The festival, now in its fifth year, takes place at the St. Petersburg venue from March 24-April 3.

The schedule also contains three gala performances, each starring one of the company's great ballerinas (Ulyana Lopatkina, Diana Vishneva, and Daria Pavlenko), and another gala performance for its corps de ballet. The gala concert closing the festival will feature all 20th-century choreography.

Stars from other ballet companies dancing in this year's festival are Svetlana Lunkina, Dmitry Gudanov, and Nikolai Tsiskaridze from the Bolshoi; Alina Cojocaru, Johan Kobborg, and Vyacheslav Samodurov from London's Royal Ballet; Agnes Letestu, Jean-Guillaume Bart, Laurent Hilaire, and Manuel Legris from the Op_ra de Paris; and Roberto Bolle from La Scala.

This year's festival program includes repertory works by George Balanchine, Yuri Grigorovich, Kenneth MacMillan, and Harald Lander, as well as by Lev Ivanov, Marius Petipa, Jean Coralli, and Jules Perrot.