At the age of six many girls only dream of being a beautiful ballerina. For Natalia Polyakova her dream was already coming true. Growing up in Moscow Natalia wanted to follow the family tradition of dance. Her mother was a dancer and her younger sister dances too. Ballet is in her blood. At the age of ten she was accepted into the Natalia Nesterova Academy of Dance. She danced there for six years and was then accepted into the Moscow National University of Culture and the Arts.
The days were long there. Natalia had to leave her house at six in the morning to make it to class on time at nine. She had to stay there the whole day until ten at night and then she had to make the three hour trip home. Natalia would have loved school if she didn�t have to spend all day there. But that�s not all, while she was at school she worked as a ballerina too. Natalia was a busy girl. She just graduated last year and now she looks forward to performing in the Nutcracker in the Chinese variation, Waltz of the Flowers, and the Snowflakes with Moscow Ballet.
Natalia does dance a lot and dancing takes up most of her time but when she does get a break she loves to go to the opera and to musicals in the theaters. She also likes to read, see movies, and travel. Natalia�s been all over the world, from Greece and Egypt to China and Singapore. She loves exotic Arabian countries where the culture is so different from her own but her favorite country is America. She feels that in the United States people are really free to go after what they want without anyone looking down on them.
Miami is the
city of Natalia's dreams. One day she hopes to settle down there and
open a ballet school of her own. She really enjoys teaching better than
dancing even though she says that it is much harder. "Teaching requires
you to give more of your self to share your soul," she says. She says
that it�s really important to her that her students want to be there
learning to dance, and she does everything she can to make dancing fun
| and interesting for her students. Her favorite part about doing the
Nutcracker is being able to teach the children how to dance. She spent
her whole life working toward this goal and she is really excited about
being able to do it with Moscow Ballet. 
She only
hopes that no more hurricanes hit Miami. She was in Lake Charles when
Katrina hit and she hurt her leg. A woman named Sarah Jones, who
directs the Balletschool in Lake Charles, took her to the hospital and
looked after her and they have been friends ever since. | In spite of
the storms and all of the hard work, Natalia is really looking forward
to coming back to America to dance with Moscow Ballet. After a
performance she likes to relax and take a bath. She has to sleep when
she can too because rest is important for dancers. While she�s on tour
she really misses her family back in Moscow but she is glad to be
dancing in the Chinese Variation with her fiance Roman.
Last
year while teaching in the Moscow Ballet Summer program in Pittsfield,
MA Mary Talmi, a choreographer who graduated from Julliard,
choreographed a ballet especially for the couple called Marilyn. The ballet featured music from the classic Hollywood musical Diamonds Are a Girl�s Best Friend, starring Marilyn Monroe. It also featured a variety of dance styles including jazz and modern dance.
Roman and Natalia hope to be married soon perhaps sometime next year. She wants to have a child someday and she doesn�t really care whether she has a boy or a girl. If she has a boy she says he must do sports and if she has a girl she hopes that her daughter would be interested in ballet but she says that people should be free to follow their own dreams.
Sarah Mitchell |
