It seems Siberia‘s Fraules Dance Center has become quite the cult favorite after all as the dance school notorious for its twerking routine has come to suddenly find itself inundated by hopeful young girls eager to join the dance company.
The dance center would come to find overnight recognition after a video of a training regime made by choreographer, Zhenya Remizovskiy came to be posted on the web (see below) and rack up over 30 million you tube views.
Told Fraules Dancing Center founder Yelena Yatkina via the UK’s dailymail: ‘I think we were incredibly lucky to find Zhenya, 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.
Added Yelena: ‘Then the media noticed us – so now every week it adds a million more hits, I am not even always sure how it happens.
‘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.’
The video follows a women, who, despondent about the minus 42 C temperature, begins to dream of warmer climates.
Her daydream follows a group of scantily clad Fraules dancers working some serious moves against a tropical looking sunset, before stripping down further to twerk on a sandy beach.
Told the Novosibirsk businesswoman of her berth as a dance company pioneer via The Siberian Times : ‘I am aged 23 and was born here, I have lived here all my life. Two 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.’
‘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.
‘This is my life now – my school is my work, my business, the main thing I do.
‘Our main classes are in the evening since our students either study or work, but there is a lot to do before that, and I constantly think about my school with a view to improving it. I want it to be bigger than just a dance class, though of course there are people that just want to come, have a dance class and leave.
‘But many other students want to learn dancing with a view to take part in competitions – and win. This is what we help them do.
‘It helped me to get business education, I went there with a thought of opening my own business one day. I am so happy it turned out that way.
‘We organise most of our city’s dance battles and competitions. The most recent and biggest of them was in May where we had eight choreographers, including our star guest Danielle Polanco.’
To her credit Yelena can boast of having being Beyonce‘s and Janet Jackson‘s choreographer as well having been paid a visit by Jenifer Lopez.
And what are Yelena’s thoughts about twerk dancing?
Offers Yelena: ‘The right name for it is twerk, which is a separate style when you shake your derriere. Booty dance is more like its marketing, commercial name. ‘
And then there are the complications of who to accept into the dance company….
Reiterates Yelena: ‘Girls and women of different ages come to study it – well, except that I try to limit the youngest and stop them from doing it.
‘I think it is not correct from the moral point of view to teach 13, 14, 15-year-old girls, because the movements carry a quite clear connotation.
‘They beg me to take them, and even their parents call me and plead to teach their children, saying that they give their permission.
‘It is certainly an energetic and beautiful dance routine, by my position is that you should start it from an older age – at least from 16’.
‘Perhaps you can compare us to America with their Broadway Dance Centre where a person can come and ‘dive’ into one particular dance style.
‘They’ve inspired me to create something similar so that people from different cities can come and spend three months studying and working on one dance style. We are moving towards it gradually.’
