Cesar Corrales

Cesar Corrales is currently listed by The Royal Ballet as a Principal. Cesar Corrales is a Cuban-Canadian Principal of The Royal Ballet whose background is unusually international even by ballet standards. His official Royal Ballet and Opera biography says he was born in Mexico City and first trained with his parents, Taina Morales and Jesus Corrales, both professional dancers, before going on to Canada’s National Ballet School. Before his major-company career he also performed the title role in the musical Billy Elliot in Chicago and Toronto between 2010 and 2011, an early sign of his ease in a theatrical environment. In 2014 he danced with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, won both the Grand Prix Award and Artistry Award at the Youth America Grand Prix, and soon after joined English National Ballet. There he was promoted to Principal in 2017 before moving to The Royal Ballet at the start of the 2018/19 season, where he was promoted to Principal in 2021.

That combination of competition distinction, North American schooling, family immersion in dance and early leading opportunities has fed into a repertory notable for bravura and dramatic command. At English National Ballet, his official biography records roles such as Ali in Le Corsaire, Mercutio in Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet, Albrecht in Giselle and Franz in Coppélia, and it notes that he created Hilarion in Akram Khan’s Giselle. Since joining The Royal Ballet he has expanded further into leading male roles including the Prince in Cinderella, Onegin, Prince Florimund, Prince Siegfried, Albrecht, Solor, Romeo and Franz, as well as major contemporary and neo-classical repertory. The same biography cites awards including the 2016 Emerging Dancer Award and the 2017 National Dance Award for Outstanding Male Performance in Le Corsaire, reinforcing the sense of a dancer whose virtuosity was recognised well before he entered his current company.

Corrales’s career trajectory also illustrates how quickly major institutions responded to his technical confidence and stage instinct. Unlike dancers whose growth is narrated primarily as an internal school-to-company progression, his story is one of mobile, international acceleration: family studio training, elite school, musical theatre, competition triumph, principal status at ENB, then principal work at Covent Garden. That path has produced an artist who is often cast in roles requiring speed, clarity, attack and princely presence, but the breadth of his official repertory also points to increasing dramatic range. In contemporary ballet terms he belongs to a generation of principal men asked to be not only brilliant technicians but vivid actors and originating collaborators, and his biography suggests he has consistently met that standard.