Director of The Tokyo Ballet since August 2024 after serving as Artistic Director for nine years.

Born in Yokohama, Japan, Yukari Saito began her ballet training aged 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. On the Company’s international tour in 1992, she danced the title role in La Sylphide at the Bolshoi Theatre, Mariinsky Theatre, and Kiev National Shevchenko Theatre to draw praise from Russian critics who called her a “Japanese Marie Taglioni”.

During her 28-year dance career with The Tokyo Ballet, Saito performed a full range of the Company’s principal roles and danced 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 also made numerous international appearances at major theaters around the world, both with the Company’s tour as well as a guest artist, including the Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin), Staatsoper Stuttgart, Hamburgische Staatsoper, and Kremlevskii dvorets s’ezdov for the 65th anniversary gala of Ekaterina Maximova.

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.

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. Under her leadership, Choreographic Project was launched in 2014, where the Company’s dancers create and present their own choreographies every year. The Tokyo Ballet also made its Oman debut in 2018 and Australian debut in 2023, bringing the Company’s international performances to 799 in 158 cities across 33 counties (as of 2025).

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.