Maria Żuk is a first soloist of the Polish National Ballet. She studied dance at the State Ballet School in Krasnodar and debuted at the Yuri Grigorovich Krasnodar Ballet Theatre in 2003. In Krasnodar she danced Clara in The Nutcracker, Phrygia in Spartacus, and Princess Shyrin in Legend of Love. In 2007 she moved to Poland. First she danced with the ballet of the Musical Theatre in Lublin as a soloist, before joining the ballet of the Teatr Wielki Polish National Opera in 2008 as a coryphée. A year later she was promoted to soloist and in 2012 to first soloist.
In Warsaw she has danced lead roles in classical ballets: Clara in The Nutcracker (first in Andrzej Glegolski’s choreography, then also in the Toer van Schayk and Wayne Engling’s version); Odette-Odile in Swan Lake; Nikiya and Shade-Soloist 2 in La Bayadre; Cinderella and Fairy Winter in Cinderellaby Frederick Ashton; Osilde in Tristan; two big duets in Kurt Weill and In Light and Shadow by Krzysztof Pastor, leading solos in Concerto Barocco by George Balanchine; solos in ballets by Maurice Béjart (The Rite of Spring), Alexei Ratmansky (Anna Karenina), and Emil Wesołowski (The Kisses). She also has danced Siren in The Prodigal Sonby Balanchine, Second Air in In Light and Shadow by Krzysztof Pastor, and Kitri-Dulcinea in Don Quixote by Alexei Fadeyechev.
