Meet Yuka
Hometown: Akishima-shi, Tokyo
Yuka Iseda began ballet studies at age five. She received training at Ecole de Ballet “PUCK”, in Tokyo, and Palucca Schule Dresden. Yuka joined Philadelphia Ballet for our 2016/2017 Season as a member of the corps de ballet, was promoted to Soloist for the 2018/2019 Season, and then to First Soloist for the 2019/2020 Season. Following the December 16, 2021 performance of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®, Yuka was promoted onstage to Principal Dancer by Angel Corella. She has danced principal roles in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® (Sugarplum Fairy), Angel Corella’s Le Corsaire (Medora), Swan Lake (Odette/Odile), Giselle (Giselle), Don Quixote (Kitri) and La Bayadère (Nikiya). Yuka has also performed in the world premieres of Juliano Nunes’s Connection and Garrett Smith’s Reverberance, as well as Novice in Jerome Robbins’s The Cage.
Prior to Philadelphia Ballet, Yuka danced at Dresden Semperoper Ballet (Ballett Sächsische Staatsoper), followed by the Dutch National Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Angel Corella’s Barcelona Ballet, and Ballet Carmen Roche in Madrid. Some of her featured roles with those companies include Cinderella in Cinderella, Juliet in Romeo & Juliet, Hermia and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Clara in The Nutcracker, Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, and Odette/Odile (with Angel Corella) and Pas de Trois in Swan Lake.
