Hyo-Jung KANG
강효정
Principal Dancer, Semperoper Ballett Dresden (since the 2025/26 season)
Principal Dancer, Vienna State Ballet, Vienna State Opera (2021-2025)
Principal Dancer, Stuttgart Ballet, State Opera Stuttgart (2011-2021)
Hyo-Jung Kang is a South Korean-born ballet artist and Principal Dancer of Semperoper Ballett Dresden. Before joining the company in Dresden, she was Principal Dancer of the Vienna State Ballet from 2021 to 2025, following a decade as Principal Dancer of Stuttgart Ballet from 2011 to 2021.
She received her early training at Sunhwa Arts School in Seoul and the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington, D.C., before completing her studies at the John Cranko School in Stuttgart. After graduating in 2003, she joined Stuttgart Ballet and progressed through the company from eleve to corps de ballet, demi-soloist and soloist. She was promoted to Principal Dancer in 2011.
Admired for her musicality, dramatic subtlety and finely articulated movement quality, Hyo-Jung Kang has interpreted many major roles in the classical and narrative repertoire. Her roles include Tatiana and Olga in Onegin, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Odette and Odile in Swan Lake, Giselle, La Sylphide, Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Kitri in Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut in The Lady of the Camellias, Mary Vetsera in Mayerling, Nikiya in La Bayadere and the Dying Swan.
Her neo-classical and contemporary repertoire includes works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Hans van Manen, John Neumeier, Kenneth MacMillan, Jiri Kylian, William Forsythe, Uwe Scholz, Heinz Spoerli, Martin Schlapfer and Christian Spuck.
In addition to the Prix de Lausanne Scholarship Prize in 2002, she received the Dance Award of the Friends of Stuttgart Ballet in 2006 and the German Dance Prize Zukunft in 2011. Alongside her performing career, she works as a teacher, coach and mentor in international training programmes, workshops and summer intensives.