Svetlana Lunkina

Lunkina is the artistic director of the Canada All Star Ballet Gala. Its first performance took place on 11 February 2017 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, featuring principal dancers from American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi Ballet, Rome Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.

Lunkina joined the National Ballet of Canada as a principal guest artist in August 2013 and as a permanent principal dancer the following year. In 2014 she was invited as a guest dancer in South Korea, and in April 2015 she performed in Taiwan.

Lunkina has two children: Maxim, born in January 2004, and Eva, born in April 2009.

In 2002, Lunkina played one of the main characters in the feature film St.Petersburg-Cannes Express, by the American director John Daly; the world premiere screening took place in 2003 in Palm Springs, California. In 2004, the Japanese portrait photographer Eichiro Sakata, included Lunkina in his photo gallery called "Piercing the Sky" as an outstanding contemporary personality. In 2013 Lunkina became the main attraction and the “objet d'art” of a European art exhibit, created by the artist Anna Gaskell.

Over her 15-year career with the company, Lunkina danced many leading roles in both classical and contemporary ballets. In 2001 she was a Triumph Youth Award recipient, and the following year, Alexander Grant set the role of Lise in Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée on her. Later she worked extensively with Roland Petit, who gave her the roles of Liza in La Dame de Pique and Esmeralda in Notre-Dame de Paris in their Bolshoi premieres. She also performed his La Rose Malade, which Petit updated for Lunkina for the first time since Maya Plisetskaya danced it. She was promoted to the rank of principal dancer in 2005. Lunkina was awarded Brilliance of the 21st Century award the same year. In 2010 she was awarded with the prize Ballerina of the Decade, along with the three other well-known ballerinas: Diana Vishneva, Alina Cojocaru and Lucia Lacarra. During her career she also performed in such ballets as The Nutcracker, Don Quixote and The Sleeping Beauty, and appeared at such theatres as the Berlin and Vienna State Operas, and with the Paris Opera Ballet, among others.

Svetlana Lunkina was born in Moscow and attended the Moscow Choreographic Academy. Upon her graduation in 1997, she joined the Bolshoi Ballet. During her first season at the Bolshoi Theatre she was chosen to perform the title role in Giselle and thus, at the age of 18, became the youngest Giselle in the history of the Bolshoi.

Svetlana Aleksandrovna Lunkina (Russian: Светлана Александровна Лунькина ; born 29 July 1979) is a Russian ballerina who is a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada.