Saori Yamashita
“My dance journey has been like riding an elevator because I’m always going up or down… and sometimes I’m not even the one pushing the buttons.”
Saori hails from Sapporo, Japan, and got her start dancing at Sapporo City Ballet. She received further training at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington D.C. and the Joffrey Academy of Dance Trainee Program. She was invited to join The Joffrey Ballet's Studio Company in 2014 where she performed works by Christopher Wheeldon, Alexander Ekman, Stanton Welch, Sir Frederick Ashton, Gerald Arpino, Alexei Kremnev, and Krzystof Pastor. She has performed at Lincoln Center in New York City as part of the YAGP Gala and was invited to compete in the Moscow International Ballet Competition. Saori joined State Street Ballet in 2017. Being in Santa Barbara, she (naturally) started learning how to surf this summer!
Saori started wearing PerfectFit before Nutcracker in 2019, and hasn’t looked back. She finds that her pointe shoes last longer with PerfectFit! And she admits, “my feet are looking so good after switching to PerfectFit. They look like I don't wear pointe shoes!”
When we asked Saori to describe her dance journey in the form of a metaphor, she said that “it’s been like riding an elevator because I’m always going up or down… and sometimes I’m not even the one pushing the buttons.”
