Dancing Out of Darkness

by Kristina Rhianoff

  To my mother, the strongest woman I know.

  Thank you for giving me this life. Thank you for giving me everything you could, even when your own life was overshadowed by darkness.

  I’m always learning from you and it was you who taught me that anything is possible – as long as you don’t give up. Nothing and no one can break our bond, a bond that is known only to mothers and daughters. This book is dedicated to you and to all those single mothers for whom nothing is impossible.

  With all my love,

  Kristina

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword by Sharon Evans, founder of Dot Com Children’s Foundation

  Introduction

  Prologue: The Last Tango

  1. Once upon a time in a land far away…

  2. Pickling, preparing and performing

  3. Dancing with boys

  4. School, Stalin and sick notes

  5. Wanting to be a Masha

  6. There may be trouble ahead. But while there’s moonlight and music…

  7. The dark days

  8. I grew up with an idea that any man in my life will always let me down…

  9. A boy called Brian…

  10. Smiling at strangers? I’m a long way from home…

  11. Happy holidays – the American way!

  12. Dancing to the right tune

  13. Dancing with the Stars? It will never work…

  14. Once a dancer, always a dancer…

  15. Lights, camera, action!

  16. Dancing with John is a drag (paso doble week)!

  17. The biggest mistake

  18. A Welsh dragon and a Siberian siren

  19. A knock-out blow

  20. Too many broken hearts in the world

  21. Health, happiness and heartbreak

  22. Dancing with Big Ben

  23. Charity highs

  24. No good deed goes unpunished

  25. Putting my best dancing foot forward

  Plates

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to say a big thank you to John Blake Publishing for all their work on this project. And also thanks to Abi Smith and everyone at Kruger Cowne agency.

  Foreword

  It is my privilege to have come to know Kristina through our love of dance and our passion for helping children to stay safe. Her love of children and her devotion to our charity, the Dot Com Children’s Foundation, is perhaps a side of her life that will come as a surprise, as it is far from the glamour of the stage and the glitter ball!

  I was introduced to Kristina in 2010 by Len Goodman, who was my dance teacher during my childhood, but is perhaps better known as the head judge on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. I decided to put on a dance show with the help of Len’s son, James Goodman, to raise funds for the charity. James and I wanted someone from Strictly to act as a judge as Len was away in America on the night of the event, and so he suggested Kristina because he said everybody on the show knew how much she loved children.

  I was delighted at how readily Kristina accepted the invitation and very pleased that she agreed to stay for the dinner after the show. I started the charity because growing up near Dartford where Len had his dance school, I was forced to keep a terrible secret. Nobody knew that my father was extremely violent and my grandfather was a paedophile. Between the ages of three and seven I was exposed to extreme violence in my home and sexual abuse, which left me with learning difficulties at school. At charity events I always speak about my childhood and how dancing with Len helped to heal me and gave me the motivation to go on to become a newsreader and eventually start a charity to help protect children and give them a voice.

  After my speech on that night I was surprised that Kristina asked to speak to me privately. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she explained that she had grown up in an environment where she was frightened all the time and did not feel loved. Like me, she felt that dancing had saved her and her dance school was the only place where she felt valued and safe.

  Since that night, Kristina has put her heart and soul into helping me grow the charity and bring more children and more schools into the programme. In 2014, she took the decision to speak publicly about her childhood and has become the charity’s patron. I imagine that many people who watch Kristina and believe her to have had a perfect and glamorous life will be shocked by the truth and how hard it has been for her to overcome the fear and loneliness of her childhood and become an international star.

  Through the charity’s learning programme, Kristina and I are now reaching thousands of children and helping them learn how to stay safe and how to value themselves.

  One of the things I have come to learn in life is that the way to decide who your friends truly are is to look at their actions. In the last five years, Kristina has travelled all over the country meeting children and visiting schools talking about her childhood and how she overcame the challenges. One summer she even spent six weeks putting on a special dance programme for children in London’s most deprived areas.

  In 2014, I was honoured by Best magazine with their Bravest Women Award after Kristina nominated me for the work I do in raising awareness of child abuse and protecting children. It is pretty tough making yourself vulnerable and telling people about the parts of your life that were painful, but I believe that is the only way we will bring about change. The truth is it was very lonely for me on the stage until Kristina was by my side using all her courage to tell her own painful story. She has used all that wonderful passion and energy that can be seen in her dancing to bring greater awareness of the need to have a national education programme in our schools, which helps children protect themselves from danger and know how to ask for help.

  I hope you will be as fascinated as I was to read the full story of Kristina’s life because, as you will discover, it is very far from what you might think!

  Sharon Evans, founder of Dot Com Children’s Foundation

  Introduction

  What have you read about me in the papers? Or perhaps I should ask one important question first… Do you believe everything you read about me in the newspapers, magazines or internet articles?

  Have you made up your mind about a person without ever actually knowing them or speaking to them, or hearing what they have to say?

  I have been called a ‘Siberian Siren’, a ‘man-eater’, a ‘vixen’; I am ‘cold’ and a ‘predator’. I have been labelled a ‘homewrecker’, a ‘trouble-maker’, a ‘man-stealer’.

  Apparently, I am at the ‘centre of relationship breakdowns’, I have a ‘flirtatious nature’ and I am now ‘banned from dancing with married men’.

  I sound like a pretty horrible person, don’t I? But this book is my chance to tell you about the real me. I want to share with you the truth about all the press stories that have been written about me that would puncture the thickest-skinned person.

  To this day I don’t understand why there is so much media interest in me. I am just a dancer, a dancer who grew up in Russia. For me dancing wasn’t just a hobby – it was my survival. I owe my existence to dancing. It made me strong; I showed it dedication and it rewarded me with determination. It was my one constant through a childhood of misery and darkness and it has now given me a career and a means to support my family. I have sacrificed relationships for it and I have celebrated success through it.

  But my life wasn’t always in the headlines and I wasn’t always being judged on how I looked, whether I was dating this man or that man, whether I had broken up a marriage or a relationship. I have had adventures all over the world and I have met some amazing people in my life. Yes, I have made m
istakes, and I admit those within these pages. But I have been a victim, too. I have had low points that have been spread across the pages of tabloids and I have had triumphs on the dance floor that don’t get more than a passing mention in an occasional article.

  But now it is time for you to read about the real me, right from the Russian’s mouth. Here, my life is laid out in front of you and I hope after reading this book you will be able to see and understand the real me.

  Lots of love,

  Kristina

  PROLOGUE

  The Last Tango

  The roar of the crowd was absolutely deafening. I had no idea the sound of 13,000 people cheering and stomping their feet would create such a mind-blowing noise. It felt like the O2 Arena had completely erupted.

  Simon Webbe and I had just performed the last dance on the 2014 Strictly Come Dancing tour and we stood in the centre of the floor savouring every moment of that sweet sound. There was no sign of the standing ovation quietening down so we didn’t move a muscle. We just held hands, with sweat dripping down our cheeks, our hearts hammering in our chests, looking up at the thousands of faces that were cheering us on. I felt completely overwhelmed.

  ‘Remember this moment, this is why we worked so hard,’ I whispered to him, although I don’t think he heard a word I said over the noise of the audience.

  This appreciation, it is a magic only dance can create. It has nothing to do with who you are, how you look or what you have been doing, it is simply a recognition of the two minutes of intense, powerful routine we had just performed. This was pure admiration for our dance and at one of the biggest venues in London; the emotion just drained out of me. It was a moment that I had dreamt about since I was a little girl first learning to dance in Russia. I needed that sort of approval then as much as I needed it now. As a dancer it is something you feed off, you crave it like a drug for without it all the hours of work, all the dedication, all the sacrifices you make are for nothing.

  I was someone who probably yearned for it more than most. From about the age of six I had to seek attention and love from outside of my family. I had parents who were so intent on causing themselves misery and pain they ignored their only child, who was so desperate to be noticed. Dancing saved me more times than I can remember and it became my lifeline through the dark days of childhood and the tragedies of growing up in a country filled with crime and uncertainty. It took me to new places filled with promise and dreams and gave me opportunities I would never have thought possible. It also gave me the means to support my family and me and make those I love more comfortable.

  And now, here I was, standing in the O2, listening to the most wonderful noise in the world. The dance we had just performed, the Argentine tango, was such a special dance for Simon and me: it was the last dance we performed on the previous series of the show and now we had come to the end of the road together. It was our last tango and it only got better when we were presented with the Glitterball trophy that night after winning the whole live tour. That was why we put so many hours into rehearsing; we had created this special relationship with the audience. To feel you have given them something that they enjoy is a feeling I can’t describe, but I remember getting it from the very first competition I won when I was a little girl. If I couldn’t get the approval from my mum and dad, I could get it from people watching me dance. So in a way, growing up with parents who hated each other made me the dancer I am today.

  All children growing up in Soviet Russia had to have an after-school hobby; you were never idle or just hanging around. Whether it was music, gymnastics, dance… the pressure was to excel, to be the best to make your country proud. But for me dancing was more than just a way of passing the time and fitting in with social expectations: I did it to escape, I had to escape. Home was where there was fighting and arguing and hatred, and dancing took me away from all that.

  I know there was a time when my parents were not fighting, though. To be fair to them, there was a time, before I was born, when they were happy. Young idealists with dreams and aspirations, they were living in a time when Russia was under Soviet rule and things were rigid, structured and you stuck to the rules. It was a time, way back in the seventies, when two people met and fell in love…

  CHAPTER 1

  Once upon a time in a land far away…

  My parents were both students at the same Far Eastern polytechnic university in Vladivostok, Russia, when they met in 1976. Mum was studying shipbuilding and my dad wanted to become an engineer, and although it wasn’t in the classroom of that college where they fell in love, it was at another typical student hangout – a party.

  My mum, Larisa Osadchaya, was a lot more studious than my father, Igor Pshenichnykh, who was an aspiring musician and composer. He studied well enough to become an engineer but music was his real passion. He wrote several songs about Vladivostok, a port on the eastern coast of Russia; they are regularly played on the city’s ‘birthday’, on 2 July each year. That day is called the ‘day of the city’ and we celebrate with parades and music. So although he isn’t famous in the real world, as it were, his music and his songs about Vladivostok are fairly well known there. My dad had a lovely voice; his music is perhaps classed as a mixture of pop and reggae, and he would write about the beauty of the city – the beaches and the sea and all of the little islands surrounding it. It is a beautiful place, a famous seaport in our country, and in the days of my parents studying and falling in love, it was, of course, part of the Soviet Union.

  Vladivostok was a closed city, which meant that no one was allowed in without very specific travel papers authorised by the government. My mum told me later that you were allowed out of the city but coming into it was a different matter. You had to have special papers to travel into the city because of the naval base, the Soviet authorities being keen to protect and keep secret anything that was happening in Vladivostok. You might think that it was a strange profession for my mother to be in, the shipbuilding industry, but she was a highly educated, very intelligent young woman. She finished school with a gold medal – an accolade only the elite students received, and only very rarely in those days, for the Soviet Union education system was tough, and designed to push students to be the best.

  Everything was a competition and the mantra was to win at everything you could, and for my mum, who loved to study and soak up everything she could, it was the perfect environment to nurture her love of learning. And shipbuilding appealed to her emotional side, as it seemed to her to be a very romantic ideal – to build ships in her country’s largest port on the Pacific Ocean. She was an ideologist and wanted to do something big. Always reading, constantly studying, she was ever hungry to learn. I suppose part of her love of learning came from her own childhood, as her mother, my grandmother, Valentina Vorobieva, was a teacher. She taught what was then called ‘household studies’. It was still being taught when I was in school and I think the best way to describe it is that boys learnt manly stuff – like how to bang a nail into a piece of wood, or something – and girls would learn how to knit or sew, or cook. It all sounds terribly old-fashioned now, I suppose, but that is what my grandmother taught in her school while my grandfather, Grigory Osadchy, was an engineer and also a highly educated man.

  My mum’s childhood wasn’t a particularly happy one. When she was born on 5 January 1956, Grigory was well on his way to becoming an alcoholic; over the years it just got worse and he became a heavy drinker. Mum told me that when she was growing up quite often she would spend some nights staying awake, just waiting for my grandfather to get home drunk as he was very violent and would be physically aggressive towards my grandmother. When that happened, my grandmother would often take my mother away and they would end up sleeping overnight in the school where she taught, just to be safe for the night. And then in the morning, my mother would just wake up and walk along to her classroom and wait for the other students. Apparently my grandmother spent a lot of time struggling to keep the marriage together as divorce
was frowned upon in those days, but because of all the violence and drinking, there wasn’t really another option. My mum was twelve years old at the time, but she understood what it would mean for her mother to suffer the stigma of being ‘a divorcee’. And despite the abuse my grandmother suffered, she would still rather that than have people know she was a divorcee.

  My grandfather did eventually stop drinking. Not long after the divorce, he had some kind of seizure and was told by the doctors that if he didn’t stop, he would be dead. After that, and after the divorce as well, I suppose he decided to change his ways completely. He quit his job as a high-level engineer and moved to a small village called Risovo, near a town called Arseniev, where his sister and some of his cousins lived, and there he completely turned his life around. Now he became a local hunter, a beekeeper and lived off the land, really, as a sort of farmer. He didn’t make contact with my grandmother and my mother decided that she never wanted to hear from him either, although she did years later when I was nine years old and we went to visit him together – but more on that later.

  My grandmother went on to marry a wonderful man, who became my mum’s stepdad, and I class him as my grandad. His name was Boris Stolov and he was a geologist and went on lots of exciting expeditions. He was able to take my mum and grandmother around the country (the Soviet Union at that time would pay for family travel) and he absolutely cherished my grandmother. He loved my mother, too, and was very kind to her, helping with her education and supporting her decision when she finished school in 1973 to study engineering in Vladivostok.

  Which is where, of course, at one of the hippy parties in the late seventies that my mum met my dad. He was singing and playing guitar with his band at this party and Mum has told me she instantly gravitated towards him. A good-looking guy with beautiful long black hair, he had a wonderful voice to boot and my mother, a good-looking woman herself, was instantly smitten. They began dating and it wasn’t long afterwards that Mum fell pregnant. It was 1977 and she was twenty years old, and in Russia at that time, everything had to be done by the book. This meant that they had to get married fairly promptly as a child born out of wedlock was not the way things were done and so they registered an application to get married. This system is still used in Russia today: you have to apply to get married and then you are given a month by the court to organise your wedding. So that’s what they did, and they married in a very small, intimate ceremony when my mum was three months’ pregnant with me. As students, they received a small amount of money from the government for studying, and in those days there were initiatives in place whereby if you went into a local food shop and showed them that you were due to be married then you were granted extra food and could buy certain products at a discount.