- For me it was so unlike anything else. I came to the institute, a large hall, and more than 100 people are warming up there. Everyone is so beautiful, balletic, moving great. For the creative competition [a part of entrance examination], everyone prepared some cool performances with interesting ideas. And I ... No, of course, I also approached this creative competition very seriously. Just, you know, when you come, and it seems to you: "Bhhhrr" (Laughs)
- Like wen you suppose that everyone around you are way better than you...
- Yes! And what I prepared, I already somehow ceased to like. While everyone was warming up, I just sat, looked at them and thought that only a miracle would help me pass this exam. But in the end, we went into the hall, and everything went fine with me. Everything turned out great, the selection committee appreciated my performance, and I was selected.
- At first I wanted to say that for you, as a skater, that was a little easier. Then I stopped, because ballet and figure skating are very different in terms of choreography.
- Sure. In general, my dean Andrei Borisovich Kruzhalov scolded me for during the first year as I didn't know how to walk. He said: "You learned to skate, but you can not walk!" (Laughs.) Well, of course, when you spent my whole life skating, you don’t know how to walk beautifully in ballet.
And I went like I am skating. I was sliding around the hall (laughs). And they said to me: "When will you learn it!" In general, in GITIS [Russian Institute of Theatre Arts] I was taught how to walk. And no matter how much we do choreography and dancing at the rink, everything is completely different here.
- Can this experience somehow help you in sport?
- In general, it gave me a freedom. I became freer, stopped being afraid of how the audience, coaches would appreciate what they would say about me. I used to have a panic - when we choreographed programs, I was always afraid to offer something. But I did have some ideas. I always had a fountain of different movements in my head all the time, but I was too shy to show it, because it seemed to me that the coaches would laugh at me. And in the end everything will go nowhere.
But after GITIS everything changed. Probably, it could not be otherwise when on the first day of our studies at the “art of choreography” program they give us music and we had to find the image for it, write a libretto and choreograph a performance with some kind of story. They gave us few hours. Then everyone sat in the hall, and we were dancing once by one to the choreo we created by ourselves. We talked about the image that we saw in that music. For the first time I had it somehow ... No, of course, I am a person without complexes, but it was very difficult.
I really worried how people would react to what I was doing, to the choice of movements. After all, on ice I can improvise as much as I like. But on the floor, my vocabulary is much more modest, it's lacking. Therefore, I had to go over myself in order to stop being shy, to love what I was doing, to be sure of it. And do not be afraid of criticism. Although at our institute everyone is insanely tolerant. No matter what happens, no matter what rubbish we show on the floor, we are still respected, because we are all on equal footing.
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