A Natalia Osipova Documentary Is Hitting Theaters Today

You never quite know what’s going to happen when Natalia Osipova steps onstage—you know you’re in for something extraordinary, but the exact nature of what you’ll get is a mystery until it’s happening. It’s only fitting, then, that we would learn of Force of Nature, a new documentary following a year of the ballet superstar’s career, a day before its limited release in the UK.

The film shows Osipova in rehearsal for classical roles at The Royal Ballet (where she’s currently a principal) and for contemporary works with choreographers like Arthur Pita. There’s no shortage of performance footage that showcases her physics-defying leaps, and old videos of her in ballet classes as a child give a glimpse of both her prodigious talent and impish personality.

We also get to hear from the woman herself through interviews in her dressing room at the Royal Opera House—but according to The Guardian, if you’re hoping to hear anything about her long-since-ended engagement to Ivan Vasiliev, with whom she left the Bolshoi Ballet for the smaller Mikhailovsky, or her brief-but-intense fling with Sergei Polunin (who, meanwhile, seems to be gleefully throwing his career away with both hands), you’ll be disappointed. But we’re fully on board with anything that grants insight into the peculiar alchemy that makes Osipova such a magnetic performer—or any glimpse of the globe-trotting star’s dancing.

Force of Nature
begins a limited run in the UK on June 7; no word yet on plans for international distribution.