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

Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel with myself Isabella. Today I'm going to be talking with you about a day in the life at Vaganova. I get this question a lot and the days actually slightly vary depending on what year I was in. Now my experience is obviously different than a Russian girl's experience because the Russians had academics. So often when the Russians were having academics I was doing either Russian language or, let's face it, resting and stretching. So my classes for the first two years started at 9.30, 9.00, which is really, really early. So it was actually harder the first two years because my days lasted really, really long. So we started at 9.00 and often the cleaners would still be cleaning in the studio. I learned to just actually love warming up in the dark. So I'd get to the studio and just turn on maybe one light and just sort of really relax, take my time and warm up slowly on the slope, you know, on the little mats because everybody got their own mats, so you'd always warm up on a mat. And I just used to love the sound of the cleaner just walking along the studio with the mop and everything would mop around me. So we started in the morning with ballet class at 9.00, which would go on until about 10.45. So it'd be about an hour and three quarters. Sometimes she'd go on for two hours and my first year she'd go on for an hour. Then we'd have a rest until about 2.30. And in that time I'd have Russian language classes at lunch and often wouldn't have much time for lunch. It would be very quick and then we'd be in Russian language. And then later that day we'd have other lessons like pas de deux, character, what we called practica, which was where we usually used it for solo rehearsals with our teacher, point work, maybe rehearsing for the exam, like any particular exercise like if we were rehearsing and learning the Bolshoi Adagio for the exam, etc. I would also add that in the morning class we'd do most of the time jumps or points and not both. I found the days that we were jumping actually the hardest days. Often when she said point work I was slightly relieved because it was just less tiring. Still tiring but slightly less tiring. It took me ages until I actually felt comfortable with points. So point work often scared me for a really long time, especially pirouettes, which when you watch my graduation exams and things you usually think, oh, that's silly. But I was definitely afraid of points. I just felt really weak again because I was all gangly. That's another reason I started practicing at night to get used to being in point shoes, just not being afraid of falling over doing pirouettes and allowing myself to fall and find where I needed to be. From 2.30 onwards, those lessons would go on until maybe 6.00. And between each lesson you'd have a 15-minute break before the next one. And then maybe you'd finish at 6.00, but then when we got into nutcracker period, end of year show period, we'd have rehearsals, extra rehearsals after that. So those rehearsals would then go from 6.30 until 8.00. And then sometimes the teacher would run over and it would go on until like 9.00 or 10.00. I actually always thought, you know, this is mental. I've got to get up in seven hours, you know, so really, really tough. And then when I got to the last two years, we changed teachers to Irina Sidnikova, and that's when things got a little bit more manageable. Maybe she didn't like to start too early. My class started at 11.00. I think it may have even been 11.15, but that was like much nicer. I got up at 8.30 most days, felt really fresh. For the Russians, the routine wouldn't change at all. They would still have to come in early and they would be doing their academics. And so, you know, often us foreigners had a nicer time. Like I got up early, 8.30, and I had a class at 11.00. But some people got up at like 9.00, 10.00, you know, for their class at 11.00, whereas the Russians were all doing their academics. But obviously some foreigners were having to do a lot of their studies online still, a lot of their A-levels, and so had to commit a lot of time for that. I decided within myself that I just need to focus completely on the ballet because this is taking up a lot of my time and energy. And, you know, should I want to do more studies later? I'll catch up later and do more studies. I honestly just had full focus on my goals and what I wanted to achieve within the ballet. So I just wanted to rest and work on other things like my conditioning, my stretching on the down periods. But again, that's not for everybody. So I would get up, do a thorough conditioning routine, a nice stretching routine, and then go do class, which was so difficult, often collapsed after class. We'd then have a really good lunch. I'd have a nap, wake up from the nap, try to refresh, and then go do the next afternoon of very difficult classes, which would go on until 8.00, 8.30. So it was a long day all around, and a really difficult day. Another thing with Vaganova, before we finish, is that it's six days a week, and it's not, you know, often with schools, when you're doing six days a week, the Saturday is usually easier. The Saturday is just as hard. So Sunday, you're literally a ball in bed all day, and you're like, ugh, I've got to do my laundry. So much effort going to do your laundry, as well as going to buy more food. Just so much effort. But it was like, yeah, and a little bit depressing. It was like, this is my only day off, and I'm spending it doing my laundry. We had barely any holidays, so it was very different to other schools where we'd have our term, Easter holidays, Exeats. You know, it's a three-day weekend. Honestly, we get it easy in England. But the thing is, I got used to them being in Russia and having no break. So we'd train six days a week for months. We'd get two weeks in January, and then eight weeks in summer. That's it. The rest is go, go, go, go, go. But I'm telling you, you improve loads. There's no, like, down period. There's no, oh, I've got to catch up. Again, it's just like you get better and better and better, and your body gets used to it. And when my friends at home in England were having their half-terms, I was like, really, already? I got so used to not having a holiday. But then that's why a lot of the foreign students at Vaghanova don't do summer schools, I think, because we work all year round. We literally don't want to do any more. But anyway, guys, that is a typical day in the life at Vaghanova. If you'd like more of these videos or have some ideas of what you'd like to hear from me, leave your comments down below. And thank you once again for all the support. And, you know, what about you? Would you prefer doing class at 9 a.m. or 11? And, you know, if you had to sustain your energy, would you like to hear about, you know, what I ate in the day and when I ate it and what kept me going and sustaining my energy? Let me know. I touched on this in a podcast episode, but I'm happy to do another video here about that. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. Bye for now.