Itsy bitsy prima ballerinas

Through some bizarre twist of fate, I was recently fortunate enough to spend a day at one of Russia's most prestigious ballet schools, the Vaganova academy. When our teacher told us that we had been invited to help the children practise their English I was hysterically excited at the thought of meeting Russia's future ballet stars and seeing the studios where many world famous names received their training.

My feelings on leaving the academy, however, were not at all what I had expected. Instead of starstruck I felt melancholy and very sorry for the talented young dancers I had met over the course of the day. Prior to visiting the school, I was obviously aware of how physically demanding life must be for these children but after interacting with the kids and finding out about their everyday lives I was surprised by how deeply moving the experience was.

Many of these children travel thousands of miles aged 11 to come to the academy, they very rarely get to see their family and have absolutely no life outside of the school. I doubt the boarders even spend much time outside.

Whilst watching a rehearsal of a group of 13 year old girls I was shocked by the skeletal figure of one of the girls but later realised that she was just the only one who looked unhealthy. The other girls all looked like perfectly healthy 10 or 11 year olds.

From New York based photographer Rachel Papo's beautiful series Desperately Perfect, which perfectly captures the pupils of the Vaganova Academy

At the end of the third year in the school the children are whittled down to the very best, meaning that around half of the children are asked to leave. The ideal solution for the unsuccessful ones would be to enter into another, less distinguished academy because they are most definitely not educated to a standard sufficient enough to enable them to enter their age group in mainstream education.

A friend asked our guide what happens in case of injury and we were informed that the school allows the children a year to recover. There was no mention of what happens if they do not recover or what their options would be after leaving.

At the end of the day I was left feeling strangely glad that I was not born with no real physical skills to speak of and wondering whether there will ever come a day when society turns away from this undeniably beautiful art form because of the incredible strain it puts on its artists.

All of this was of course mulled over as my friends and I stuffed our faces full of chocolate.

Russian Reminiscin'

Last night after dinner my Russian mum and I somehow ended up discussing the many social and political changes that have taken place in Great Mother Russia over the past few decades and what she had to say was interestingly a lot more relevant to British politics than expected.

This is a woman who had spent all of her life growing up in a society where everyone was forced to have a job and it was simultaneously nigh on impossible to become extremely wealthy. In her eyes, socialism meant that there were as few rich people as there were poor and the majority formed a just about comfortable middle class.

She explained to me that after perestroika, opportunistic oligarchs stole the country's national resources and these Super Rich go on to use their profits to holiday in places like my fatherland (the Seychelles). She also took issue with the fact that they justify themselves by saying that they earned the money; they didn't put in any hours in at the mine or down at the farm. All of their employees, ordinary people, did all of the work that pays for their houses in London and their luxury holidays.

Meanwhile, people have cottoned on to the financial benefits that come along with governmental roles meaning that politicians are no longer motivated by their work for the people, but simply by the money that brings.

It seems to me that although Russia and the UK have had and continue to have vastly different political situations, the gripes of ordinary people here are not all that far from the many dissatisfactions and frustrations we feel at home.

Russian Roadtrippin'

Hours before sunrise on Sunday morning, my Russian mum and I got on the metro along with drunkards on their way home from da club to begin our four and a half hour journey to the dacha. The dictionary definition of a dacha is "a Russian country-house or villa" but I believe this definition somewhat glamourises the average dacha. I would describe it as a cross between glamping and a trip to the allotments.

The highlight of the trip was by far my fast ever trip to a Russian bathhouse. Sergei and Lyuda (my hosts) have their own bathhouse across the road from the dacha. Prior to the experience I was aware of two things about the banya experience: the complete nudity, and the practice of "massaging" yourself with bunches of dried birch leaves. What I did not know was that it is also traditional to wear a hat, ideally one made of felt. A visit to Google has informed me that this is to maintain a constant temperature throughout your body, so that you aren't rapidly overwhelmed by the 93 degree heat. Lyuda did explain this when she handed me a hat but I was too busy trying to work out where to put my eyes to be able to understand much Russian at the beginning of the experience.

Da dacha!

So there I was butt naked, with a red woolly hat on, in the middle of nowhere in a Russian forest. After a brief adjustment period, I took some time to meditate and then taught Lyuda some meditation techniques before getting dressed and heading back to the house to watch hours of crappy Russian TV.

Never a dull day in Russia!