Valentina Kozlova

Valentina Kozlova, born on August 26, 1957, in Moscow, is a Soviet-born Russian American ballerina, dance educator, and founder of the Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition. She appeared on Broadway in 1983 in the musical On Your Toes.

Kozlova's mother, a technical supervisor for a phone company, encouraged her daughter's early interest in dance. Kozlova joined a children's ballet company at age seven and, two years later, was accepted into the Bolshoi Ballet School. She trained there until 1973, when she was invited to join the Bolshoi Ballet company itself. By 1975, she had been promoted to principal dancer, performing all of the major classical roles in the company's repertoire.

In 1979, while the Bolshoi was on tour in Los Angeles, Kozlova and her then-husband, fellow principal dancer Leonid Kozlov, defected to the United States. The two guest-starred internationally in the years that followed, and Kozlova briefly joined The Australian Ballet as a principal dancer. In 1982, she made her Broadway debut in the revival of On Your Toes, which featured George Balanchine's ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. The following year, Balanchine invited both Kozlova and Kozlov to join New York City Ballet. Kozlova remained a principal dancer with the company until 1995. During her tenure, New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff praised her performances in Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, noting that her portrayal of Titania possessed strong dramatic projection and a supple quality that Russian dancers refer to as plastique. Kisselgoff also observed that Kozlova's glamour and high extensions attracted contemporary choreographers, among them Jerome Robbins, who cast her in their works.

Following the onset of glasnost, Kozlova traveled to Moscow in 1991 to perform at the Kremlin alongside dancers from New York City Ballet, New Jersey Ballet, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. She returned to Moscow in 1992 for the premiere of a solo work titled Blue Angel, created for her by American choreographer Margo Sappington. The two subsequently formed a touring company together, initially called From Bolshoi to Broadway before being renamed the Daring Project. Kozlova described the group's programming to The New York Times in 1996 as one in which members dare to perform everything from classical excerpts to contemporary ballets.

Beyond the stage, Kozlova appeared in a production of A Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Christmas Future at Madison Square Garden, sharing the stage with Tony Randall and Ben Vereen. Her video credits include the Pavlova Special for CBS, La Fille Mal Gardee released by Philips Video in Germany, and Spartacus produced by VEAR Productions in Argentina.

In 2003, Kozlova founded Valentina Kozlova's Dance Conservatory of New York, where students are trained in the traditional Vaganova method combined with Balanchine footwork. The school presents an annual production of The Nutcracker, featuring a female Baroness Drosselmeyer, as well as a spring performance at Symphony Space in New York. Her students have gone on to earn positions in companies including Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Washington Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Universal Ballet, and the Cuban National Ballet.

An experienced juror at international ballet competitions, Kozlova established her own competition in 2011. The inaugural edition, then called the Boston International Ballet Competition, ran from May 12 to May 16, 2011, in Boston, with a jury that included Violette Verdy, Andris Liepa, and Mikko Nissinen. The competition is managed by the non-profit Dance Conservatory Performance Project. In 2014, Kozlova expanded the event to include a Contemporary Dance and Choreography Competition, held at Symphony Space in New York on April 28 and 29 of that year, with judges drawn from institutions and companies including Alvin Ailey, Juilliard, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. Competitors have earned scholarships and contracts with companies such as Boston Ballet and Houston Ballet, while choreographers participating in the contemporary division have received commissions from international dance companies.