The Tokyo Ballet announces that Principal Yasuomi Akimoto is to leave the Company at the end of March 2024 after eight and a half years. 

Akimoto joined The Tokyo Ballet in 2015, being the first male dancer to join the Company as Principal. He has made an incredible contribution to the artistic life of The Tokyo Ballet, starring in the great breadth of the Company's repertoire including Vladimir Bourmeister's Swan Lake, Anna-Marie Holmes's Le Corsaire, George Balanchine's Serenade, Jerome Robbins's In the Night, Jiří Kylián's Petite Mort, and in the world premieres of Saburo Teshigawara's Remains of a Cloud, Jo Kanamori's KAGUYAHIME and Yukari Saito's The Sleeping Beauty. In 2020, he received Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists. 

The opening night of The Nutcracker on Thursday 21 December at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan will be his final performance in a principal role during his tenure with The Tokyo Ballet. We hope you will enjoy the show.