Margarita Fernandes

Margarita Fernandes, born in Portugal, began her ballet training at the age of eight at the Conservatório Internacional de Ballet e Dança Annarella Sanchez in Leiria, which follows the Cuban methodology. She regularly received further education from guest teachers and renowned dancers of the Vaganova and French schools, including Julio Bocca, Misha Tchoupakov, David Makhateli and Yannick Boquin. From 2020, she worked daily with Maina Gielgud on the 19th- and 20th-century classical repertoire, performing Gielgud’s stagings of La Sylphide (Act II) as well as full-length productions of Don Quixote, Giselle, and Swan Lake.

In the 2021/22 season, at the age of only 16, she joined the Bavarian State Ballet as a Demi-Soloist. In 2024, she was promoted to Soloist. Beginning with the 2025/26 season, she will join the Vienna State Ballet as a Soloist.

Her repertoire includes major roles such as Olga in John Cranko’s Onegin, Juliet in Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet, the title role and Effie in Pierre Lacotte’s La Sylphide, Swanilda in Roland Petit’s Coppélia, Helena in John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ophelia in Alexei Ratmansky’s Tchaikovsky Overtures, the title role in Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Clementine in Wheeldon’s Cinderella. She has also performed works by George Balanchine, Ray Barra, Patrice Bart, David Dawson, Nacho Duato, Sol León & Paul Lightfoot, Angelin Preljocaj and Peter Wright, among others.

Margarita Fernandes has won numerous prizes at international ballet competitions, including first prize (2018) and the Hope Award (2017) at the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP), first prize at Domenico Modugno in Lecce, Italy (2017) and second prize at the South African International Ballet Competition (2018).