Director of The Tokyo Ballet

Yukari Saito was appointed Director of The Tokyo Ballet in August 2024 after serving as Artistic Director for nine years from August 2015.

Born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Yukari Saito began her ballet training at the age of six. From the age of 16, she frequently visited Moscow to take lessons from Marina Semionova and Ekaterina Maximova. In 1987, she joined The Tokyo Ballet. When she danced the title role in La Sylphide at the Bolshoi Theatre, Mariinsky Theatre and Kiev National Shevchenko Theatre on the Company's international tour in 1992, she drew lavish praise from Russian critics who called her a "Japanese Marie Taglioni".

During her 28 years with The Tokyo Ballet as Principal Dancer, Saito danced a full range of the Company's principal roles and performed in many Company premieres including Maurice Béjart's Bhakti III (2000), Jiří Kylián's Dream Time (2000), Vladimir Vasiliev's Don Quixote (2001), Frederick Ashton's The Dream (2005), Pierre Lacotte's La Fille du Danube (2006), Natalia Makarova's La Bayadère (2009) and John Cranko's Onegin (2010), as well as in the world premieres of Béjart's Bugaku (1989), and John Neumeier's Seven Haiku of the Moon (1989) and Seasons - The Colors of Time (2000). She was also acclaimed as a guest artist at major theaters around the world including the Hamburg Ballet. In 2009, she graduated from the Moscow State Academy of Choreography with highest honors in ballet master and ballet teaching and obtained ballet teaching qualifications. In 2011, she worked as an assistant to Pierre Lacotte at the Moscow Academic Music Theatre for the staging of La Sylphide.

Her awards include The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize, the Hattori Chieko Award, the Tokyo Shimbun's Dance Arts Award, the Kanagawa Bunka Award, and the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon awarded by the Japanese government in 2012.

During her 9-year tenure as Artistic Director, she gave the world premieres of the Company's new productions of Tchaikovsky's three great ballets, and two ballets by Japanese choreographers, Saburo Teshigawara's Remains of a Cloud and Jo Kanamori's KAGUYAHIME. The Company received the Grand Prize in the Dance Division at the Agency for Cultural Affairs' National Arts Festival in 2019 and 2022.