Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Nikisha Fogo trained at the Kungliga Svenska Balettskolan and The Royal Ballet School. She joined the Vienna State Ballet in 2013, and was promoted to demi-soloist in 2015, soloist in 2016, and first soloist in 2018. She joined San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer in 2020.
“Though her meteoric rise has caught the eye of the ballet world, [Fogo] dances with the abandon and joy of a woman unaware of how extraordinary she is.”—Dance Magazine
Nikisha Fogo created a splash in her SF Ballet debut as the Sugar Plum Fairy in Tomasson’s Nutcracker, a role she revived in 2022. At SF Ballet’s next@90 festival, celebrating the Compnay’s 90th anniversary season in January 2023, Fogo debuted in Val Caniparoli’s Emergence and has continued rehearsing the role of Myrtha in Tomasson’s Giselle, opening later in February. Fogo’s diverse repertory includes principal roles in full-length ballets such as Legris’ Sylvia, Lacotte’s Coppélia, and Nureyev’s Don Quixote, among others, as well as neoclassical and contemporary works such as Balanchine’s Allegro Brillant, Rubies, Stars and Stripes, Tarantella, and Theme and Variations; Cranko’s Onegin; Kaydanovskiy’s Der Feuevogel and Movements to Stravinsky; Macmillan’s Concerto; Neumeier’s Le Sacre, Forsythe’s The Second Detail, and Wayne McGregor’s EDEN | EDEN.
Her awards include first prize at the Stora Daldansen competition in Falun, Sweden, and the Grasse Ballet Competition in France.