Tivat, Montenegro

Slavic ballerina by the sea

I'm Anastasia. Twenty years of ballet, one suitcase too many, and a balcony over the Adriatic where I start again every morning at six.

Posture, discipline and quiet. That is most of what I know, and all of it is here.

Take the posture test My story

Anastasia Orlova in a white linen shirt by the window

Age: 24
Born: Yekaterinburg
Lives in: Tivat
At the barre since: Age five

Anastasia sitting by the window above the bay with a coffee

The short version

I was taught to keep my back straight before I was taught to speak

I grew up in Yekaterinburg, in a house where good posture, good books and composure mattered more than feelings did. Ballet arrived early and never left. It gave me my body, my patience and my habit of keeping a calm face while something inside is falling apart.

Then one chapter ended rather abruptly, and I left with a suitcase, a taste for expensive things and no one to arrange my life for me. I chose Tivat because the sea here is quiet in winter and nobody asks what happened.

Now I train alone, write in the evenings, and I am slowly putting money aside for a small studio by the water — somewhere women can get their line back.

discipline is still the only thing that saves me

Four questions · about a minute

Where your line breaks

Every body collapses somewhere specific, and almost nobody collapses where they think. Answer four questions and I will tell you which part of you is doing the work the rest of you refuses to do.

Anastasia stretching in a side split on a wooden floor

What I share

Four rooms, and you only see some of them

Anastasia with a coffee in a cafe above the bay

Anastasia in a full split on a rug by the window

Anastasia walking on the tarmac with a suitcase

Anastasia at home in a blue knitted sweater

Four questions · about a minute

Which shelf is yours

There are four shelves in my bathroom cabinet and most people only need one of them. This tells you which, and why the other three can wait.

Close portrait of Anastasia without makeup

The shelf

Six things, and five that are not worth your money

The whole cabinet, written out: what each thing does, the dose, when to take it, what to take it with — and the list of what I refuse to keep, which is the more useful half.