Elena Zaitseva

Born in Leningrad. In 1991 she graduated from the theatre-production faculty ("theatre costume" department) of the Leningrad State Cherkasov Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. From 1990–1995 as an assistant costume designer and as a costume designer she collaborated with the Lenfilm studios. From 1995–2001 she was a specialist on costume design at the Mariinsky Theatre, where she has worked as a costume technologist on productions of Parsifal, The Queen of Spades and Le nozze di Figaro, and as a costume designer she has worked on  Der Fliegende Holländer and an authentic version of the ballet The Sleeping Beauty (author of the reconstruction of the costumes by Ivan Vsevolozhsky). Has created the costumes for dramas at the St Petersburg Youth Theatre on the Fontanka. From 2001–2003 she worked at the Novaya Opera theatre in Moscow. From 2003 she has been the head of the artistic costume department of the Bolshoi Theatre. At the Bolshoi Theatre, using old sketches she created costumes for Le Corsaire (2007), La Esmeralda (2009) and Grand Pas Classique from "Paquita" (2008); has created the costumes for the ballets Zakharova Supergame (2009), Jewels (2012), A Hero of Our Time (2015), Don Quixote (2016), Ondine (2016), performances of the Workshop of New Choreography (2005, 2006, 2008) and the operas Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (2004), Wozzeck (2009), Ruslan and Lyudmila (2011) and The Tsar's Bride (2014). Regularly collaborates with stage director and set designer Dmitry Chernyakov, appearing in tandem with him as a costume designer on productions at the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Berlin, the Teatro alla Scala, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Opéra de Paris, English National Opera, the Nederlandse Opera, the Opernhaus Zürich, the Hamburg Oper, the Metropolitan Opera, Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Mikhailovsky Theatre. Has created costumes for ballet productions at the Yekaterinburg, Perm, Chelyabinsk and Astrakhan Opera and Ballet Theatres.