Gulnora Mavayeva

Gulnora Nizomovna Mavayeva was born in Tashkent on 30 June 1931. She was an Uzbek ballet dancer and a teacher of choreography. In 1939–1941 she studied at the Tamara Khanum ballet school and in 1944–1948 at the ballet studio of the Navoi theatre; in 1951 she graduated from the Uzbek ballet studio of the Moscow Choreographic School.

In 1945–1949, and again from 1951 until the mid-1960s, she was one of the leading soloists of the Alisher Navoi Theatre of Opera and Ballet. In the classical repertoire she danced Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, Esmeralda, Maria and Zarema in The Fountain of Bakhchisarai; among Uzbek ballets she took the title part in Oynisa. Uzbek folk dances were also a significant part of her stage work.

In 1953, at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Bucharest, she won the first prize and a gold medal for the Uzbek dance “Pilla”. She performed in cities of the Soviet Union and abroad.

In 1971 she completed the teaching department of the Leningrad Choreographic School and began teaching at the Tashkent Choreographic School, whose artistic director she was in 1975–1978. She also taught at the Tashkent Institute of Culture in 1974–1978, worked as a ballet teacher in Egypt and Yemen in 1979–1981, and from 1982 taught at the higher school of dance and choreography, the predecessor of today's State Academy of Choreography. Her students include Mamura Ergasheva, People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR, and the Honoured Artists Feruza Sagdullaeva, Gulnora Nizamova and Jamila Usmanova.

In 1959 she received the Order of the Badge of Honour; on 13 November 1964 she was named People's Artist of the Uzbek SSR, having earlier been an Honoured Artist of the Uzbek SSR.

Gulnora Mavayeva died on 26 July 2025 at the age of 94. The Ministry of Culture announced her death and remembered her as a ballerina, dancer and mentor.