Topic: Anastasia Volochkova

Anastasia Yurievna Volochkova (Russian: Анастасия Юрьевна Волочкова) is a Russian prima ballerina. She was born in Leningrad in 1976 and was trained in the Vaganova Ballet Academy by Natalia Dudinskaya, a famous pupil of Agrippina Vaganova. She then danced with the Mariinsky Ballet for four years and won the Serge Lifar Competition in Kiev in 1996.

In 1998, her influential patrons had her transferred to the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, which she was forced to leave in 2000, although she returned a year later. In 2001 she worked with Derek Dean and with Alberto Alonso in the English National Ballet. The following year, she was awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse.

In March 2009, she was running for the post of mayor of Sochi, the city that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. She was excluded from the list of candidates at the last minute on a formality.