THIS MUCH I KNOW

Irina Kolesnikova

If my daughter said she wanted to be a dancer I’d be delighted, but I’d never force her and actually I’d deliberately try not to even to influence her. But our family is “ballet”. Vasilisa’s world is ballet. it might be hard to dissuade her.

The feeling dancing gives depends on the ballet I’m dancing. It depends on my mood on a given day. Mainly I find dance a mental drain. I can cope with the physical, but the emotional input can be intense. Dancing itself, steps, jumps ... totally invigorating!

I’m a housewife, a mother. I live in a lovely apartment in old St Petersburg. Because I don’t spend anymore than two months at a time at home, I make the most of my beautiful historic city and of course as a dancer I go to work every day. Even if I’m not performing I have to do class. It’s a necessary ritual.

The most frivolous thing I have done lately? Chocolate.

I was last defiant about expectations of my body and of dance, tonight. A dancer is always fighting fatigue, injury, pain — this is not a complaint. Just an everyday fact.

In dance, the hardest taskmaster or the most unforgiving is the audience, my body, my choreographer, family, the ballet world. All these, but above all, my emotional involvement in the characters I dance. I simply can’t make a performance work without a deep emotional involvement. I can manage the physical, the emotional connection is the hard part and needs great preparation.

The greatest myth about Russia is that we are an unhappy people. We love life. We have a great connection to history. We are friendly.

I want nothing for Christmas. I have it all ... a career ... a wonderful husband and a precious daughter ... Vasa is too young to make demands ... ask me next year.

My greatest fear in the immediate ... injury that would stop me from dancing. Long term? That my family might at some time be in danger.

I dream about chocolate.

On Christmas Day I’ll be on an aeroplane between Sydney and Christchurch. Christmas dinner at 10,000 metres, yum yum!

What the world needs now, is a better pointe shoe!