Early Beginnings

Viviana Durante was born in Rome and started ballet aged six, graduating from classes in a local garage to the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Spotted by ballerina Galina Samsova, she came to London to join the Royal Ballet School aged eleven. A year later she featured in a Thames Television documentary, I Really Want to Dance. After six years at the school she graduated with distinction and joined The Royal Ballet, aged 17.

Viviana became front-page news when she was plucked from the ranks by director Anthony Dowell to replace an injured Odette in mid-performance of Swan Lake, aged 20 and never having been taught the role. At 21 she became The Royal Ballet's then-youngest Principal Dancer. Four years later she and her fellow principal, Darcey Bussell, were the subjects of a South Bank Show documentary, Two Royal Ballet Dancers.

Star of The Royal Ballet

With The Royal Ballet and as an international guest artist, Viviana danced most of the major roles, 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 backstage 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, as well as in works by Bintley, McGregor (his first classical choreography), Page, Tuckett, Amodio and others. Among her coaches were Antoinette Sibley, Lynn Seymour and Margot Fonteyn, while her partners included Irek Mukhamedov, Anthony Dowell, Tetsuya Kumakawa, Vladimir Derevianko, Vladimir Malakhov, José Manuel Carreño, Angel Corella, Julio Bocca, Robert Tewsley, Massimiliano Guerra and Carlos Acosta.

International Guest Star

Parting ways with The Royal Ballet in 2000, Viviana became Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, Teatro alla Scala, and Japan's K-Ballet while continuing to guest with companies worldwide. She has performed in many of the world's major theatres 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.

As an actress, she starred in the Italian film Ogni 27 Agosto and performed at the National Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival. In addition to media coverage of her work, she has appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan and Harpers & Queen and has been profiled in Vogue, Elle, Hello, and OK! She has modelled for photographic shoots for Karl Lagerfeld and Valentino and catwalk shows for Maison Gattinoni and Jasper Conran, and her television work includes commercials for Toyota.

Available on film 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 also features in The Royal Ballet's Die Fledermaus and Gala Tribute to Tchaikovsky and in NYCB's George Balanchine Celebration.

Viviana received the London Evening Standard Award (the youngest-ever artist to receive the award), the Time Out Award, the Premio Positano Italia (twice), Premio Internazionale "Gino Tani", Premio Vignale danza, Premio Bucchi, Premio Apulia, Prix de Lausanne, Premio Eccellenze della Danza and Premio Fabbrini, among others. She was nominated for an Olivier Award for her performance of the title role in MacMillan's Anastasia and has been named Dancer of the Year in the UK, Italy, Japan and Chile. The Times described her as “in the people's imagination, the heroine who dies for love,” The Independent called her an “unsurpassable” dance-actress and the Daily Mail dubbed her “the future of British dance.”

Principal Coach, Teacher, and Juror

In September 2016 Viviana returned to The Royal Ballet to coach a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's Anastasia. She went on to coach ballets including The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, The Judas Tree and Manon for The Royal Ballet; Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet for ABT; Manon for ENB; and Giselle for Hong Kong Ballet.

Viviana earned Diplomas in Dance Teaching and Learning from The Royal Ballet School and Trinity College London. She has taught and given masterclasses at The Royal Ballet School, Prix de Lausanne, Rambert School, K-Ballet School, Liaoning Ballet, Beijing Dance Academy, and Hong Kong Ballet Academy. She was a mentor for BBC Young Dancer.

She has been a juror for the Prix de Lausanne (2011, 2016, Jury Vice-President 2022), Beijing International Ballet and Choreography Competition (2017 and 2019), Royal Ballet School’s Ursula Moreton Choreographic Competition (2011) and Kenneth MacMillan Choreographic Competition (2017), ENB Emerging Dancer (2016), Hong Kong Ballet Group Stars Award (2016 and 2017), Premio Maria Taglioni (2019), Dance Open America (2021), Sibiu Dance Competition (2021), Youth America Grand Prix Finals/Asia Finals (2021-23), Liaoning International Ballet Competition (2025). In 2019 she opened the Belgrade Festival as guest of honour.

Choreographer and Author

As a choreographer, Viviana created new work at Dance Base, Edinburgh and the National Theatre Studio, London and has collaborated with director Richard Eyre and Oscar-winning composer Dario Marianelli on a ballet adaptation of Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly, Deeply. She created an original choreography for the premiere of The Crown Season 6 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Viviana is the consultant editor of the 2018 DK book Ballet: The Definitive Illustrated History.  

English National Ballet School

In 2019 Viviana was appointed Director of Dance and in 2020 Artistic Director at English National Ballet School  During her tenure she staged ballets by Ashton, Balanchine, Bournonville and Bausch, commissioned more than thirty new works, and launched a professional trainee programme that drew talented graduate dancers from around the world to the UK. She brought the leading UK ballet schools together for the first time at Sadler’s Wells in Unite for Ukraine; created a ground-breaking collaboration between ENB, the Wallace Collection, the Royal College of Music, and the London School of Fashion; innovated in dance for healthcare including pioneering a dance-based rehabilitation programme for HIV outpatients; and instigated World Ballet School Day, which brought together twelve leading ballet institutions to give a global platform to young dance artists. In February 2024 Viviana announced that she would step down from her role at ENBS in July 2024, marking five years in post.

Viviana Durante Company

April 2018 saw the debut of Viviana Durante Company at the Barbican Centre, for which Viviana restaged three early Kenneth MacMillan ballets, House of Birds, Danses Concertantes and Laiderette. The dancers included Thiago Soares, Lauren Cuthbertson, Francesca Hayward and Yasmine Naghdi together with Ballet Black and dancers from Scottish Ballet. In Dancing Times, Graham Watts called the production “an outstanding, purposeful debut.”

In May 2019 the Company produced a semi-staged version of Brecht/Weill's Seven Deadly Sins, together with a new work by Javier de Frutos, 8:38, made on Viviana and Mbulelo Ndabeni, that marked Viviana's return to the stage after a long absence. The TLS praised the programme as “a marvellous thing.”

February 2020 saw the premiere of Isadora Now at the Barbican Theatre, featuring an all-female company in a triple bill inspired by Isadora Duncan, including a reconstruction of Duncan's Dance of the Furies, Frederick Ashton's Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan, and a new group work, Unda, by Joy Alpuerto Ritter. The Wonderful World of Dance praised the production as "exquisite and unforgettable." In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, it toured to the Bolshoi Theatre's DanceInversion Festival in Moscow.

Patronages and Boards

Viviana is patron of the Women's International Festival of Choreography, the Hammond School and New English Ballet Theatre. She has served as a board member of One Dance UK and a trustee of Dancers Career Development.