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FORMER PRINCIPAL DANCER OF ROYAL BALLET LONDON & ABT
is acknowledged by critics and audiences worldwide to be one of the finest and most dramatic ballerinas of our time.
She was born in Rome and started ballet aged six at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. Spotted by ballerina Galina Samsova, she came to London to join the Royal Ballet School at ten years old. A year later she was the subject of a Thames Television documentary, I Really Want to Dance. After six years at the school she was offered a contract with the Royal Ballet, joining the company in 1984. She became an overnight sensation when she was famously plucked from the corps de ballet by director Anthony Dowell to replace an injured Odette in mid-performance of Swan Lake, aged 20 and never having been coached in the role. At 21 she became the Royal Ballet’s youngest Principal Dancer.
Since then Viviana has danced all the major roles in classical ballet, including Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote, Anastasia, Manon, Mayerling, A Month in the Country,My Brothers, My Sisters, The Prince of the Pagodas, Symphonic Variations, Different Drummers, La fille mal gardée, Rhapsody, Ondine, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Les Biches, Raymonda, La Bayadere, Cyrano de Bergerac, Diana and Actaeon, Thaïs pas de deux, Sylvia, Apollo, Ballet Imperial, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Who Cares?, Laurentia, La Ronde, The Red and the Black, Carmen, Coppelia, Duke Ellington Ballet, Birthday Offering, Scènes de ballet, Requiem, Les Patineurs, Elite Syncopations, Symphony in C, Gloria, Cabiria and Anna Karenina.
Noted for her versatility, she is particularly associated with the repertoire of Kenneth MacMillan, who tragically died while she was dancing the role of Mary Vetsera in his Mayerling. She created roles in MacMillan’s The Judas Tree (which won a Laurence Olivier Award) and Winter Dreams, and in numerous contemporary ballets by Bintley, McGregor, Page, Tuckett, Amodio and others. Among her coaches were Antoinette Sibley, Lynn Seymour, and Margot Fonteyn.
In 1992 Viviana and her fellow principal Darcey Bussell were the subjects of a South Bank Show documentary, Two Royal Ballet Dancers. Viviana has received the London Evening Standard Award (the youngest ever artist to receive the award), the Time Out Award, the Premio Positano Italia (twice), the Premio Internazionale “Gino Tani”, the Premio Vignale danza, the Premio Bucchi, the Premio Apulia, the Prix de Lausanne, and several other international awards. She was nominated for the Olivier Award in 1996 for her astonishing performance in Anastasia and has been named Dancer of the Year in the UK, Italy, Japan, and Chile. The Times has described her as “in the people’s imagination, the heroine who dies for love.” The Independent has called her an “unsurpassable” dance-actress and the Daily Maildubbed her “the future of British dance.”
After leaving the Royal Ballet in 2001 she became a Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, Principal Guest Artist with Teatro alla Scala, and the leading ballerina of Japan’s K-Ballet. As a guest artiste Viviana has danced all the major theatres in the world including New York, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Milan, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, Verona, Naples, San Francisco, Washington, Boston, Turin, Palermo, Frankfurt, Dresden, Copenhagen, Athens, Amsterdam, Miami, Toronto, Sydney, Seoul, Hong Kong, Santiago, Melbourne, Bristbane, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Hiroshima, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Saitama, Sendai, Tulsa, Dresden, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Oslo, Berlin, and Stuttgart.
Her partners have included Tetsuya Kumakawa, Irek Mukhamedov, Anthony Dowell, Vladimir Derevianko, Vladimir Malakhov, José Manuel Carreño, Angel Corella, Julio Bocca, Robert Tewsley, Massimiliano Guerra, and Carlos Acosta.
As an actress, she starred in the Italian film Ogni 27 Agosto and has performed at the National Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival. She has featured in TV commercials for Toyota and in several print campaigns. In addition to press and TV coverage of her work, she has appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan and Harpers & Queen and has been profiled in Vogue, Elle, Hello, OK! and other magazines. She has modelled for photographic shoots for Karl Lagerfeld and Valentino and catwalk shows for Maison Gattinoni.
Available on DVD are her interpretations of Mayerling, Winter Dreams and The Sleeping Beauty with the Royal Ballet and Swan Lake, Giselle, Carmen and The Sleeping Beauty with K-Ballet.
She is a patron of the Hammond School and New English Ballet Theatre. In 2011 she was a juror of the Prix de Lausanne and judged the Royal Ballet School’s Ursula Moreton Choreographic Competition. She has taught masterclasses at the Royal Ballet School, in Japan, and internationally. As a choreographer, she has collaborated with the Ballet Boyz, artist Linda Karshan, director Richard Eyre, and Oscar-winning composer Dario Marianelli. In 2010 she created new ballet works at Dance Base, Edinburgh and the National Theatre Studio, London.
Viviana is married to the British author Nigel Cliff. They have a son, Orlando, and are based in London.