Viviana Durante

Durante holds diplomas in dance education from the Royal Ballet School and Trinity College, London. In 2016, she returned to The Royal Ballet as a regular guest coach. In 2017 she founded Viviana Durante Company which debuted with Kenneth MacMillan: Steps Back in Time at the Barbican Centre. Durante was the consultant and wrote the foreword for the 2018 DK book Ballet: The Definitive Illustrated History. She was appointed Director of Dance at English National Ballet School in 2019.

Durante is a patron of The Hammond School and New English Ballet Theatre. She is a regular juror at competitions including the Prix de Lausanne and the Beijing International Ballet Competition. In 2010 a work choreographed by Durante premiered at Dance Base, Edinburgh and the same year she collaborated with Richard Eyre on a dance adaptation of the film Truly, Madly, Deeply.

Durante married the British author and journalist Nigel Cliff in June 2009. They have a son, and live in London.

In 1999, a disagreement between Durante and The Royal Ballet, reportedly following her request for a cast change after she was dropped by a partner, blew up into a national media storm. After what the media called a ‘dazzling 12-year career’ as one of the British ballet’s major stars, Durante left the company in 2001 to pursue a freelance career.

Durante joined American Ballet Theatre as a principal dancer for the 1999 spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City. She subsequently appeared as a guest artist with major international ballet companies including La Scala Milan, Tokyo Ballet and Dresden Semperoper Ballett. From 2003 to 2012 she was the leading ballerina of Japan’s K-Ballet, founded by fellow Royal Ballet alumnus Tetsuya Kumakawa. Continuing to perform the classics, she also took roles in ballets including Bintley’s Cyrano de Bergerac; George Balanchine’s Apollo, Ballet Imperial, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Who Cares? and Symphony in C; Rudolf Nureyev’s Laurentia; Tetley’s La Ronde; Uwe Scholz’s The Red and the Black; Roland Petit’s Coppelia, Carmen and Duke Ellington Ballet; and André Prokovsky’s Anna Karenina.

In 1995, she appeared in the title role of a ninety-minute version of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, which was telecast on Great Performances by PBS during the Christmas season. In 1998, Durante made a return to the Rome stage as a guest artist in Prokovsky’s production of the Tchaikovsky ballet, one of many international guest appearances.

In 1992 Durante and her fellow principal Darcey Bussell were the joint subjects of a South Bank Show documentary Two Ballerinas at the Royal Ballet (UK: Two Royal Ballet Dancers), and the following year both were invited by the New York City Ballet for the Balanchine Celebration at the New York State Theater.

Durante was born in Rome and started ballet there at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma aged six. Spotted by ballerina Galina Samsova, she joined the lower school of the Royal Ballet School at White Lodge in Richmond Park, London. A year later she featured in a Thames Television documentary entitled I really want to dance. Shortly after graduating to the upper school, aged 17, she joined the Royal Ballet Company. Two years later she attracted national attention when she took over as Odette/Odile in mid-performance, never having been taught the role. At 21 she became the company’s youngest principal dancer, and a year later, in 1990, she became the youngest artist to receive the Evening Standard Ballet Award.

Viviana Durante (born 8 May 1967) is an English-trained Italian ballet dancer, considered one of the great dramatic ballerinas of recent times. She was a principal dancer of The Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Teatro alla Scala and K-Ballet. She is currently Director of Dance at English National Ballet School and Artistic Director of Viviana Durante Company, with which she occasionally performs.