THE COMPANY

Joy Womack is an internationally acclaimed American ballerina based in Paris. She made history as the first American woman to graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and join the Bolshoi Ballet as a full company member.

At age 19, she became a principal dancer with the Kremlin Ballet, launching an international career that has spanned major stages across Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States.

A prizewinner at prestigious competitions including the Varna, Moscow, and Korea International Ballet Competitions. Joy has performed leading roles in both classical and contemporary repertoire. Her multifaceted career includes a featured role on the Amazon Prime series Étoile, and her life has been the subject of the documentary Joy Womack: The White Swan and the Hollywood feature film Joika. In 2025, she released her memoir, Behind the Red Curtain, offering a rare and honest look into the world of elite ballet.

Beyond the stage, Joy is a leading educator and entrepreneur. She is the Artistic Director of Maison de Danse Paris and the founder of CORPS Paris, a global digital training platform that has trained over 2,500 dancers across 35 countries using the Vaganova method. Joy also serves as a frequent jury member for major international competitions, including the Prix de Lausanne and Asian Grand Prix. Her philanthropic work continues through the Joy Womack Ballet Foundation (USA) and the Association Joy Womack pour la Danse (France), dedicated to supporting emerging artists and fostering international cultural exchange.

Vsevolod Maievskyi is a Ukrainian classical ballet dancer currently performing as a Soloist with the Dutch National Ballet for the 2025–2026 season. Known for his powerful technique, dynamic partnering, and compelling stage presence, he has danced leading roles with some of the world’s most prestigious ballet companies.

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Maievskyi began his dance journey in ballroom at age five before transitioning to classical ballet at twelve. He trained at the Kyiv State Ballet School from 2009 to 2016. After standing out at the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) in 2016, he earned a scholarship to the Ellison Ballet in New York City, where he furthered his training.

His exceptional performance at the YAGP Finals the following year led to an invitation to join the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg in 2018. Over his four years at the Mariinsky, he rose to the rank of coryphée and was cast in a wide range of principal and soloist roles. His repertoire included Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, Conrad in Le Corsaire, Torero in Carmen Suite, Ivan in The Firebird, Vaslav in The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, and featured roles in George Balanchine’s Symphony in C.

In 2022, following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Maievskyi made the difficult decision to leave the Mariinsky. Relocating to Europe, he joined the Dresden Semperoper Ballett, where he danced for the 2022–2023 season. In 2023, he accepted a position with the English National Ballet, where he was promoted to Soloist the following year. During his time with ENB, he expanded his repertoire with major roles including Albrecht in Mary Skeaping’s Giselle and the Nephew/Sugar Plum Cavalier in Wayne Eagling’s Nutcracker.

Maievskyi is now a Soloist with the Dutch National Ballet. Beyond his resident company work, he frequently appears as a principal guest artist in prominent international ballet galas and independent global productions. Notably, he was a featured artist in the internationally acclaimed Reunited in Dance project, including the Les Ballets Russes à Florence production. He continues to perform at prestigious events worldwide, including the YAGP Anniversary Gala and the YAGP Nervi Festival.

Boris Zhurilov graduated from the world-renowned Vaganova Ballet Academy in 2006 and joined the Mariinsky Theatre, where he performed an extensive repertoire of soloist and leading roles over 12 years. In 2018, at the invitation of Nina Ananiashvili, he joined the State Ballet of Georgia in Tbilisi as a Principal Dancer.

In 2019, Zhurilov joined the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre in Moscow at the invitation of Laurent Hilaire. Since 2022, he has served as a First Soloist with the Hungarian National Ballet (Hungarian State Opera) in Budapest.

A versatile lyrical and dramatic artist, Zhurilov’s classical repertoire includes leading princely roles in The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, as well as Albrecht in Giselle and the Young Man in Chopiniana. Showcasing his dynamic range in heroic-dramatic repertoire, he has also excelled as Spartacus, Espada in Don Quixote, and the Torero in Carmen Suite.

As an international guest artist, Zhurilov is a key member of the Reunited in Dance ensemble, a star-studded company of international ballet artists who left preeminent Russian companies. Following his performance in their historic inaugural gala in November 2022 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in California, he has continued to perform with the company during their prestigious engagements at the historic Teatro della Pergola in Florence, Italy. This includes performances in the Festivalino 2024: Simbiosi gala in June 2024, and the acclaimed Les Ballets Russes à Florence production in June 2025.

In his most recent 2025 and 2026 seasons, Zhurilov has continued to expand his repertoire both in Budapest and internationally. In June 2026, he debuted in the male lead as Prince Désiré in the Hungarian National Ballet’s acclaimed revival of Sir Peter Wright’s The Sleeping Beauty. He also featured prominently in the company’s September 2026 season-opening neoclassical mixed bill, Dancingly Yours, performing alongside the company’s top soloists. As an international guest artist, his recent engagements include touring performances of The Nutcracker across Cyprus in late 2025, starring alongside Iana Salenko, and summer 2026 gala appearances dancing the Grand Pas de Deux from The Nutcracker with Anna Muromtseva.

Ukrainian ballerina Anastasia Matvienko trained at the Kyiv State Choreographic School (1996-2001) and furthered her education at the International Slavic University of Ukraine (Choreography Tutor and Teacher, 2005-2007) and the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia (Ballet Master and Producer, 2018-2020).

Her distinguished career includes principal roles as a Soloist with the Ukrainian National Opera in Kyiv (2001-2007), Prima Ballerina of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg (2007-2009), and First Soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg (2009-2022), encompassing a vast classical and contemporary repertoire. Highlights include leading roles in Giselle, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Raymonda, Don Quixote, Romeo and Juliet, and significant works by choreographers such as Grigorovich, Fokine, Balanchine, Ratmansky, and Clug.

A sought-after Guest Principal Dancer, she performed regularly at The New National Theatre in Tokyo (2003-2017) and the Novosibirsk Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre (2016-2018). She toured internationally with the Mariinsky Theatre and starred in Dwight Rhoden’s The Great Gatsby (2014-2020).

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ms. Matvienko relocated to Slovenia, building upon her established artistic connection with SNG Maribor and choreographer Edward Clug. She premiered Gospa Bovary at SNG Maribor (2022), participated in the Ljubljana Festival (2022), and served on the jury of the "TuTu" ballet competition (2022). From 2022 to November 2024, she was a guest ballet dancer at SNG Ljubljana, performing a wide repertoire.

In June 2025, she notably collaborated with Reunited in Dance, performing in the production Les Ballets Russes à Florence at the historic Teatro della Pergola in Florence, Italy. Moving into the 2025–2026 season, her international guest career flourishes with leading roles including Odette/Odile in Swan Lake and Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary at SNG Maribor. She has also expanded her pedagogical footprint, working as a guest ballet teacher at the Conservatory of Music and Ballet Ljubljana.

In 2022, she co-created Ballet Stage, a crucial platform providing support and networking for Ukrainian ballet artists. This initiative has since grown into a global network, successfully launching major educational events including the BalletStage Summer Intensives in Ljubljana for 2025 and 2026, where she serves as Co-Founder, Principal Guest Dancer, and MasterClass instructor.

Ms. Matvienko’s exceptional talent has been recognized with awards including medals from the Serge Lifar Competition (2002), the Varna International Ballet Competition (2004), and the Moscow International Ballet and Choreography Competition (2005), as well as the DANCE OPEN Prize for Best Partners (2011).

She is an ambassador for GAYNOR MINDEN and La Prima Ballet School in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Alexander Parish — known as Xander — was born in 1986 in Beverley, East Yorkshire. He began his ballet training at the age of eight in Hull, attending classes alongside his sister Demelza. At 11, he moved to London to join the Royal Ballet School at White Lodge, graduating from the Royal Ballet Upper School with honours in 2005.

He and Demelza subsequently entered The Royal Ballet’s corps de ballet together, becoming the first brother and sister to be engaged simultaneously by the company.

In 2010, at the personal invitation of Artistic Director Yuri Fateev, Xander made history as the first British dancer to join the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. He rose through the ranks to become a Principal Dancer in July 2017, a promotion announced after the opening night of Swan Lake during the Mariinsky Ballet’s London season at the Royal Opera House.

His career has been recognised with numerous distinguished awards, including the Positano Premia La Danza Léonide Massine Award for Emerging Dancer on the International Scene, Best Young Male Dancer at the inaugural Taglioni European Ballet Awards, and Outstanding Male Performance (Classical) at the UK Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards.

In 2017, the University of Hull conferred upon him an Honorary Doctorate, and he delivered the keynote address at that year’s graduation ceremony. In 2019, he was appointed OBE by HM The Queen for services to dance and to UK–Russia cultural relations. In 2025, he was invested as a Knight of the Royal Order of Francis I of the Two Sicilies in recognition of his achievements in the arts.

As a guest artist, Xander has performed with distinguished companies worldwide, including English National Ballet, the Stanislavsky Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.

In 2021, he founded the online ballet training platform balletclass.com, which he continues to develop alongside his wife, Anastasia — a fellow dancer whom he met at the Mariinsky Theatre and married in St. Petersburg in 2021. In 2022, the couple joined the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo and performed with the company for two years. In 2024, they welcomed their daughter Amalia and resettled in Xander’s hometown in East Yorkshire.

In September 2022, Xander was appointed Artistic Director of Reunited in Dance, a company dedicated to supporting displaced dancers who formerly worked with Russian ballet companies before the invasion of Ukraine. Under his direction, the company appeared at prestigious venues internationally, including the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, Festival Napa Valley, and the Teatro della Pergola in Florence as part of the New Generation Festival.

In September 2024, Xander made his stage acting debut in The Gates of Kyiv, a play by Ian Kelly, performing opposite Stockard Channing at the Theatre Royal Windsor. That same year, he was named among Variety magazine’s Ten Brits to Watch for 2025.

Jean-Romain Vesperini studied acting at L’École du Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris and singing at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he trained as a baritone.

After graduation, Jean-Romain decided to pursue a career as a stage director and spent several years collaborating with Luc Bondy, Peter Stein and Georges Lavaudant, from 2005 until 2017. As a result of these long-term partnerships, he built solid professional experience managing and leading artistic ensembles in major opera houses such as La Scala, Paris Opera, Lyon Opera, the Bolshoi Theatre and the Opéra-Comique, as well as at the Salzburg Festival and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

In 2012, his own career developed with a successful production of La Traviata, presented by the opera houses of Rennes, Limoges and Reims in France. The production was broadcast on French national television and radio and led to return invitations from these opera houses to stage a new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

He also founded his own company and became a producer of his theatrical shows, taking responsibility for fundraising and production budgets. His theatre productions include Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, Paravidino’s Two Brothers, Levin’s The Labour of Life and Sacha Guitry’s Quadrille.

At only 33, at the specific request of Nicolas Joël and Stéphane Lissner, he staged Gounod’s Faust at the Opéra National de Paris, conducted by Michel Plasson, with whom he would work on the same opera at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2018. In 2018, the Bolshoi Theatre invited him to create a new production of Puccini’s La Bohème, now an important part of the opera house’s repertoire. That same year, Opera Hong Kong, in co-production with Le French May Arts Festival, engaged him for Bizet’s Carmen.

He staged Puccini’s Turandot at Ekaterinburg National Opera House, as well as the rediscovery of Benjamin Godard’s Dante at Opéra de Saint-Étienne, in co-production with Palazzetto Bru Zane. The Opéra de Saint-Étienne subsequently invited him for another French rediscovery, Joncières’s Lancelot.

In 2021, he staged Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, a production which was revived in Avignon in 2024.

He also made his debut in the United States, staging Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi at Festival Napa Valley, with the support of Maria Manetti Shrem. With the festival, he has since staged Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore and Don Pasquale, and will stage Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. He will also create a brand-new opera commissioned by the festival and composed by Jake Heggie.

Vesperini continues to develop his career in North America. In 2023, he staged Saint-Saëns’s Henry VIII at the Fisher Center at Bard as part of Bard SummerScape, a production named among the year’s best classical music performances by The New York Times.

In Canada, he staged a new production of Faust and was subsequently invited to direct La Vie Parisienne and Le Comte Ory.

He made his debut at the Opéra Royal de Versailles last season with La Fille du Régiment, which was subsequently revived at Festival Napa Valley and is scheduled to return to Versailles next season. The Opéra Royal de Versailles has invited him to open its 2026/27 season with Salieri’s Tarare, followed by a double bill of Gluck’s The Tricked Pasha and Rameau’s Pygmalion.

The Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège invited him to stage Le Nozze di Figaro last season, and Vesperini will return in the upcoming season to stage Puccini’s Turandot.

Jean-Romain Vesperini will also make his debut at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon with Beethoven’s Fidelio. He will also stage a programme at Carnegie Hall devoted to Ravel and Gershwin, featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Angel Blue.

Jean-Romain Vesperini is a native French speaker and is also fluent in English, German, Italian and Russian.

Étienne Guiol is an innovative video artist specialising in immersive and monumental productions. He was born in France in 1989.

Following a multidisciplinary academic background, he pursued artistic training, particularly in drawing and animation, and founded his first studio, BK International, in 2012.

Working with his team, he has created more than one hundred productions for theatre, opera and ballet. His creative studio is also known for designing installations for museums and artistic projects around the world.

Étienne Guiol was part of the creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, working as a scenographer and video designer.

In 2024, he founded a new studio, Immersive Opera, specialising in the production of immersive works inspired by opera.

Several of his creations have received awards and distinctions, including Best Opera Creation for Maria Republica (2016), Best Stage Concept for Le Coq d’Or (2015), recognition by The New York Times among the Best Productions for Henry VIII (2023), and Best Video Creation at Lyon’s Fête des Lumières (2015).

Bruno de Lavenère is a set designer for opera, theatre, and dance for over 25 years.

His visually striking and dramaturgically rich creations have been featured on major stages across France and internationally, including the Paris Opera, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Bolshoi Opera, Theater Basel, the Hong Kong Opera, Monaco Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Royal Muscat Opera House, Comédie-Française, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Théâtre du Lido… He regularly collaborates with acclaimed directors and choreographers such as Jean-Romain Vesperini, Florian Zeller, Gilles Rico, Thomas Jolly, Lucinda Childs, Alexander Ekman, Lilo Baur… In 2024, he co-designed the set design for the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games and created the scenography for the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Paralympic Games.

In October 2025, he designed the scenography for Robert Badinter’s Panthéon induction ceremony in Paris.

In June 2026, he designed the scenography for Marc Bloch’s Panthéon induction ceremony in Paris.

Awarded the Critics’ Prize in 2014 and the Éloges in 2024, he asserts a vision of theatrical space that is both poetic, rigorous, and resolutely contemporary.

A graduate in Art History and trained in fashion design at the Cours Berçot in Paris, Alain Blanchot began his career as a costume designer working in film and advertising. Drawn early on to live performance, he created costumes for singers with distinctive artistic identities, including Brigitte Fontaine, Sapho, Anna Karina and Ingrid Caven.

His passion for the performing arts soon led him towards more unconventional stage productions. In 2004, he began his long-standing collaboration with stage director Benjamin Lazar, designing the costumes for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Molière and Lully’s comédie-ballet performed by Le Poème Harmonique in a production lit entirely by candlelight. He continued to explore the sumptuous and imaginative visual language of Baroque opera with productions including Landi’s Sant’Alessio, conducted by William Christie for Les Arts Florissants and featuring Philippe Jaroussky, and Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione at the Opéra Comique. Through these productions, he further developed his distinctive approach to materials and colour.

Since then, Alain Blanchot has designed costumes for numerous Baroque opera productions, including Handel’s Rinaldo, Lully’s Phaéton, Cavalli’s Egisto and John Blow’s Venus and Adonis. His work has been presented at major Parisian venues including the Opéra Comique, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre de l’Athénée, as well as internationally in Germany, Russia, New York, Los Angeles, Sweden, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and Monte Carlo.

His work also encompasses contemporary opera, with productions such as Cachafaz, based on the work of Copi, Au Web ce soir, a live opera created for the internet, and Lalala, as well as works from the classical repertoire including Cendrillon, Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and La Nonne sanglante.

Over the course of his career, he has worked with many acclaimed stage directors, including Louise Moaty, David Bobée, Robert Carsen, Jean-Romain Vesperini, Basil Twist, Aurélien Bory and Lilo Baur, while developing close artistic collaborations with singers such as Lea Desandre, Jakub Józef Orliński, Julie Fuchs, Michael Spyres, Véronique Gens and Philippe Jaroussky.

Alain Blanchot has also collaborated with the House of Guerlain, designing the staff uniforms for its Institut on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

His costumes are regularly exhibited in France at the Centre National du Costume de Scène.

More recently, he reunited with Jean-Romain Vesperini to design the costumes for Saint-Saëns’ Henry VIII at Bard College in New York, followed by Smetana’s Dalibor. Both productions received critical acclaim in The New York Times.

His forthcoming projects include Salieri’s Tarare at the Royal Opera of Versailles and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Drottningholm Palace Theatre in Sweden.