Top 10 Greatest Ballet Dancers of All Time

Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Kirov Ballet in Toronto in 1974 and proceeded to become the most technically complete male dancer the West had ever witnessed -- his elevation, speed, and precision setting a new global benchmark. He served as artistic director of American Ballet Theatre from 1980-1989, transforming it into one of the world's great companies, and later co-founded the White Oak Dance Project to explore contemporary forms. His 1977 film The Turning Point earned him an Academy Award nomination and introduced ballet to a generation of cinema-goers who had never entered an opera house.

Anna Pavlova remains the most universally recognised name in ballet -- not merely a great dancer but the person who made ballet a global art form. Born in St. Petersburg in 1881 and trained at the Imperial Ballet School, she became the prima ballerina of the Mariinsky before leaving to form her own company and tour the world for three decades. Her signature role, The Dying Swan -- a four-minute solo choreographed for her by Michel Fokine in 1905 -- was performed over 4,000 times and inspired generations of dancers across six continents who had never seen a professional ballet before she arrived in their city.

Margot Fonteyn was the Royal Ballet's defining ballerina for four decades -- the artist around whom Frederick Ashton built his greatest works and who gave the company its international identity in the postwar years. Her partnership with Rudolf Nureyev from 1962, begun when she was 42 and he was 24, produced performances of Giselle, Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet that are still considered the interpretive standard by which all others are measured. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956, and she was later named prima ballerina assoluta -- a designation so rare it has been awarded only a handful of times in history.

Vaslav Nijinsky's career lasted barely a decade before mental illness ended it permanently in 1919, yet his impact on ballet is second to none. As principal dancer of the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev he combined a superhuman elevation with an expressive intensity that contemporaries struggled to describe in rational terms, and his choreographic debut -- L'Apres-midi d'un faune (1912) -- caused a scandal that put ballet on the front pages of European newspapers. His choreography for The Rite of Spring (1913) caused the most notorious riot in performing arts history and is now regarded as the founding document of 20th-century modernism in dance.

Sylvie Guillem became the Paris Opera Ballet's youngest-ever etoile at 19 and proceeded to demolish every assumption about what a classical ballerina's body and technique should look like. Her extraordinary flexibility -- she could raise her leg to 180 degrees effortlessly -- combined with an intellectual rigour that drove her to collaborate with contemporary choreographers including William Forsythe and Akram Khan throughout a career that spanned four decades. She joined the Royal Ballet as a principal guest artist in 1989 and became the highest-paid dancer in the world, her independent artistic authority unprecedented in the ballet world.

Carlos Acosta grew up in a poor neighbourhood of Havana and trained at the Cuban National Ballet School under the system developed by Alicia Alonso before becoming one of the most electrifying principal dancers in the history of the Royal Ballet, where he spent the core of his career from 1998. His athleticism and stage presence in roles such as Prince Siegfried, Spartacus, and Basilio in Don Quixote set new standards for bravura technique in the classical repertoire, while his autobiography and subsequent biopic brought ballet's human stories to entirely new audiences. He returned to Cuba in 2016 to found Acosta Danza, blending classical and contemporary forms.

Natalia Makarova defected from the Kirov Ballet in London in 1970 and joined American Ballet Theatre, where her interpretations of Giselle and Manon redefined dramatic expressivity in the classical canon. Unlike some Soviet-trained dancers whose technique overwhelmed their acting, Makarova fused Stanislavskian psychological depth with supreme classical purity -- her Giselle universally regarded as the interpretive benchmark of the 20th century. She later staged her own productions of La Bayadere and Swan Lake for major companies worldwide and received a Tony Award in 1984 for the Broadway musical On Your Toes.

Erik Bruhn was the Danish noble of classical ballet -- a technician of such purity and elegance that Mikhail Baryshnikov later named him the greatest male dancer he ever saw. Principal dancer of the Royal Danish Ballet and frequent guest with American Ballet Theatre throughout the 1950s and 60s, his Albrecht in Giselle and James in La Sylphide set the interpretive standard for Romantic-era roles that persists to this day. He was also an influential director, leading the Royal Swedish Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada, where he died in 1986 after significantly raising the company's international profile.

Alessandra Ferri trained at the Royal Ballet School and became a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet before Kenneth MacMillan -- who called her the greatest dramatic ballerina of her generation -- brought her to American Ballet Theatre in 1985. Her portrayals of Juliet, Manon, and Juliet in his choreography became definitive: dancing of such emotional transparency that audiences consistently reported weeping without knowing why. She retired in 2007 but returned in 2013 and continued performing into her late fifties, her artistic authority undiminished by time in a manner virtually without precedent in the art form.

Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Kirov Ballet in Toronto in 1974 and proceeded to become the most technically complete male dancer the West had ever witnessed -- his elevation, speed, and precision setting a new global benchmark. He served as artistic director of American Ballet Theatre from 1980-1989, transforming it into one of the world's great companies, and later co-founded the White Oak Dance Project to explore contemporary forms. His 1977 film The Turning Point earned him an Academy Award nomination and introduced ballet to a generation of cinema-goers who had never entered an opera house.

Anna Pavlova remains the most universally recognised name in ballet -- not merely a great dancer but the person who made ballet a global art form. Born in St. Petersburg in 1881 and trained at the Imperial Ballet School, she became the prima ballerina of the Mariinsky before leaving to form her own company and tour the world for three decades. Her signature role, The Dying Swan -- a four-minute solo choreographed for her by Michel Fokine in 1905 -- was performed over 4,000 times and inspired generations of dancers across six continents who had never seen a professional ballet before she arrived in their city.

Margot Fonteyn was the Royal Ballet's defining ballerina for four decades -- the artist around whom Frederick Ashton built his greatest works and who gave the company its international identity in the postwar years. Her partnership with Rudolf Nureyev from 1962, begun when she was 42 and he was 24, produced performances of Giselle, Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet that are still considered the interpretive standard by which all others are measured. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956, and she was later named prima ballerina assoluta -- a designation so rare it has been awarded only a handful of times in history.

Vaslav Nijinsky's career lasted barely a decade before mental illness ended it permanently in 1919, yet his impact on ballet is second to none. As principal dancer of the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev he combined a superhuman elevation with an expressive intensity that contemporaries struggled to describe in rational terms, and his choreographic debut -- L'Apres-midi d'un faune (1912) -- caused a scandal that put ballet on the front pages of European newspapers. His choreography for The Rite of Spring (1913) caused the most notorious riot in performing arts history and is now regarded as the founding document of 20th-century modernism in dance.

Sylvie Guillem became the Paris Opera Ballet's youngest-ever etoile at 19 and proceeded to demolish every assumption about what a classical ballerina's body and technique should look like. Her extraordinary flexibility -- she could raise her leg to 180 degrees effortlessly -- combined with an intellectual rigour that drove her to collaborate with contemporary choreographers including William Forsythe and Akram Khan throughout a career that spanned four decades. She joined the Royal Ballet as a principal guest artist in 1989 and became the highest-paid dancer in the world, her independent artistic authority unprecedented in the ballet world.

Carlos Acosta grew up in a poor neighbourhood of Havana and trained at the Cuban National Ballet School under the system developed by Alicia Alonso before becoming one of the most electrifying principal dancers in the history of the Royal Ballet, where he spent the core of his career from 1998. His athleticism and stage presence in roles such as Prince Siegfried, Spartacus, and Basilio in Don Quixote set new standards for bravura technique in the classical repertoire, while his autobiography and subsequent biopic brought ballet's human stories to entirely new audiences. He returned to Cuba in 2016 to found Acosta Danza, blending classical and contemporary forms.

Natalia Makarova defected from the Kirov Ballet in London in 1970 and joined American Ballet Theatre, where her interpretations of Giselle and Manon redefined dramatic expressivity in the classical canon. Unlike some Soviet-trained dancers whose technique overwhelmed their acting, Makarova fused Stanislavskian psychological depth with supreme classical purity -- her Giselle universally regarded as the interpretive benchmark of the 20th century. She later staged her own productions of La Bayadere and Swan Lake for major companies worldwide and received a Tony Award in 1984 for the Broadway musical On Your Toes.

Erik Bruhn was the Danish noble of classical ballet -- a technician of such purity and elegance that Mikhail Baryshnikov later named him the greatest male dancer he ever saw. Principal dancer of the Royal Danish Ballet and frequent guest with American Ballet Theatre throughout the 1950s and 60s, his Albrecht in Giselle and James in La Sylphide set the interpretive standard for Romantic-era roles that persists to this day. He was also an influential director, leading the Royal Swedish Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada, where he died in 1986 after significantly raising the company's international profile.

Alessandra Ferri trained at the Royal Ballet School and became a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet before Kenneth MacMillan -- who called her the greatest dramatic ballerina of her generation -- brought her to American Ballet Theatre in 1985. Her portrayals of Juliet, Manon, and Juliet in his choreography became definitive: dancing of such emotional transparency that audiences consistently reported weeping without knowing why. She retired in 2007 but returned in 2013 and continued performing into her late fifties, her artistic authority undiminished by time in a manner virtually without precedent in the art form.