I’m loving my summer holidays so far – I’m enjoying doing everything that I miss so much whilst I’m in Moscow but of course I’m also keeping up with my training and continuing to maintain my fitness.

I’m going to the gym every day for an hour and half where I warm up, do a ballet barre and stretch (all based on the warm up that I do before every ballet class which you can see here).

I’ve also been training with my old teachers at Bristol Russian Ballet School to keep me up on the Russian style.  It might seem like a long way to go but it’s worth it; Chika and Yury work me really hard and are really knowledgeable giving me advice and corrections that I really respond to.

I spent four days in Bristol and had three hour classes each day which included rehearsing some variations I’ve been working on – Gulnare, from Le Corsaire, and 3rd Odalisque, also from Le Corsaire.  I particularly like these variations because Gulnare is musically and rhythmically very challenging whilst Odalisque enables me to practise my jumps and turns which are my areas for improvement.

Below is a short compilation video showing some of the exercises I do in class and a snippet of both variations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP_NgpadI8w&feature=youtu.be

Here also are some photos taken during the classes:

If you’d like to follow my career as a professional classical dancer, go over to my Instagram page here.  

If you would like advice on your training, I wrote about things to consider in your everyday ballet training regime here.