“They are so meticulous!” the Russian ballet star said. “Unlike in Japan or many theaters in Europe, the Bolshoi’s stage is slightly tilted. The audience does not see it but for the dancers it makes a huge difference. So the Japanese made themselves a tilted stage to rehearse on before coming here!”

The stage does not stop them from dancing up a storm, and the language barrier is not a problem either.

“I myself had a Russian ballet teacher, so when I am working with Russian dancers, it is like we have always known each other,” said Asami Maki, artistic director of the New National Theatre Ballet of Tokyo.

Just like in Europe, ballet in Russia came about in order to entertain the royal court. The first performance was in the 17th century.

Some 200 years later composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky transformed ballet music, giving us classic Russian ballet as we know it with “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker.” It has since become an international brand, and Russian dancers are sought-after worldwide.

However, away from the on-stage magic and the off-stage limelight, it is all about hard work. To become star ballerinas, girls usually start dance classes at the age of 4. They graduate at 18 and typically retire before they are 40. The profession is incredibly physically demanding.

All these graceful turns and precise acrobatic movements seem effortless, but a ballerina must have iron legs and a steely will to become a dancing queen.

“You should be very hard-working, have a lot of determination and be fanatically in love with ballet,” said the Director of the Classical Dance College, Larisa Ledyakh. “It’s like a necklace: day by day you’re adding one bead to the string after another. Only then you will get results.”

Girls at the college spend up to five hours a day rehearsing. 17-year-old Yana Gamanova dreams of a glittering career, but knows the road to success isn’t always like dancing on air.

“You don’t get hooked until you actually start performing on stage,” she said. “Sometimes you even think that it is not worth it, all these rehearsals. But once on stage, you get such an adrenaline rush – the audience, the applause – you want it again and again!”

Well, it may be too late for many of us to start learning, but at least now you know the secret to Russian ballet: a lot of hard work goes behind creating a fairytale on stage.