Yuri Burlaka

Upon completing his training at the Moscow Ballet School (now the Moscow State Academy of Choreography) in Professor Peter Pestov’s class, he was admitted to the Russian Ballet Moscow Theatre where, in 2006, he was a choreographer and, in 2007-2008, its artistic director.

In 1993-96, he studied at the choreographic faculty of the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (Vyacheslav Gordeev’s class), then transferred to the Moscow State Academy of Choreography, from which he graduated with honors as teacher-choreographer.

In 2009–2011, he was ballet director of the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia. Here he revived fragments of Marius Petipa’s ballets The Awakening of Flora and The Magic Mirror and staged the Grand pas from Paquita (2008), the ballets Le Corsaire  (with Alexei Ratmansky, 2007) and Esmeralda (with Vasily Medvedev, 2011). Author of the musical dramatization of the ballet The Flames of Paris (directed by Alexei Ratmansky, 2008).

Since 2017, Burlaka has been chief choreographer of the Samara Opera and Ballet Theatre, where he staged the ballets Esmeralda and Swan Lake.

He mounted classical ballets and evenings of old choreography in Chelyabinsk, Perm, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin and Mexico City. In Ekaterinburg, he participated in the staging of Don Quixote (choreographer Vyacheslav Gordeyev, 2006). Here he revived the suite from the ballet The Naiad and the Fisherman (choreography by Alexander Shiryaev, 2017) and staged Don Quixote (choreography by Alexander Gorsky, 2019).