Born in St. Petersburg, Yuri Fateev graduated from the Vaganova Choreography School in 1982 and joined the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet Company the same year. His repertoire included the ballets Giselle, La Bayadère, Paquita, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Creation of the World, Le Carnaval, La Fille Mal Gardée, The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin and Coppélia among others.
In 1996 he became a coach with the Mariinsky Ballet Company and worked on Mariinsky Theatre premiere performances of ballets by George Balanchine, Roland Petit, John Neumeier, Alexei Ratmansky, William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon and José Antonio. He has been a guest coach with the Royal Ballet in London and Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre, given master-classes for the ballet company of the Opéra de Paris and taught for the Swedish Royal Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet (USA) and the Danish Royal Ballet, where he staged a production of highlights from the ballet Le Corsaire. He was involved in the Kings of Dance project in Russia and the USA as well as Stiefel and Stars in the USA, where he staged highlights from classical ballets.
Mr. Fateev has been Acting Director of the Mariinsky Ballet Company since 2008.