Her feet leave the floor with effortless ease. Toes pointed in opposite directions as her legs scissor out into a full split at the height of her jump. Gliding across air, hovering for mere seconds, but lasting far longer in the eyes of the audience.
“Don’t jump. Fly,” she tells herself.
Still just a teenager, Sophia Sevier, has garnered international attention from the ballet community for her dedication, drive and determination to make her next performance, her next movement even better than the last.
But it wasn’t easy for the 16-year-old, who had to give up attending traditional high school, opting instead to take online courses. She also had to quit playing the three instruments she loved, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone, to focus solely on ballet.
“When I’m not dancing I don’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “I’ve always loved the discipline, the repetition of ballet. I don’t get to play music anymore, but I get to dance through it … I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
The love affair with the art form, which began at age four, when she and her mother attended a performance of “The Nutcracker” while they were living in San Diego, has grown into a healthy obsession, paying off big dividends for her hard work, Sophia’s mother, Michelle Sevier said. Last summer, Sophia was chosen to attend a summer intensive program in New York City working with the Moscow-based Bolshoi Ballet Academy.
Her skills were immediately recognized by the teachers and after a series of essays and phone interviews, she was selected to join the academy in Russia this summer for dance and Russian language training.For six weeks Sophia spent half of her days learning to speak, read and write Russian and the other perfecting her dance.
“We’d spend four-and-a-half hours learning Russian and three hours of dance,” she said. “It made for long, but wonderful days.”
Sophia, who also lived with a host family in Moscow part time during the country’s partial occupation of Ukraine, said she never felt in any kind of danger. Even when Malaysia Airline Flight 17 was shot down over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine shortly after she arrived.
Listening to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speeches prompted a lot of political conversations with her host family, friends at the dance academy and back home, but Sophia said she took it as an opportunity to act as an ambassador for each country, sharing information with each side.
Aside from political turmoil and doing her best to represent America and Russia, the vast majority of Sophia’s attention was dedicated to her studies.Bolshoi’s directors took notice. Two days after she returned to Bellevue on Aug. 23, Sophia was offered a spot to attend the academy for a full year.
Her mother, while sadden to see her eldest daughter leaving the country again, couldn’t be prouder of Sophia’s accomplishments.
“I’m just grateful to be part of her world,” she said. “She has a chance to continue to be an ambassador for the arts.”
Vera Altunina, artistic director at the International Ballet Academy in Kirkland, Sophia’s teacher for the past few years, said she couldn’t be more proud, adding her acceptance to Bolshoi’s is another example of her school’s vision working.
If Sophia were living in Russia trying to apply for enrollment, she’d be competing with 3,000 other top dancers in the country for just 15 spots.
“We have extremely wise students,” Altunina said. “But we’re not only giving them dance lessons, we’re giving them life lessons as well.”
Established roughly a decade ago, the studio’s programs, which include studying world dances and history, are seeing the results of the labor of love. Last year, another student seeking to study choreography, was accepted to the State Academic Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia, Altunina’s hometown.
Altunina said her students, like many Russians, are dedicating their lives to art, an experience not lost on Sophia during her time in Moscow.
“Ballet in Russia is like football in America,” Sophia said. “People go to the theater there like we go to movies.”
Sophia is scheduled to go back to Russia in late October and plans to chronicle her journey and continued immersion into the country’s culture online through a newsletter.
Josh Stilts:425-391-0363 ext. 5052; jstilts@bellevuereporter.com; On Twitter: @JoshStilts
