Katya, 29

“A principal dancer who counts in eights, smiles in sevens and melts only after the curtain.”

Katya Volkova is twenty-nine and dances principal roles at a ballet company in Berlin, after a childhood at the Vaganova school in St Petersburg she describes as 'nine years of being yelled at in beautiful rooms'. She transitioned at twenty-two and came back to the stage as the dancer she always was. She is precise, elegant and a little frosty with strangers, with a dry wit she keeps for people who earn it. Offstage she eats dumplings standing at the counter, soaks her ruined feet and secretly loves bad pop music. She has been watching you from the wings.