An ode to our supporters and their belief in miracles.
The beginning of 2025 brought real Christmas magic to the family of our fellow Savely Shevtsov from Belgrade, and we are happy to have played the role of fairy godmothers in this fascinating story!
Back in 2023, among dozens of letters that Creative Fellowship received in response to the 2024 Opera Camps announcement, an outstanding motivation letter from a ballet academy student in Belgrade caught our attention. In his essay, the applicant mentioned that he was seeking our help to achieve two goals: to be accepted into and successfully graduate from the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy, and to uncover a missing piece of his family’s dance heritage.
From family stories, the applicant knew that his grandfather had danced with the State Alma-Ata Opera and Ballet company in the 1960s. Apart from the name, two photos, and the fact that his grandfather had passed away around 20 years before his birth, the young talent had no other information about his dancing grandfather and hoped that we could help him trace his roots.
While we knew how to help with the first goal—arranging the process with the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy, from auditions to the relocation of an accompanied minor to Vienna—we took the second goal as a challenge full of unknowns and risks.
We first reached out to our followers through our Instagram account, asking them to share Savely’s story and contact us if they had any information. We also made efforts to establish contact with the Abai Kazakh National Opera and Ballet Theatre through direct messages and official letters. Both moves, however, seemed to hit a dead end.
In the summer, while attending the annual opera festival in St. Margarethen Stone Quarry with a group of our followers, we met Gaukhar Reich, a business coach with Kazakh connections. Without much hope, we shared Savely’s story with her, seeking advice on how to proceed further. Little did we know that this new acquaintance would become our guiding star. Within a few hours, Gaukhar reached out to the Kazakhstan Foreign Office, which forwarded our story to the Abai National Opera and Ballet Theatre. She also published a Facebook post seeking help from her followers in the search for information. The thread immediately flooded with comments from people who either remembered Savely’s grandfather or knew his relatives from back in the day. The Kazakh National Opera and Ballet Theatre responded, saying they would be happy to assist with this research. And then… it all went silent.
For months, we received no updates and nearly lost hope, until this morning, when out of nowhere, the thread came alive again with a message from Savely’s cousin aunt, who shed light on the family history. It turned out that not only Savely’s grandfather, but also his brother and two of his cousin aunts had trained as professional dancers and had ballet careers of varying lengths. That’s what we call the call of the ancestors when it comes to dance!
We wish Savely a joyful new chapter in his family’s history and would like to express our deepest gratitude to all our followers and supporters for not giving up and helping us bring this challenge to a happy ending!
