet. She won the Best Performance Award in the senior category at the Tao Li Bei National Ballet Competition in 1997, at age 13. In 1999, she was a finalists at the Third International Ballet Competition, held in Nagoya. She won a Prix de Lausanne in January 2000, allowing her to continue her training with the school of the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto.

Career

She joined the ABT Studio Company in September 2001, joined ABT's main company as an apprentice in 2002, and became a member of the corps de ballet in June 2002. Effective August 2007, she was promoted to the rank of soloist. She is the only Japanese soloist in ABT.

Her repertory with ABT includes: Gamzatti in La Bayadère, Blossom in Cinderella, Gulnare in Le Corsaire, Kitri, Amour and a Flower Girl in Don Quixote, Zulma and the peasant pas de deux in Giselle, Valencienne in The Merry Widow, Clara in The Nutcracker Henrietta in Raymonda, the Fairies of Fervor and Joy in The Sleeping Beauty, the pas de trois in Swan Lake, and the Waltz in Les Sylphides.

Other work

Kajiya starred in the 2007 documentary Passion Across a Continent, which aired on MBS in Japan. In July 2010, she appeared on an episode of the American television series So You Think You Can Dance, along with fellow ABT soloist Jared Matthews. In addition to dancing with ABT, she teaches master classes the United States and Japan.