Maria Riccetto and Gustavo Carvalho in Romeo and Juliet

Maria Riccetto and Gustavo Carvalho (Uruguay National Ballet) in Romeo and Juliet, music by Sergei Prokofiev, choreography by Kenneth MacMillan. Benois de la Danse 2017, Defile of the Stars and New Laureates, shot in the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow on 30.5.2017.

Maria Riccetto is a first resident dancer with is a principal dancer with BNS | Ballet Nacional Sodre (Uruguay National Ballet).was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and began studying ballet at the Uruguay National Ballet School in 1990. She was hired as a professional dancer in 1995 by the national ballet company, SODRE. In 1998, Riccetto was named “Revelation of the Year” by Uruguayan dance critic Washington Roldan, and received the Elena Smirnova Prize from Enrique Honorio Destaville, an Argentine ballet reviewer. Later that year she attended the North Carolina School of the Arts on a full scholarship.. In 1999, when the production was performed at the Hungarian National Academy, Ms. Riccetto was invited to Budapest to reprise her role as the Sugar Plum Fairy, dancing with Gabor Szigeti, a soloist with the Hungarian National Ballet. Riccetto was as a guest artist at the 25th Anniversary Gala for the Uruguay National Ballet School and was invited by that country’s First Lady to dance in Montevideo and Punta Del Este. In August 1999, Riccetto joined American Ballet Theatre’s corps de ballet and three years later she was promoted to soloist.  After 13 years of dancing in the American Ballet Theatre, in 2012 Riccetto came back to Uruguay to dance in the national ballet company, S.O.D.R.E., directed by Argentinian former dancer Julio Bocca.

Party fact: Riccetto was the “dance double” for Mila Kunis in the 2010 film Black Swan, a psychological thriller about ballet dancers in New York City.

Gustavo Carvalho is a principal dancer with BNS | Ballet Nacional Sodre (Uruguay National Ballet) He was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He began his ballet studies at the Marcia Sampaio Company in 2004. In 2009 he joined the Companhia Brasileira de Ballet as soloist and was then promoted to first dancer. In 2014 he was awarded a bronze medal in the USA International Ballet Competition. In 2015 he joined BNS and was promoted to first dancer in the 2016 season.

Photos by Jack Devant Ballet Photography with kind permission of the Benois de la Danse and Bolshoi Theatre, special thanks to Nina Kudriavtseva-Loory and Regina Nikiforova.