To Lyubov Kunakova’s 70th birthday (f/ V. Tereshkina, El. Yevseyeva, M. Iliushkina, Yek. Chebykina)

In the end of the last season, on August, 8, we celebrated the 70th birthday of Lyubov Alimpievna Kunakova, People’s Artist of the RSFSR, coach and repetiteur of the Mariinsky ballet. The congratulatory video from was published in the theatre’s social media that day, and now is available for our Youtube-channel subscribers. Graduate of the Perm Ballet School, from 1974-1992 Lyubov Kunakova was a leading performer of the ballet repertoire at Leningrad’s Kirov Theatre of Opera and Ballet (renamed the Mariinsky in 1992). She appeared in the ballets Giselle (Giselle, Myrtha), The Sleeping Beauty (Aurora, the Lilac Fairy, Princess Florine), La Bayadère (Nikia, Gamzatti), Swan Lake (Odette-Odile), Raymonda (Raymonda), Don Quixote (Kitri), Le Corsaire (Medora, Gulnare), Paquita, La Sylphide (the Sylph), The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (Zarema), The Legend of Love (Mekhmeneh-Bahnu) and Scotch Symphony among others. She has staged the Mariinsky Theatre’s versions of classical ballets in Minsk (Don Quixote, Chopiniana), Athens (The Sleeping Beauty), Tokyo (Paquita) and Brazil (Giselle). She has taught classical dance at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (1997-2002, her pupils including Anastasia Kolegova, Tatiana Tkachenko, Natalia Sharapova, Vera Garbuz and Yulia Repet); she has also taught in Japan, Brazil and South Korea. Since 1997 she has been a repetiteur at the Mariinsky Theatre and coaches roles with Viktoria Tereshkina, Elena Yevseyeva, Maria Iliushkina and Yekaterina Chebykina.