Elena Yatkina, 25, founder of Fraules Dancing Centre, Novosibirsk, has achieved amazing international acclaim, highlighted by the recent visit from American dancer Danielle Polanco, choreographer for Beyonce, Janet Jackson and Jennifer Lopez. The international focus on Elena’s school came after a video made by Zhenya Remizovskiy, which has now amassed more than 135 million hits on YouTube. You can watch Elena and her students in this ‘nothing but the best’ performance here:
‘I think we were incredibly lucky to find Zhenya,’ she said. ‘That video got so successful first because Major Lazer reposted it – that immediately brought more people to us, and then the tune went on radio and TV and became really popular among dance hall dancers’. Major Lazer is an electronic music project created by American DJ and record producer Diplo. Elena also has a video on Diplo’s 6th Gear:
‘Then the media noticed us – so now every week it adds a million more hits, I am not even always sure how it happens,’ Elena said. ‘We filmed it not only to promote our school, but to show how great it is here in Siberia. It is fantastic to see that it worked, and naturally it helps our dancing centre’s popularity’.
Apart from the sheer skill of the dance routine, Fraules is a great Siberian business success story in Novosibirsk, our biggest city, and the third largest in Russia.
‘I am aged 23 and was born here,’ said Elena. ‘I have lived here all my life. Four years ago I got my diploma from the faculty of business at Novosibirsk State Technical University.
‘I began dancing when I was ten years old. For about seven years I was going to ‘Todes’ dancing studio, and then began adding various master classes to improve my skills, including the foreign master classes. Then I began teaching myself and in 2010 I opened my own school.
There was a pull to Moscow – ‘but I stayed in Siberia’ – and she is happy she did.
‘Right now, I can see it was a wise decision, but it was more my family who said I had to go for my higher education.
‘I am very grateful to my teacher Yulia Masayeva – she got me into hip-hop, house, dance hall, popping and locking styles. In the end we chose dance hall, and later I got to vogue style. She got me to go to Moscow for master classes, then I went for four trips to Paris to visit various dancing classes.
‘Then Yulia moved to Moscow in 2009, and said that I could take over her students and teach – this is how I got to a new stage of my dance life.
‘The school was founded in 2010. First it was called Indigo Dance Centre and then I renamed it Fraules.’
‘For some it is the best – but not the easiest! – way to keep in shape’.
Why Fraules? ‘It means ‘Strawberry’ in Greek. It is also my nickname with a personal story behind it, which means a lot to me and which I don’t want to make public. I renamed the school because I wanted it to have like a part of myself in the name.
‘This is my life now – my school is my work, my business, the main thing I do.
Elena has also new incredible videos on her YouTube channel that gained more than one million subscribers. She is now married to Dmitriy Fomin and they are expecting a baby. Here are some of her best videos….Enjoy them
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