Ekaterina Lapaeva sent us a letter in which she announced her decision to retire from competitive dancing. Only recently she split up with Anton Karpov and tried out with Slavik Kryklyvyy. Anton and Ekaterina represented Russia in Professional Latin and were Blackpool and UK Open finalists and Russian Professional Latin vice-champions. See her profile page for more information about partners and to see more photos.
I am writing this letter to announce my retirement from competitive dance sport career.
Dancing, competing, performing has been a major part of my life for 22 years. It has been a long and exciting journey of restless search of new knowledge and commitment to the daily development and discovery of new possibilities of expression. It has been a journey richly filled with so many special moments, experiences or lessons which makes me feel so lucky to have been a dancer and for having had the opportunity to simply take on the journey of dance.
I thank my ex dance partners for the time and moments we spent together on achieving various levels, reaching for the stars and dreams we dreamt together. Every partnership has taken me to another level. Today, I hold no grunge for anything that might not have gone the desired way but only a feeling of gratefulness to each. In every partner and in the each following partner through the years I found more and more of who I am and who I am not. The experience I got with every partner was perfect indeed as it played a huge part on my realisation of who I am today.
I would like to thank all my teachers that I have ever had a pleasure to learn from. I thank you for sharing your knowledge, your passion, your believes and just your love to dance with me. I remember and appreciate time spent in learning from each of you, so unique and so different personalities. Every teacher and every stage has helped me on reaching this high.
I would like to express a special gratitude to my main teachers for the inspiration and unconditional support, and for simply believing in me. These people did not only teach me dancing - they taught me life and gave me more strength on my not always easy paths than they would ever realise. These Beautiful people willingly shared with me great passion and devotion to dancing, education, beauty and art of the movement and will be remembered as my Dance Angels by me. They know who they are.
The last but not least, I feel thankful to my family who introduced me to dancing and gave me an opportunity to dance in my early years. To my friends and fans for their support of my dancing and any of the decisions I have made on my path.
Endings are always sad but beginnings are exciting, and as sad as I feel with closing the competitive chapter, as excited I feel looking into the future and the new possibilities and projects that are there for me to explore.
Undoubtedly, I will be around willingly sharing my knowledge, passion, love and spirit with my students and dancing with them in my heart.
I am also planning to continue my education of psychology and philosophy, together with study of literature and creative arts towards which I have enormous interest and passion.
Once again thank you to all the people I have met on my dancing path. You have all helped me in some unique way, enriched me and my life. Without each and every of you the success I reached in dancing would never be possible and today I feel extremely blessed and grateful, closing this chapter filled with only great memories and a smile on my face.
Sincerely yours,
Ekaterina Lapaeva
