After the stunning performance of "Don Quixote" at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, the delighted audience was informed that ballerina Nora Straukaitė, who performed the role of Kitri on stage for the first time, would become the leading soloist of the ballet company.
N. Straukaitė graduated from the Ballet Department of the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Arts in 2022 (classical dance teacher – Deimantė Karpušenkovienė). While still a student, the young ballerina became a laureate of several international ballet competitions. The LNOBT ballet company immediately accepted her into its ranks of soloists, which is a special and extremely rare recognition for a recent graduate.
Having successfully integrated into the theatre’s repertoire of ballet performances, N. Straukaitė was recognized as the Ballet Hope of the Year at the LNOBT Soloists of the Year Awards in 2023. Currently, the ballerina is eagerly awaiting the "Golden Cross of the Stage" awards ceremony, as she has been nominated for this award for her leading role in the ballet "Le Parc".
The ballerina's list of principal roles on the LNOBT stage is getting longer: this season we have already seen her as Myrtha in the ballet "Giselle", Pierrette in "Les millions d’Arlequin", Gulnara in "Le Corsaire", Miss Bürstner in "Der Prozess", and Aušrinė in the ballet "In the Beginning There Was Nothing".
"The very debut of the role of Kitri in “Don Quixote” was already a huge and exciting event for me. And what happened after the performance – when the artistic director of ballet Jurgita Dronina took the stage and announced that from now on I was the leading soloist of the company, was absolutely unexpected for me, completely out of the blue! It was my dream, but I expected it to come true at least a year or two later... I could not hold back tears of joy.
Afterwards I’ve received a huge number of congratulations and good wishes, and I am now trying to respond to all those who congratulated me. But I will, of course, continue to strive to improve, to perfect the quality of my role preparation," – promises N. Straukaitė, who is dancing in the LNOBT company for the third season.
This season we will also witness her performing the lead role of Barbora in the ballet "Barbora Radvilaitė", as well as in the premiere scheduled for May at the LNOBT – in Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold's ballet "La Fille mal gardée".
