Italian Petra Conti is a world-renowned ballet dancer who is currently a principal dancer for the Los Angeles Ballet. She has also been a principal for other major companies, including the Boston Ballet and La Scala Theatre Ballet in Milan, Italy. Before that, she was a corps de ballet dancer with the Bavarian State Ballet in Munich, Germany. Her popularity on the stage has translated into popularity on social media, and she has been featured by the likes of Vogue.com as a beauty worth following on Instagram. As well as the obligatory selfies, Conti shares her passion for dancing on Instagram, even live-streaming tutorials.

Conti was born in Anagni, Italy, in 1988 but grew up in Frosinone. She comes from dancing stock, with her mother and sister both having trained with the Polish National Academy of Ballet. She, however, trained at the National Academy of Ballet in Rome, graduating in 2006. Her first major job was dancing with the Bavarian Ballet in Germany, which she managed to do whilst also training with the Mariinsky Ballet in St Petersburg, Russia. In 2009, she returned to Italy and became a principal dancer with the world-famous La Scala Ballet. During her time there, she was the subject of a Sky Italia documentary, Dancers of Tomorrow. Four years later, in 2013, she was invited to America to become a principal dancer with the Boston Ballet. In 2017, she moved south to Los Angeles, taking up the same role with that city’s ballet company.

Despite her huge success in one of the arts’ most demanding businesses, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Conti: in 2016, she needed surgery for kidney cancer, which she has now fully recovered from.