Nina Ananiashvili

Nina Ananiashvili was born in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. She began ballet education at the Georgian State Choreographic School when she was ten years old. She enrolled in the Moscow Choreographic School when she was thirteen years old. When she graduated in 1981, she joined the Bolshoi Ballet.

While remaining a Bolshoi prima ballerina, she joined the ABT as a principal dancer. She has also performed with the Royal Danish Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, the Royal Ballet of the United Kingdom, Covent Garden, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the National Ballets of Norway, Finland, and Portugal... She has performed over a hundred ballet pieces and has earned first prizes in the Varna International Ballet Competition (1980), the Moscow International Ballet Competition (1981), and the International Ballet Competition Jackson, Mississippi (1986, USA).

Alluring grace, alluring mystique, personal enchantment, instinctive expressiveness, and the technical wizardry to lure the public into unvoiced passions and aspirations – these are the attributes that distinguish a handful of true ballerinas from multitudes of mere female ballet-dancers. Nina Ananiashvili, the Georgian-born, Bolshoi-trained artistic director of the State Ballet of Georgia, is among that small group.

Born: 1963
Nationality: Georgian