Born in Cuba, Arionel Vargas trained with Laura Alonso at the National Ballet School of Cuba. His career began at Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet, where he danced a variety of the Balanchine repertoire including Serenade, Ballo della Regina, Allegro Brillante and Concerto Barocco, as well as Jiří Kylián’s Symphony in D, John Neumeier’s The Nutcracker, Rudi van Dantzig’s Romeo & Juliet, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty by Galina Yordanova and David Nixon’s Beauty and the Beast and Madame Butterfly. Vargas joined English National Ballet as Principal in 2004, where he danced leading roles in all the major classical repertoire, including Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet and Giselle, with Albrecht being one of his favorite roles. He has also danced both Lescaut and Des Grieux in Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. His won the gold medal in Brazil’s International Ballet Competition in 1994 and the New York International Ballet Competition in 1996. He has appeared in Carlos Acosta and Friends in Valencia and the London Coliseum. Vargas danced in David Nixon’s Withering Heights at Northern Ballet Theatre. He performed Wayne Eagling’s Duet at the Prague International Festival with English National Ballet’s former prima ballerina, Daria Klimentová, and in 2009, he performed with Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro with Royal Ballet Principal Roberta Marques in The Nutcracker. Most recently, Vargas appeared as Romeo in Derek Deane’s staging of Romeo & Juliet in-the-round at the Royal Albert Hall, danced at the Dance Open Ballet Festival in Saint Petersburg (Russia), and performed in international ballet festivals in Miami and Havana. Vargas returns as a guest artist with Milwaukee Ballet, having previously danced as Karl/The Prince in The Nutcracker and Josef in Mirror Mirror.