Diliana Nikiforova

Onstage at the Sofia National Opera on 10 May 2003, Diliana Nikiforova appeared in a production staged after Leonid Lavrovsky's choreography, with Kyrill Ivanov and Jasen Valchanov. A pupil of Krasimira Koldamova, she danced with companies in Stuttgart, Marseille, Paris and Belgium before becoming a principal ballerina of Bulgaria's National Ballet in 1996, and she appeared as a guest soloist with the Norwegian National Opera. She took a master's degree in ballet pedagogy in Plovdiv and a doctorate in theatre studies in 2010, and at the Plovdiv Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts she teaches classical dance, ballet history and repertoire, writing also on dance theatre and on Bulgarian ballet. She founded the summer Ballet Academy Marian in 2011.