Masha Ilieva is a cheerful person, even though it doesn’t show. She likes the fairy-tale world, which she sometimes opposes to reality. One of the children from her ballet school told her: “I would like to watch spectacles-fairy-tales like “The Nutcracker”, but this ballet is being played only around Christmas. And when can I see a ballet after the fairy-tale “Sleeping Beauty?” Masha replied that she would be welcome to the premiere spectacles of this ballet in November. The prima-ballerina is sure that each of her girls would like to become a great ballerina. To play Sleeping Beauty, and after that to receive a long applause.

Maria Ilieva was educated in love for ballet. Her mother was born in St. Petersburg and as a child she had danced and taken part in theatre spectacles. Her great dream was her girl to become a ballerina. And her dream came true.

“Since I was a little child I started visiting the spectacles of the International Ballet Competition in Varna and of the Opera in Sofia. Then came the lessons in ballet. My fate was predetermined”, tells Masha. If she hadn’t become a ballerina, maybe now she would be a painter, because till today it is her favourite art. Her hobby is drawing. “All my notebooks were drawn. And now, sidelong the written rows, I always draw some sketches. But I’m not drawing very well”, behaves demurely the ballerina.

At the Choreography school she enrolled among the first ones in the list. She had luck that still the next year arrived specialists from the Choreography school in St. Petersburg (at that time still Leningrad) and they liked three children. Among them was Masha. There she studied 7 years.

“I still remember my first appearance on the stage – shares the ballerina. I was terribly afraid. In one moment I even had a conflict with one of the girls. That is why now, as a teacher, I put the children in front of audience since very small, so that they could overcome this fast panic horror from the unknown.”

As strange as it may sound, Masha Ilieva was never attracted by international competitions. “It was enough for me that I won a prize in Varna. Since that moment it stopped to be interesting for me.”At Sofia Opera she was accepted in the standard way – with a competition, as all the rest. Masha, however, turned out to be not like all the rest. Still since the first year she received solo parts. “In spite of that I passed through all stages of development. I have played absolutely everything”, tells the prima ballerina, who is now producer and choreographer of the ballet „Sleeping Beauty”. This is the ballet which the small girls want to play when they grow up.

“Romance never goes away from my soul, says Masha Ilieva, because without it is possible no one of my steps in real life! The ballet in “Sleeping Beauty” is romance, and romance is ballet.  For this reason in it everything is beautiful and possible!”