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Natasha
with her dedicated young students.
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Natasha
hopes to pass her dancing skills on to her Chinese students.
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Natasha
trying her hand at the local folk art of shadow play.
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Natasha is a ballerina that M graduated from the Russian Dance
Academy in Moscow in 1994. She has performed numerous shows with
the Moscow Ballet, including classics Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty.
On a performing tour of Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s
Shaanxi Province, she met and fell in love with a local named
Sun Lujun, and decided to stay.
Describing her impression of Xi’an, Natasha says, “Its
long history and culture blew my mind. The Terracotta Warriors,
the Lesser Goose Pagoda, everything there was fascinating to me.
Then I got to know Sun Lujun, and within a short space of time
he captured my heart. So I decided to stay in this ancient city.”
Since then, the couple has married and bought a new house. Natasha
now teaches ballet in Xi’an, and is studying Chinese part-time
at the Xi’an International Studies University. She loves
reading Chinese magazines, but sometimes she needs to ask for
Sun’s help in explaining the more difficult passages. “Natasha
seems to have fallen in love with Chinese culture,” comments
Sun. “She is keen to learn more about Xi’an’s long
history – she often visits historical sites in the city and
searches for traces of its past.”
The head of the ballet troupe Natasha now works for invited her
to teach the children in her troupe. Natasha accepted, and now
puts her heart and soul into training these youngsters in the
Western art. Every week, she spends long hours preparing for her
classes, and though there is a language barrier, she expresses
herself perfectly through movement. Natasha hopes to pass her
dancing skills on to all of her students in this ancient Oriental
city.
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