When ballet dancer Iana Salenko was just 21, her career in Ukraine was already at a peak: She was a principal dancer at the National Ballet of Ukraine. It was 2005.
But soon it all ended. Later that year, the ballerina moved to Germany to be with her fiancé, a Berlin State Ballet dancer Marian Walter, where she had to start from scratch and work her way up once again.
Two years of eight-hour-long daily training sessions paid back: In 2007, Salenko became the prima ballerina at Berlin State Ballet.
“In Ukraine, I achieved success very quickly. Everything was so easy and I didn’t appreciate it,” Salenko says, adding that only in Germany did she understand how much she really loved ballet.
Salenko, now 34, returned to her hometown Kyiv on Oct. 21 to dance in “Marlene Dietrich,” a performance dedicated to the German actress and singer who was noted for her humanitarian efforts during the World War II.
“Marlene was a very strong woman, but people forgot about her,” says Salenko. “And I want to remind them of this amazing woman.”
Salenko’s partner in the Kyiv performance was her husband Walter, 36.
New life
Salenko entered a ballet school in Kyiv at the age of 12, which is considered late. At first, she had to work harder than her classmates to catch up with them, yet soon her natural gift for ballet revealed itself.
She left home at the age of 14 to study at the Pisarev Ballet School in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. From 2000 to 2002 Salenko performed with the Donetsk Ballet and then joined the National Ballet of Ukraine.
To make a name for herself, she often participated in dance contests abroad.
“I understood that publicity is necessary to achieve success, so I was quite used to competitions,” Salenko says.
At one of these contests in Vienna she met Walter, her future husband.
“It was love from the first sight,” she says smiling. “He proposed to me two months after we met, and I said yes.”
The couple decided to move to Berlin — the city Walter lived and worked in. For Salenko, it was a tough step. She had to leave her career in Ukraine, and her family didn’t support her decision to move.
“I was only 21 years old, and my family wondered what I was doing,” she says, adding that her husband’s family seemed not to like her at first.
“Maybe they thought I just wanted to marry a foreigner,” she says. “Of course, as time passed they understood how wrong they were.”
While in Kyiv Salenko was a principal ballet dancer, in Berlin she had to start from the very beginning as a demi-soloist. She would receive only up to four leading parts a year. She didn’t give up though, and says even became more devoted to her job then she had ever been before.
“When you put effort into something — it always pays back,” says the ballerina.
Working hard day by day, in 2006 she was promoted to a ballet soloist and in 2007 — to a principal dancer.
Aside from that, she is also a guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London, and often performs across Europe.
Family ties
It’s been 13 years since Salenko married Walter. The couple has a nine-year-old son Marley.
For a ballerina, having a child is very challenging. Female dancers have to get back in shape really fast. Salenko succeeded: She was back on stage just two months after giving birth to her son.
She and her husband are often paired on the stage. Salenko recalls a staging of “Romeo and Juliet” in 2010, when she and Walter were given the leads in the reserve cast.
They had so much fun at the rehearsals, and did so well, that two days before the show, the choreographer said that he wanted them as his Romeo and Juliet.
“It was a scandal,” Salenko recalls. “Another couple was supposed to dance in the show, they were rehearsing for a much longer time.”
Salenko believes that she and her husband got the parts because the choreographer noticed the feelings they have for each other.
The key factor to success is to show emotion on stage, Salenko said. When all the moves are rehearsed and the technique is as close to perfection as possible, emotions and feelings are what distinguishes a ballerina from a prima ballerina.
“When you look at a prima ballerina, you can’t take your eyes off her,” says Salenko.
