She has danced as a guest principal dancer with Arena di Verona, the Great Russian Ballet, the National Opera of Ukraine, the Ballet Opera of Istanbul, the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Albania in Tirana.
Early life and education
Petra Conti was born on April 30, 1988, in Anagni and grew up in Frosinone, Italy. Her father is Italian and her mother is Polish. Her mother and sister trained at the Academy of Ballet in Poland.
Conti trained at Szewczenko M.M. School of Ballet in Poland and later at National Dance Academy in Rome, graduating from the latter in 2006.
Career
At seventeen years old, Conti was a guest dancer in the Arena di Verona Ballet's Cinderella. At the National Academy of Dance, she trained under the guidance of Zarko Prebil and later joined the Mariinsky Ballet as a trainee, where she worked with Elvira Tarasova.
From 2017 to 2019, Conti was an artistic consultant at the State Ballet Academy Educandato agli Angeli in Verona, Italy. She is a resident ballet coach at Pasadena Civic Ballet and a guest ballet coach for University of South Carolina, Orange County School of the Arts, and Southeastern School of Ballet.
She served as a ballet judge for the 2023 Youth American Grand Prix. The same year, she founded her own ballet company Hollywood Ballet in Los Angeles.
Awards and recognition
At fifteen, TV host Raffaella Carrá introduced Conti on her show as "the future of Italian ballet in the world". In the show, a teenage Conti travels to Russia to perform a pas de deux with Roberto Bolle.
In the summer of 2017 and 2018, Conti played an Ethiopian princess in Aida and performed multiple shows in blackface at the Arena di Verona, Italy. In a now-deleted Instagram post, Conti is seen, alongside her makeup artist, applying dark makeup for an upcoming show. She received criticism from the ballet community, including American ballerina Sydney Magruder Washington, for continued usage of blackface in her performances.
