Prima Ballerina is Prima Assoluta in the U.K.

Natalia Osipova.
Photo by Damir Yusupov.

Natalia Osipova has won Britain’s Critics’ Circle National Dance award for Best Dancer of 2013. Qualifying artists must have performed in the U.K. between August 31, 2012 and September 1, 2013. Britain’s Judith Mackrell reported for The Guardian in her DANCEBLOG that, “there are few more dramatic and virtuoso stars in ballet today than Natalia Osipova – yet while the Russian ballerina wins her best female dancer award for performances with the St. Petersburg company the Mikhailovsky Ballet, and has been nominated in previous years for her performances with the Bolshoi, there is an extra frisson to her win this time around, given that her recent signing to the Royal Ballet has, for the time being, made her one of our own.” 

Natalia Osipova. Photo by Gene Schiavone

Osipova has appeared at the Center with the Bolshoi Ballet, the Center’s Tour de Force dance galas, in Reflections and American Ballet Theatre’s world premiere of its new production of Firebird. The incomparable Osipova returns to the Center with her equally phenomenal partner, Ivan Vasiliev, July 25 – 27. They will perform a special program titled Solo for Two.

Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev in Don Quixote.
Photo by Mikhail Logvinov, copyright Bolshoi Ballet.