📍Kerch, Crimea
1973 – 1983“Uliana Lopatkina was born in October 1973 in Kerch, an ancient port city at the eastern tip of the Crimean peninsula, on the strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, with a history stretching back to the Greek colony of Panticapaeum. She grew up there in a city of fishermen, shipyards and sea air, and from an early age she loved to dance, taking dance classes in Kerch as a small girl. At about ten, she left Kerch for Leningrad, more than two thousand kilometres away, to audition for the Vaganova Academy, the most famous ballet school in Russia, and she was accepted. It was a huge change for a girl from the Crimean coast, but she was quiet, serious and devoted to her art. At the academy she studied first with Galina Novitskaya, and in the senior classes with the great ballerina Natalia Dudinskaya, who refined her extraordinary line and expressive arms. In 1991, while still a student, she won a prize at the Vaganova-Prix competition. She graduated in 1991 and joined the Mariinsky Ballet, where she was promoted to principal in 1995. Tall, elegant and deeply spiritual in her dancing, she became one of the greatest interpreters of Swan Lake and The Dying Swan of her generation, and received the title of People's Artist of Russia. After retiring from the stage in 2017, she has devoted herself to teaching and to sharing the tradition of Russian ballet. Kerch is proud of the girl from the Crimean coast who became the queen of the Mariinsky.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today