Day in the life at Vaganova Ballet Academy | Vaganova chats!

Hello Everyone,
A lot of you wonder what a day is like at Vaganova well here I will share with you :-) As you may have guessed the days are long and gruelling!
Also - hilarious fact! the shot of the asian girl eating lunch is a Korean student who was in my class at Vaganova! my editor randomly chose some stock footage, how random! :-)
Enjoy and please leave your comments below!
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About Me
Hello everyone! my names Isabella.
I am the first British graduate of the Vaganova ballet academy in Saint Petersburg Russia. I was a soloist working with the Mikhailovsky Ballet and Eifman ballet.
Now I live in London as a full time coach
Here, on my channel I am sharing my passion with you all about the Vaganova technique amongst many other things related to ballet we all love.
It's a hard industry so I am here to help with my insights and knowledge to make it a little easier for you all, as well as to hopefully entertain you with my content.
Thank you for watching!

[@fluer6049]

These are fascinating insights!! Keep them coming! I don't know if you've done any videos from your time with the Royal Ballet School-- but that would be very interesting too. Especially if you were at White Lodge, Richmond!

[@jessicamarquet4348]

In my ballet school, we start at 07:30 am, so for me class at 09:00am it's not that early hahaha. But, of course, we finish our day earlier.

[@balletwithisabella]

Haha that is early!! At least you finish earlier though ❤

[@ambitiously_]

Your school also wasn’t Vaganova so the start and end times are irrelevant. It’s like comparing clown college to Harvard.

[@mathildewesendonck7225]

I would definitely want class at 11 o clock or even later 😅 I am so stiff when I get out of bed, and I think it’s also good if you are an „owl“ rather than a morning person. After all, in this job you will need to be at your top level between 7 and 10 pm in the evening for performances

[@margobrambor973]

At my professional ballet school in Russia, we have 4 time slots for our daily ballet class - 9 am, 10:45, 12:30 pm and 2:30 pm. Last term our ballet class was at 2:30 until about 4:10, then we had 10 minutes for break and other classes until 8 or 8:30. This term our class is at 10:45, which in my opinion is ideal - not too early where you can’t function, and not too late where you feel exhausted from your morning academic classes 😊

[@clarafeldman9130]

Dear Isabella, I admire ballet and have a lot of respect for you and the other dancers. Your level of commitment is incredible. Thank you so much for the content you are creating. It's such a pleasure to listen to you! Your videos are very poetic, inspiring, and practical, not only about the skills but also in terms of life philosophy. I'm 47 now and I adore ballet workouts for amateurs. I was born in Moscow and used to live 5 min from Bolshoi Theatre. I wish you all the best❤ What is that beautiful soundtrack you use in the opening?

[@balletwithisabella]

Thank you!! ❤ so sweet of you and lovely to read your message - the music is a personal intro of mine 💜

[@suem6004]

Lived and taught in Soviet Union as a foreigner. Washing clothes was a bathtub and clothes line. Shopping... bread and dairy mostly available. You had to hunt on the street for other foods then queue. I lived on bread, kefir, cheese mostly until people fed me. How was your experience? I agree. Nothing substitutes for practice. No different in schooling either. the more you study, the better you become.

[@ambitiously_]

The Soviet Union and modern day Russia (and other former Soviet countries) are completely different. Communism made the USSR the hell you described, things are much better generally now. Or at least they were until Putin lost his mind.

[@fluer6049]

Comparing communist Soviet Union to the Russian Federation is like comparing field cabbage and seedless, burbless hothouse cucumbers. I just watched current video of ppl shopping in far flung Siberia-- their grocery stores have many varieties of everything-- no different than the West now.

[@aradech1470]

Isabella, what a women you are! I admire you a lot! I used to be so so so disciplined but during Covid I turned out in a different kind of person like always tired and with no motivation, etc. And now i'm finding me again, like i'm can afford a class and do my best. I still battle with some lazyness, because I used to train for being professional and I wanted to be a professional ballerina, but I cant do that anymore because life and stuffs like I have to go to work and study. But your videos are helping me a lot, really, making changes. I just dont give up easy like I used to do anymore. Thanks a lot ❤❤❤❤

[@irinad.7802]

Just found your channel, thanks a lot for your insights into life at Vaganova as a foreigner. It would be great if you could do more videos about your experiences in Russia.

[@smokeyhan]

Hi Isabella! I would love to hear more about how you got over your fear of pointe -- any particular tips? I'm really struggling with that right now.

[@TheGoldenSkill]

wow top tier stuff i like the grind - much love & respect!

[@l.alexandra5871]

Your videos are fascinating. Training in New York we had classes six days a week, year round. My particular school/teacher never closed for holidays. Missing for even a long weekend or a one week holiday was really “horrible” and felt so out of shape. We would take two ballet classes between ninety minutes and one hundred fifteen minutes each. The first one would be at 12noon and the second at 5:00pm. We would have a pointe class or variation class during the day. How many actual classes were you taking during the days, please? How long were you actually working with a teacher? When I studied nobody did one on one lessons or private coaching. Sometimes we’d sneak off and take another technique class at another school like ABT or Joffrey. When I was at the Royal Ballet I finally realized my pointe training had been a bit deficient. Maybe because my teacher was a man we just didn’t devote as much time to pointe classes. Two things that always seemed “ridiculous” in hindsight - even from a pretty early age: always doing class in front of a mirror and not doing most classes wearing pointe shoes. Now I see lots of teachers don’t want students depending on looking in the mirror and many dancers change into pointe shoes even before the barre is over and wear pointe shoes for all center work. Thank you again

[@svetlanajemerova390]

Thanks a lot, very interesting! You mention breakfast and lunch, was there any dinner?

[@TheGoldenSkill]

wow top tier stuff - i like the grind!!

[@l.alexandra5871]

Dear Isabella, your videos, again, are fascinating. While it’s pretty obvious that nothing comes close to Vaganova and the quality of the dancers at Mariinsky and Bolshoi (at least) is phenomenal, I still wonder about the constant stress to stay soooo much thinner than Western ballet dancers. (Paris Opéra and its school are phenomenal too). Yes, there are a few extremely thin dancers but the standard at Vaganova is clearly different. I always struggled to stay thin enough for the Royal Ballet and NYCB, etc but I could manage it. But is it true that if you develop any breasts at all and so forth that you’re “abused” by the teachers? One dancer I admire a lot is Maria Bulanova and she’s a gorgeous dancer and very thin but she’s a tiny bit bigger on top and has slightly wider shoulders. I look at many of the youngest, newest graduates and they’re just astonishingly thin. Is Nikolai Tsiskaridze very interactive with the students? Thank you.

[@jolanmariavarga3830]

Thanks for the video it's really interesting! My question is maybe too intimate but how do you and other girls dealt with period at the academy? (Do you even had despite of the intense training?) Were you allow to wear extra layers or skip a class if it was really bad?

[@balletwithisabella]

I’ll answer this in another video - it’s a great question.

[@lucylockyer9209]

I’m very. Interested to hear your experiences at White Lodge…you said you would talk about it in another video………if you did could you point me in the right direction thankyou

[@lilygreenbliss]

What was the food like there?

[@bovanhagen]

Is that Nancy Burer in the video fragments in between your talking?

[@bayleecrute]

Did you ever join a company?

[@shannonasakura7815]

Wait, so you just didn't do ANY school while you were training in Russia? Did you ever graduate from high school?

[@balletwithisabella]

Yeh I had done all my GCSEs and a few AS levels - I just did Russian at vaganova and some students did online school but we mostly all took the same thought of we can catch up later if we have to but this is so intense I just want to concentrate on this.

[@mathildewesendonck7225]

@@balletwithisabella that makes a lot of sense! You were at Vaganova for the ballet, after all. Academics can wait! Very wise decision of you 👏👏👏