Holden Kunowski, born and raised in San Diego, California, has been training vigorously for 12 years in ballet, contemporary, jazz, musical theater, ballroom, hip hop and tap. He began his dance training at Danceology and was part of their company team under the direction of Niki Lucia; and ballet academy under the direction of Elena Baltovick. In his early teens, he began to focus more of his time on ballet, training in the Vaganova method under the artistic direction of Slawomir Wozniak, Dmitri Kulev, Taras Domitro, Igor Yulov, and Sylvia Tchernychev. Holden has placed in the top 3 at Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) in classical ballet; and garnered first place in the contemporary category. At YAGP, he advanced each time to the finals in New York City. He has received full scholarship offers to summer intensive programs from the Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet Academy, Ballet West, and Boston Ballet, and has attended Houston Ballet’s summer intensive under the direction of Claudio Munoz and Melissa Bowman. In 2020, he received a Merit Award for the virtual LA Music Center’s Spotlight scholarship. Holden has had the privilege of working under the direction of such artists as Norbert de la Cruz III, Travis Wall, Will Loftis, Teddy Forance, Jason Parsons, Andrew Brader, and Nick Meola, among notable others in the academic and commercial dance world. He consistently placed in the top of his age division at Break The Floor conventions, The Dance Awards and NYCDA.  Aside from dance, he has done commercials for Sony PlayStation, Atlantis Bahamas Resort, Nerf Supersoaker, and has performed a variation in The Nutcracker on local Fox News San Diego. Holden is a senior at Del Norte High School and looks to pursue dance professionally in a company or after college, whichever offers him the best opportunity and path forward. He is very excited to be cast in Festival Ballet Theatre's production of The Nutcracker.