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.