"Sofia enjoys doing it to this music." Choreographer Natalia Belugina on choreographing a program for the Academy gymnast

Choreographer Natalia Belugina choreographed a new program with a ball for the Academy student Sofia Smirnova from the Moscow region.

She told how the process of staging the exercise took place.

"At first we gave her some cheerful clubs. And we wanted Sonya to be more of a dancing girl, because she is quite calm and lyrical. We did clubs for her, everything went well. And we were left with a ball. She had music, also lyrical. But it felt like she was a little tired of it, she didn’t feel it emotionally. And we started just listening to different music. And then I was like, we also had the wonderful, recent “Beautiful Far Away”. We turned it on and realized that she really liked it, and decided to perform to it. And it really suited her. That is, you can see that she can convey this emotion, that she enjoys performing to it," she said. 

She explained why it is important for a gymnast to feel the music.

"That's the thing, when a child feels the music, she doesn't need to be told that she needs to turn her eyes here, smile here, frown here, and so on. That is, it was clear from her that when we started composing, she added something on her own. It is clear that during training we begin to understand even more that emotion is needed in all places. But in most cases, I tell all children to feel," Natalia said. 

Earlier, Natalia Belugina choreographed the Childhood performance to the “Beautiful Far Away” song for the Alina-2025 festival.