More Than Just Tutus and Pink Slippers

Tucked in the middle of an old shopping center off Lafayette Boulevard is a school where discipline and hard work help develop young ballerinas. These young students don’t just hop around in tutus.

Classical Ballet of Fredericksburg opened just four years ago, but already the husband and wife owners, Regina and Vadim Bogomolova, are developing top ballerinas.

Eliana Durham, 12, placed in the top 12 at the International Ballet Competition for the Youth America Grand Prix last month. Durham studies six days a week at the school and will attend master classes in New York City this spring. Mary Cate Mosher, 13, and Sarah La Ponte, 11, also competed in the contest; La Ponte will attend the master classes with Durham. La Ponte said she’s been training for about four years. Durham has been dancing since the age of 7 and Mosher has been doing this since she was only 3.

“They worked really hard all summer,” Regina Bogomolova said. “For kids to be able to pull it off requires a lot of work. It was a pretty big commitment on their parts and of their parents.”

Classical Ballet of Fredericksburg was a longtime passion of the Bogomolovas. The couple teaches about 50 students.

“We felt like it was artistically important for us to do things we liked to do,” said Regina Bogomolova, 43, during a recent interview. “We take it very seriously. It’s not just for fun, it is our life.”

She grew up in D.C. and performed ballet in Montgomery, Md, where she met her husband, who is a graduate of the Vaganova Choreographic Institute, a ballet school considered by many as the best in the world. Vadim Bogomolova, 45, is finishing a five-year graduate program to teach ballet, which means he has to travel back and forth to Moscow.

They focus on teaching the Russian Vaganova technique of ballet, which is one of the world’s oldest. The technique is a full-body approach to ballet that’s more arduous than other forms, and used by some of the greatest dancers of all time, such as Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Makarova, and Balanchine.

“We love the discipline and the combination of athletics and artistry,” Regina Bogomolova said. “It incorporates the entire body.”

Classical Ballet of Fredericksburg is located at 4004 Lafayette Boulevard and the Bogomolovas can be reached at 540-842-6680. Class offering are on the website.