Anna Nikulina (Bolshoi Theatre) and Kim Kimin in Swan Lake

Kim Kimin in the ballet Swan Lake

Kim Kimin his already performed this role on tour in Seoul. The graduate of the Korea National University of Arts succeeded in winning the hearts of Korean audiences. Now he faces the task of winning acclaim from demanding St Petersburg audiences. The dancer’s virtuoso skills have already been noted in Don Quixote and Études. While still a Mariinsky Theatre trainee, he leapt around the stage in Le Corsaire to thunderous applause. Kimin is currently a First Soloist at the theatre and he now faces an exam in his talent for aristocratic manner and dance elegance, both so vital to the role of the prince in a ballet that is one of the most vivid embodiments of the St Petersburg classical style.

That evening Kim Kimin will be partnered by Anna Nikulina, a Lead Soloist of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. The role of Odette-Odile has been in the dancer’s repertoire since the very start of her almost ten-year-long stage career. At the Bolshoi Theatre she dances Yuri Grigorovich’s version of Swan Lake, while she has danced other versions of the ballet at other theatres. Anna Nikulina will be performing Konstantin Sergeyev’s revised version of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s choreography for the first time with the Mariinsky Ballet.