The story starts in Yekaterinburg (a city near Siberia in Russia) and hasn't stopped moving since.
I grew up in Yekaterinburg — one of the most free-spirited and politically defiant cities in Russia. I was a child of the 1990s, the decade when the Soviet Union collapsed and every social institution collapsed with it. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to.
My school wasn't officially licensed. The curriculum was experimental. Later we found out we'd been taught using Montessori methods, which was radical for post-Soviet Russia. Outside, the city was caught in the crossfire of the '90s crime wave. Yekaterinburg sat on the drug route from Afghanistan, and it showed.
And yet — I grew up in a loving family. My childhood memories are almost entirely warm.
I always knew I wouldn't stay. When I was 13, someone asked me where I dreamed of living. I said California. For a teenager from a post-Soviet city near Siberia, that was a strange answer. But I meant it.
First stop: Moscow (17 million people). The city matched my ambition, and I built a fast, successful marketing career there. But by 2016 I could see the political direction shifting — away from openness, away from where I wanted to be. I started looking toward European and international markets.
In 2019, I found a role in Berlin and moved to Germany.
Of all the art forms, contemporary ballet is the one I love most. The European scene is wonderfully varied — each country, sometimes each city, has its own choreographic language — and I travel for it often. A weekend in another country for one specific production is a completely normal thing for me to do.