Laura Contardi

Guest Ballet Mistress

Laura hails from Piacenza, Italy. At the 1981 Prix de Lausanne competition, the artist was awarded a scholarship which enabled her to study at the Boston Ballet School. She continued her training in Paris at the Conservatoire and the Ballet School of the Opéra national de Paris. Upon her gradution, she joined Paris Opera Ballet. She subsequently danced with the Ballets de Monte Carlo, London Festival Ballet, the ballet company of Deutsche Oper Berlin and Semperoper Ballet in Dresden. In 2001, she ended her active career as a dancer and became a ballet mistress at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. Since 2002, she has held the same position at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where she has staged, among others, Swan Lake and Don Quixote by Rudolf Nureyev, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by George Balanchine, Manon and Romeo and Juliet by Kenneth MacMillan, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty by Alexei Ratmansky, and, in 2024, John Neumeier’s The Lady of the Camellias (together with Kevin Haigen and Janusz Mazoń).

(Information as of April 2026)