The Beauty of Dance, Part Three: Yuriko Kajiya, American Ballet Theatre, New York, NY

Yuriko Kajiya became a soloist with the American Ballet Theatre in the summer of 2007.

Born in Nagoya, Japan, Yuriko Kajiya began her dance training when she was eight, and she soon went to China to study with and graduate from the Shanghai Ballet School on scholarship, one of the first non-Chinese dancers to do so. She came to North America by winning the Prix de Lausanne Scholarship in 2000, allowing her to study at the National Ballet of Canada School in Toronto.

Ms. Kajiya joined American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company (now ABT II) in 2001 and became an apprentice with the main company in 2002, joining the corps de ballet later that year. Her credits with American Ballet Theatre include Blossom in Cinderella, Gulnare in Le Corsaire, Henrietta in Raymonda, Clara in The Nutcracker, and too many more to list here.