Valentina Kozlova

Valentina Kozlova (born August 26, 1957) is a Soviet-born Russian American ballerina and founder of Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition. In 1979, while on tour as a young principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, Kozlova defected to the United States, where she became a principal dancer with New York City Ballet and later, opened her own ballet school. Perhaps best known as a lyrical and expressive ballerina, Kozlova is also renowned as a private coach, producing students who have gone on to garner prestigious prizes and positions in companies such as Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre Washington Ballet, Stuttgarter Ballet, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Universal Ballet, and the National Ballet of Cuba.

Kozlova was born in Moscow to Russian parents. Encouraged by her mother, a technical supervisor for the phone company, Kozlova joined a children’s ballet company at the age of seven and was accepted, at nine, into the Bolshoi Ballet School, where she studied until she was asked to join the company in 1973. She was quickly promoted to principal, in 1975, and danced all of the major classical roles.

In 1979, while in Los Angeles on tour with the Bolshoi, Kozlova and her then-husband, fellow principal dancer Leonid Kozlov, defected. They guest-starred internationally for the next few years, and Kozlova briefly became a principal dancer with The Australian Ballet. In 1982, she made her Broadway debut in the revival of On Your Toes, featuring George Balanchine’s ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Balanchine asked Kozlova and Kozlov to join New York City Ballet in 1983, where she remained a principal dancer until 1995, when she left the company. While with NYCB, Kozlova was praised for her strong technique, flexibility and exuberance. Describing Kozlova's performances in Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The New York Times' critic Anna Kisselgoff commented that her Titania "has the virtue of her strong dramatic projection and a supple quality that Russian dancers call plastique." Further, Kisselgoff notes that "the glamour and high extensions that are hallmark [...] also attracted contemporary choreographers, including Jerome Robbins, who have cast her in their works."

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