Sergei Polunin (1989-). Dancer and Director

Sergei Polunin is one of the most talented dancers of his generation, but his career has been marked by controversy. Born in Kherson, (now in Ukraine), in 1989, he trained initially in the Kyiv Ballet School and, from 2003, The Royal Ballet School. He joined The Royal Ballet and became the youngest-ever Royal Ballet principal in 2010. However, feeling that ‘the artist in me was dying’, he left The Royal Ballet in 2012 to become a freelance artist, dancing in Russia and elsewhere.

In 2014 Polunin started working in video and film, and in 2017 started Project Polunin, a multi-media enterprise, later to be called Polunin Ink. The company has mounted a number of ballet productions in which Polunin himself danced, at times along with Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru, in such places as Verona, Dubai, Japan and Israel.