Calvin Richardson

Australian dancer Calvin Richardson is a Principal of The Royal Ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet Upper School, joined the Company in 2014, was promoted to First Artist in 2017, Soloist in 2018, First Soloist in 2021 and Principal in 2024. 

Richardson grew up in Traralgon in Gunnaikurnai country (Gippsland) in regional Victoria, Australia. He started dancing aged five. With an initial interest in tap and musical theatre, he turned to ballet aged 14 when he began to study at The Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School. After becoming a finalist of the 2012 Prix de Lausanne he was awarded a tuition scholarship to study at The Royal Ballet Upper School. 

His roles since joining the Company include Romeo (Romeo and Juliet), Oberon (The Dream), Lensky (Onegin), Polixenes (The Winter's Tale), Des Grieux (Manon), Espada (Don Quixote), Prince (The Nutcracker), Step-Sister & the Prince (Cinderella), Bluebird (The Sleeping Beauty), Benno (Swan Lake), Albert de Belleroche (Strapless), Knave and the Mad Hatter (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Peter (Judas Tree), pas de six (Giselle), ‘Emeralds' (Jewels), The Instrument (The Cellist), Septimus and Evans (Woolf Works). He has also performed roles in The Statement, Infra, The Human Seasons, Chroma, Symphonic Dances, Asphodel Meadows, Concerto and The Two of Us. He has created roles in Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern and Light of Passage, Wayne McGregor’s Untitled, 2023, Multiverse, Obsidian Tear, Yugen and The Dante Project, Hofesh Shechter’s Untouchable and Kyle Abraham's The Weathering.

Richardson is also a creative artist and choreographer. In Richardson's graduate year at The Royal Ballet School, he created his own rendition of The Dying Swan, which was performed in the school’s annual graduate performance and with the Company in various performances worldwide. His other works includes Good People; Something Borrowed; Intractable; Bird of Paradise, a co-creation with Joshua Junker during the pandemic for DisDancing, and Lighthouse for Hatch House, Covent Garden Dance. He has created for Draft Works, including Alvin Lucier Variations, a co-creation with Edo Frankel. Movement direction and choreography credits for film and media includes the music film for Keeley Forsyth's Bring Me Water of the album Limbs, and his most recent, Open Form, a collaboration with artist and performative drawer M.Lohrum.