Valerii Petrovich Kovtun

Born Oct. 22, 1944, in Donetsk Oblast. Soviet ballet dancer. People’s Artist of the USSR (1978). Member of the CPSU since 1978.

From 1965 to 1968, after graduating from the Kiev Choreographic School, Kovtun was a soloist with the ballet company of the Kharkov Theater of Opera and Ballet. In 1968 he became a principal dancer with the T. G. Shevchenko Kiev Theater of Opera and Ballet. His parts have included Siegfried in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the Prince in Prokofiev’s Cinderella, Daphnis in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Lukash in Skorul’skii’s The Forest Song, and Don Juan in Gubarenko’s The Stone Master.

Kovtun won prizes at the international ballet competitions in Varna (1970) and Moscow (1973). He received the Lenin Komsomol Prize in 1977.