Masterclass Masterclass Ballet and Repertoire (female)

Maria Kochetkova is an internationally acclaimed ballerina, teacher, curator, and producer. Since 2025, she has served as a teacher with the Royal Danish Ballet, while continuing to perform and collaborate internationally. She is celebrated for her technical brilliance, artistic curiosity, and commitment to shaping the future of ballet.

Born in Moscow in 1984, Kochetkova trained at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. After graduating and winning the Prix de Lausanne in 2002, she joined The Royal Ballet in London and later danced with English National Ballet. In 2007, she became a principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, where she remained until 2018, performing many of the most demanding roles in both classical and contemporary repertoire. From 2013 to 2017, she was also a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, performing leading roles in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, La Bayadère, Le Corsaire, Sylvia, and The Golden Cockerel.

Throughout her career, Kochetkova has worked closely with some of the most influential teachers and artists in ballet, including Irina Kolpakova, Nina Ananiashvili, Larisa Lezhnina, Julio Bocca, Laurent Hilaire, Alla Osipenko, Nikita Dolgushin, Lyubov Kunakova, Irek Mukhamedov, and Natalia Makarova, whose guidance has profoundly shaped her artistic voice and approach to both classical and contemporary repertoire.

From 2018 to 2020, Kochetkova worked as a freelance principal dancer while expanding her practice as a curator and producer. During the 2020–2021 season, she joined Finnish National Ballet as a principal dancer.

Throughout her career, she has appeared as a guest artist with many of the world’s leading ballet companies, including the Bolshoi and Stanislavsky Theaters in Moscow, the Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky Theaters in St. Petersburg, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, American Ballet Theatre, Tokyo Ballet, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Compañía Nacional de Danza in Madrid, Semperoper Dresden, Staatsballett Berlin, Norwegian National Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Hong Kong Ballet, Rome Opera, Portuguese National Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, and Georgian National Ballet.

Alongside her classical career, Kochetkova is widely recognized for her artistic versatility and close collaborations with leading contemporary choreographers, including William Forsythe, Marcos Morau, Jérôme Bel, David Dawson, Benjamin Millepied, Drew Jacoby, Ella Rothschild, Liliana Barros, Julian Nicosia, Paul Lightfoot, and Sebastian Kloborg. These collaborations reflect her deep engagement with the evolving role and relevance of ballet today.

In 2019, she premiered her first solo-curated project, Catch Her If You Can, at The Joyce Theater in New York, commissioning new works by William Forsythe, David Dawson, Drew Jacoby, Jérôme Bel, and Marcos Morau.

Kochetkova has consistently expanded the contexts in which ballet is experienced, performing in museums and contemporary art spaces including the Glyptoteket in Copenhagen with La Veronal, Copenhagen Contemporary with choreographer MJ Harper, the Bass Museum during Miami Art Basel, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo in Old Man, a performance project created in collaboration with artist Vibeke Tandberg.

Her artistic reach also extends into film, music, fashion, and visual culture. She has appeared in a music video with composer Dev Hynes, collaborated on video projects with the Kronos Quartet, danced in the short film Spirit of Van Cleef & Arpels directed by Mathieu Demy, and participated in a video tribute honoring Thierry Mugler. She has collaborated with fashion houses and designers including Chloé, Ganni, Arthur Arbesser, and Natasha Ramsay, creating a new costume for a commissioned work performed at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Kochetkova’s artistry has been recognized with the highest international honors, including the Benois de la Danse Award (2018), the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Best Individual Performance for Giselle, and the Positano Dance Award’s Dancer of the Year.