13-year-old student of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet Yana Cherepanova is a real Instagram star: on her account in social network More than 68 thousand people from all over the world have subscribed. The young dancer gained fame after publishing a video showing how she balances on an exercise machine for athletes. In an interview with RT, Cherepanova spoke about her popularity on the Internet, her reaction to criticism and competition among future ballerinas.
Tell us how you got into ballet, did you immediately get involved?
My mother brought me to ballet when I was four years old - to the Nutcracker Ballet Theater in Yekaterinburg. When I came, I was little, it didn’t matter to me. And when I got older, I started to like it.
Do you remember the moment when you realized that you really wanted to become a ballerina and nothing else?
Probably when I danced good role, and I liked it. It was in opera house In Ekaterinburg. I danced Thumbelina. Although I’m not yet in a professional team, I liked it.
Surely you have idols among ballet stars.
Which ballerina would you like to be like?
I don’t know, all ballerinas are good in their own way, they all have something good.
Is there some kind of ballet that you would like to dance in? main role? What role do you think is yours?
I would like to dance the main role in all ballets. Maybe Kitri in Don Quixote. I like these types of roles when you are fast and active.
You are already making great progress in the ballet field at such a young age. What do you consider your main achievement?
At our Academy, everyone makes progress at this age. I don't know what achievement.
Cool - probably the first time I made a video on the platform. No one has ever done this before.
You quickly became popular on the Internet. How did this happen?
This happened when I made my first video on the platform, and it got 30 million views in one day. And then I thought that I need to start Instagram - maybe it will help me someday.
Why did you decide to make this video?
I just had nothing better to do, so I decided to stand on the platform and do something balletic.
How did you feel when you hit 30 million views? This is a very large number.
I was shocked. Parents were also shocked that there were so many views in one day.
This impresses everyone. How long have you been running Instagram?
When I started leading so actively... probably about two years. Before that, I led it without any purpose.
How do you react to negative comments?
I try not to react.
Don’t your parents tell you, “That’s it, stop being on social networks”?
No, on the contrary, my mother helps me with this. We post on Instagram what I'm working on for classes. Therefore, this does not interfere in any way.
It seems like you have no free time at all. Do you manage to find time for any hobby?
My hobby is maintaining Instagram. I can go to the gym after school and set up a camera so I can look at my mistakes later. I post this and after a while I post it again to see the result.
Maybe you're hanging out with your friends?
Yes, I go out with some girls from the academy, we like to go on rides.
Hasn’t it happened in your life that you study, study, study, and at some point you want to pick up and go on vacation? desert island so no Instagram, no classes?
It was, but that's what holidays are for.
Her story is amazing. I started studying ballet at the age of 12 (!), when it was already quite late. Thanks to dancing, I met my future husband, a German.
Now 34-year-old Yana Salenko is a prima ballerina of the Berlin State Opera. And on October 21, in her native Kyiv, she, along with other world stars, will give a gala concert.
We talked with Yana not only about ballet, but also about her unusual fate.
"The doctors didn't believe I could dance"
- Yana, you have been dancing in theaters around the world for 12 years. Why did you suddenly decide to organize a concert in Kyiv?
It's still mine hometown, I have parents here, many warm memories are associated with him. Last year I came to dance in Swan Lake twice and decided that I wanted to give Kyiv something special. So the idea arose to invite my friends and colleagues here - leading dancers from Berlin, Milan, London - and stage a ballet with them especially for the Kyiv concert.
- And what did you come up with?
Our ballet is called "Dietrich", it is based on the biography famous actress Marlene Dietrich - about her and the main men in her life. This is a ballet about feelings, oh strong spirit a woman who is at the same time very vulnerable and fragile inside.
- Not everyone has such qualities.
Yes, but it seems to me that I have been like this since childhood. I have four siblings, I have always followed their example. She never cried or complained. And there was no one to cry to: my parents were constantly at work, trying to feed their large family.
Besides, even before school I studied rhythmic gymnastics at Deryugina’s school - and there is iron discipline, very strict conditions.
- Gymnastics? How did ballet appear in your life?
You know, I had every chance to become an athlete. Even during the selection process, the commission noted my data - out of a hundred people, only me and one other girl were accepted into the school. Everything worked out for me, but I quickly became uninterested. So my dad decided to try to send me to dance and called Kiyanochka College.
They were recruiting children for a ballet class there, and we thought it was ballroom dancing, and they came. I was 12 years old - it’s too late to start at that age, but the teacher saw something in me and offered to stay and try.
I fell in love with ballet immediately and did everything possible to quickly catch up with the other girls in the class. When I first put on pointe shoes, I didn’t take them off almost around the clock, just to quickly learn how to dance on them. I stretched so hard that I injured my back. The doctors didn’t believe that I could dance, but I recovered in six months and am still dancing!
"It was love at first sight!"
- Did your family and friends believe that you would grow up to be a ballerina?
No! At first they thought it was not serious; my mother dreamed that I would receive a “normal” education and become a doctor. But in the end, not only me, but also my brother was drawn into ballet. My mother forced him to come with me to practice because she didn’t want me to return from training in the evening alone. Before ballet, my brother played basketball, and leaving the sport was a great tragedy for him. In addition, he got into ballet class very late, at the age of 14. But I managed to interest him in dance, and for good reason - now he dances and teaches in Japan, he has his own ballet school.
- And how did you get to Berlin?
After studying at Vadim Pisarev’s school, I worked at the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theater, then returned to Kyiv as a soloist National Opera. In this status I went to Vienna for international competition, where she took gold and met her future husband Marian Walter, who also took first place. It was love at first sight!
After I left, he found me, and we spent six months on the phone, meeting periodically in Kyiv and Berlin. As a result, Marian proposed to me and even planned to move to Ukraine. But then we thought: why don’t I try to enter the competition at the Berlin State Opera? They took me and almost immediately promoted me to soloist, and after a couple of years I was promoted to prima.
- Sounds like a Cinderella story. Did you have friends or acquaintances there?
No, apart from my husband, I had no one in Berlin. In addition, his parents were not very happy at first about their daughter-in-law from Ukraine.
It was hard, I didn’t know the language, people had a completely different mentality. At first I felt very lonely. But then I pulled myself together and began to communicate, get to know each other, and learn German. Adapt yourself to their way of life.
Now it seems to me that the German way of life is the most correct. Here you have everything social guarantees- you will never be left on the street without a pension. The banking system works very well. Taxes are high, yes, you definitely won’t get rich here. But you will always be sure of tomorrow. People live very consciously and make sure that no one disturbs the order.
I had funny incident when I first moved. Everyone there separates the garbage, and I went to take it out in a bag, like ours - it’s all a heap. As a result, the neighbors forced me to take the bag out of the bin and sort everything as it should be. This is their order. Order in everything.
By the way
What is the difference between Berlin and Kyiv theaters?
In Berlin they are more open to new things, they invite modern choreographers, artists from different countries. We try all the time different techniques dance. There are classics too, but they are not the main focus. They give a lot to the artist new information, and this allows you to grow in the profession.
In addition, the atmosphere in the troupe is much more democratic. We support each other, we have healthy competition, without gossip and envy. To some extent I understand why this is so: in Germany we are protected by the state. Artists, even after injury or retirement at 35, will not be left with anything.
In Ukraine, everything is different - people fight for every chance to stay on stage as long as possible, because they understand that they have nothing outside the theater.
- Get your paperwork sorted out as quickly as possible, especially with medical insurance. Here it is required.
- Listen to the advice of locals and absorb information. Berlin lives strictly according to the rules, so they are very careful here. traffic and just a little bit - they can be seriously fined.
- It’s the same with garbage: learn to pack it correctly, otherwise your neighbors won’t understand you and won’t love you.
- All public transport runs exactly on schedule.
- When it comes to entertainment, Berlin has it all! You definitely won't be bored.
A young ballerina from St. Petersburg, Yana Cherepanova, became famous on Reddit thanks to a video in which she confidently stands and even does steps on a swinging disk. But many users paid attention not only to the girl’s balance skills, but also to her strongly bent legs. No matter how strange they look, it is normal for ballet dancers and even demonstrates special skill.
The balance skills of the heroine of the video amazed Reddit users to the core.
Yes, I consistently fall once or twice a week while trying to put on my pants. And here it is, I’m just in shock.
I can't even stand on this thing with both feet.
As a person whose vestibular system is very bad, I am sad, envious, and impressed. What a hellish mixture of emotions!
Some users immediately assumed that the girl was from Russia, mainly judging by the appearance of the flight of stairs behind her. And they turned out to be right. The little acrobat's name is Yana Cherepanova, she is 13 years old, and she lives in St. Petersburg, where she studies at the Academy of Russian Ballet. Vaganova - one of the oldest ballet schools in the world, from which such famous dancers like Anna Pavlova, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Mikhail Baryshnikov and many others.
Yana runs Instagram, where she often posts videos in which she demonstrates her skills. In some of them, it may appear that her leg is broken, but this is a specially practiced skill, which in ballet jargon is called “X legs.” It is considered a sign of high skill, but achieving it is very difficult and dangerous to health.
Some videos may send chills down your spine because they look creepy from the point of view of those who are not familiar with ballet.
And some of Yana’s videos impress with their beauty.
The girl looks especially bewitching in those photos where she is in a dress.
Yana, as her mother Olga Cherepanova told the Italian publication Derivati Sanniti, has been studying ballet since she was four years old. The girl was taken to dance classes by her mother, and, according to her, it was a random decision.
"There is no fairy tale story about how we discovered her talent for ballet. I accidentally saw an advertisement somewhere about recruitment in ballet school and decided to try it. Yana passed the selection for the local ballet theater, but from the very beginning she was different from other children. She was very attentive and took her classes very seriously. It was even strange to see such zeal in a child.”
Yana at four years old
At the age of nine, Yana had already become a prima ballerina at the Yekaterinburg theater, where the family lived. And this is what her performance looked like at that age.
Yana already dreamed of studying at the Vaganova Academy, and in August 2014 her parents decided to take their daughter to enroll there. But the girl’s grandmother got sick, and she had to spend money on the trip and her treatment. A year later, the Cherepanov family launched a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo to move to St. Petersburg, since there was not enough money for tickets and housing there.
At that time, Yana was greatly helped by the fact that she was noticed by the ballet photographer Gene Schiavon, who published pictures with the girl on his page, which allowed her parents to collect more money for moving. So at the age of ten, Yana found herself in an academy where most of the children were a year older than her, and therefore at first she experienced difficulties.
“She was very worried that she wasn’t tall enough. Almost all the girls in her class were taller because they were older, but we couldn’t influence it in any way, so we just waited,” says Olga Cherepanova.
Now the girl has grown up and is successfully conquering the heights of ballet mastery, and her mother dreams of seeing her on the world stage.
“I want her to work hard, be a good girl and become a ballerina. But honestly, I want her to be a superstar and want all the theaters in the world to have her. Every parent wants that for their child, believe me.”
Yana works really hard and doesn’t stop working out even on the escalators, where you can again see her X-shaped legs.
A young ballerina from St. Petersburg, Yana Cherepanova, became famous on Reddit thanks to a video in which she confidently stands and even does steps on a swinging disk. But many users paid attention not only to the girl’s balance skills, but also to her strongly bent legs. No matter how strange they look, it is normal for ballet dancers and even demonstrates special skill.
On Reddit, a GIF went to the top in which a girl stands with one leg on a very unstable exercise machine for athletes (balance disk), and lifts the other up and then clasps it with her hand. The girl doesn't just stand on the platform - she rests on the balancing disc with only her toes.
The balance skills of the heroine of the video amazed Reddit users to the core.
Yes, I consistently fall once or twice a week while trying to put on my pants. And here it is, I’m just in shock. Expand
I can't even stand on this thing with both feet. Expand
As a person whose vestibular system is very bad, I am sad, envious, and impressed. What a hellish mixture of emotions! Expand
Some users immediately assumed that the girl was from Russia, mainly judging by the appearance of the flight of stairs behind her. And they turned out to be right. The little acrobat's name is Yana Cherepanova, she is 13 years old, and she lives in St. Petersburg, where she studies at the Academy of Russian Ballet. Vaganova is one of the oldest ballet schools in the world, from which such famous dancers as Anna Pavlova, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Mikhail Baryshnikov and many others graduated.
Yana runs Instagram, where she often posts videos in which she demonstrates her skills. In some of them, it may appear that her leg is broken, but this is a specially practiced skill, which in ballet jargon is called “X legs.” It is considered a sign of high skill, but achieving it is very difficult and dangerous to health.
Some videos may send chills down your spine because they look creepy from the point of view of those who are not familiar with ballet.
And some of Yana’s videos impress with their beauty.
The girl looks especially bewitching in those photos where she is in a dress.
Yana, as her mother Olga Cherepanova told the Italian publication, has been studying ballet since she was four years old. The girl was taken to dance classes by her mother, and, according to her, it was a random decision.
There is no fairy tale story about how we discovered her talent for ballet. I accidentally saw an advertisement somewhere about enrollment in a ballet school and decided to give it a try. Yana qualified for the local ballet theater, but from the very beginning she was different from other children. She was very attentive and took her classes very seriously. It was even strange to see such zeal in a child.
Yana at four years old
At the age of nine, Yana had already become a prima ballerina at the Yekaterinburg theater, where the family lived. And this is what her performance looked like at that age.
Yana already dreamed of studying at the Vaganova Academy, and in August 2014 her parents decided to take their daughter to enroll there. But the girl’s grandmother got sick, and she had to spend money on the trip and her treatment. A year later, the Cherepanov family launched a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo to move to St. Petersburg, since there was not enough money for tickets and housing there.
At that time, Yana was greatly helped by the fact that she was noticed by the ballet photographer Gene Schiavon, who published pictures with the girl on his page, which allowed her parents to raise more money for the move. So at the age of ten, Yana found herself in an academy where most of the children were a year older than her, and therefore at first she experienced difficulties.
