Candice Desilets was 12 when a ballet trip from Johannesburg took her to St Petersburg.

She performed at the Hermitage Theatre, attended masterclasses and visited the Vaganova Ballet Academy, a school whose history stretches back to 1738.

Four years later, she returned for a very different reason.

She had been accepted as a student.

Now 20, Desilets has been celebrated as the first South African to graduate from the Vaganova Ballet Academy.

It Started in Parkhurst

Candice began training at Johannesburg’s Russian School of Ballet in Parkhurst in 2016, when she was 10.

In 2018, school founder Yana Auger took a group of students and their families to St Petersburg. They attended masterclasses, performed at the Hermitage Theatre and visited Vaganova.

By 2022, Candice was moving to Russia to study there.

She was 16 and couldn’t speak Russian.

Six Hours of Ballet. Then There Was Russian.

Getting into Vaganova was only the beginning.

Candice told The Citizen that classes, handwritten schedules and everyday life meant navigating a language she didn’t yet understand.

She learnt Russian as she went and eventually became fluent.

At the same time, ballet could occupy around six hours of her day.

This wasn’t a short overseas course. Candice spent four years training at the academy before graduating in 2026.

Vaganova says its 2026 graduating class included 48 students, with graduation performances at the Mariinsky Theatre and diplomas presented at Catherine Palace.

What Comes After Vaganova?

Graduation may not mean leaving Russia.

Candice told the Rosebank Killarney Gazette that she had received an offer from a Russian ballet theatre, although the report did not identify it.

For someone who first arrived in St Petersburg as a young visitor from Johannesburg, that could turn the place she once travelled to see into the starting point of her professional career.

The Bottom Line

Candice was 12 when she first saw Vaganova. At 16, she returned to study there without speaking Russian.

Four years later, she graduated.

Now the ballet school she once travelled halfway across the world to see may have become the starting point for a professional career.