Maté Szentes is originally from Budapest, Hungary and began his training at the age of six. He studied at the Hungarian Dance Academy while attending summer programs at North Carolina Dance Theater in Charlotte, NC.
Upon graduation he joined the Hungarian National Ballet where he danced for 3 years performing corps de ballet and soloist roles in the company’s many classical and contemporary productions. In 2012 he moved to California and joined the Sacramento Ballet as a company artist and continued expanding his repertoire. Mr. Szentes relocated to the east coast in 2015 to join the Richmond Ballet where he danced principal and soloist roles. Besides dancing classical ballet’s most famous roles he had the opportunity to dance many of George Balanchine’s works and worked with world renowned choreographers such as Ma Cong, Val Caniparoli, Mariana Oliveira, Melissa Barak, Katarzyna Skarpetowska, Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa, Nicolas Blanc among many others. Since 2021 he’s a freelance artist while maintaining a guest principal dancer status with American Contemporary Ballet. He’s been part of over 40 world premieres of new works that have been created on him – many of them as a soloist or in a lead role.
He started choreographing in 2016 and so far his works have been performed by the Los Angeles Ballet, Richmond Ballet, Barak Ballet, Ballet Orange County and other independent and project based companies.
Mr. Szentes was a finalist at the Palm Desert Choreography Festival in 2022 and 2023 and his works were also invited to be performed at the North Coast Dance Festival in Michigan and at Balletfest in Long Beach, CA.
As a guest teacher he has been working internationally with schools and companies alike, most notably with Norwegian National Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and Accademia La Scala in Milan, Italy among many others.
