—Excerpt from “From Russia With Love” by Françoise Joaquin Asia Magazine , November 10, 1989
Tatiana Alexandrovna Udalenkova—her name alone was a mouthful, especially for an 18-year-old, bewildered, culture- shocked girl who couldn’t speak a word of Russian. Well, maybe just da (yes), nyet (no) and Dosvidanya (goodbye). Oh yes, spasibo (thank you) as well. I climbed the steps leading to my training ground for the next two years. Its full name then was the “Leningrad Choreographic School named after Agrippina Vaganova, Decorated with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.” The name was as long as the school’s colorful history and I remem- ber thinking that even if I didn’t make it as a ballerina, at least I was now walking through the same hallways that all the great Russian ballet dancers in the past had walked through.
Madame Udalenkova was never satisfied.
Our legs could always turn out more and extensions could always be higher.
The yellow building on Ulitsa Zodchevo Rossi reeked of more than 250 years of history and tradition. I felt like an intruder— an unwanted, unnecessary appendage of a foreign student thrown into the Seventh Level girls’ class under the tutelage of Tatiana Alexandrovna Udalenkova, a former soloist of the Kirov Ballet and wife of its distinguished premier danseur, Sergei Vikulov.
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