Yana Salenko

Biography

Iana Salenko was born in 1983 in Kyiv, Ukraine. At the age of 16, she became the youngest dancer to perform principal roles with the Donetsk Ballet in 1999. In 2001, she was appointed Principal Dancer at the Kyiv Ballet, and in 2007, she joined Staatsballett Berlin as a Principal Dancer.

Her repertoire with Staatsballett Berlin includes:

• Cinderella and The Sleeping Beauty by Vladimir Malakhov
• The Sleeping Beauty by Nacho Duato
• The Nutcracker by Patrice Bart
• Onegin and Romeo and Juliet by John Cranko
• Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux by George Balanchine
• La Sylphide by Peter Schaufuss

Since 2013, Salenko has been a Guest Principal with The Royal Ballet in London, where she debuted as Kitri in Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote. In 2017, she performed in Balanchine’s Diamonds.

Awards

• 2002 – Gold Medal and Diaghilev Award at the Serge Lifar International Ballet Competition
• 2004 – Gold Medal at the ÖTR Contest in Vienna, Gold Medal and Natalia Makarova Award at the ARABESQUE Ballet Competition, Third Prize at the Varna International Ballet Competition
• 2005 – Gold Medals at the International Ballet Competitions in Helsinki and Nagoya
• 2012, 2014, 2016 – Honored at the Dance Open International Dance Festival
• 2016 – Named Best Female Dancer of the Year by Italian magazine Danza&Danza
• 2020 – Kulturen Berlin Prize
• 2024 – Awarded the title of Chamber Dancer of Berlin (Kammertänzerin)

Guest Performances

Salenko regularly performs as a guest artist worldwide. She has appeared as a principal guest with more than 25 companies, including:

• Royal Ballet
• English National Ballet
• Hong Kong Ballet
• Tokyo Ballet
• Companies in Florence, Munich, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rome, Essen, Bratislava, Slovenia, Almaty, and many others.