Milena Sidorova is an award-winning Dutch choreographer and ballerina, but she’s probably best known for a YouTube video she posted back in 2011.

She choreographed the dance featured in her viral video when she was just 13 and it has been seen over 13.7 million times – even though it creeps some people out.

Called “The Spider” (for obvious reasons), it begins with Sidorova crawling around the stage.

Her dance requires immense flexibility, but it certainly doesn’t look like your typical ballet!

Even when she “mimes” her way up to a standing position there’s still something arachnid about the choreography.

Now the spider is flying!

“I’ve never been so impressed and scared at the same time,” said one commenter.

At only 1 minute and 20 seconds, it’s quite a short dance considering its popularity. And commenters have asked so many questions about it that Sidorova has dedicated a page on her website to explaining the choreography.

When asked how she came up with the routine, she said:

“As a kid, I really loved spiders and I used to observe them a lot. They had this particular way of moving and were still very gracious creatures, although a bit weird. When I studied ballet professionally, I once tried to imitate the movements of a spider in the living room — which made my mother laugh a lot. She said: ‘Hey, why don’t you make that into a dance?'”

Just two months later she began performing it as her contemporary solo piece at international dance competitions.

The wildly flexible dancer started her first ballet lessons at age 3 and had one of her performances broadcast on national Ukrainian television at just 4 years old.

By the age of 8, she had joined a professional ballet school and began participating in competitions across Europe. At 15, she joined the Upper Royal Ballet School in London though most of her career has been spent with the Dutch National Ballet where she became a principal dancer in 2005.

These days she’s a high-coveted choreographer as well.

While it might look relatively simple compared to some of the ballets you’ve seen, she said the “Spider Dance” can be very difficult:

“Not necessarily because it requires advanced technical skills, but the spider pose requires a certain flexibility in your hips and lower back that even most professional dancers do not possess.

Especially the first pose and the walk that follows are very demanding.”

If that first pose isn’t perfect, it really defeats the purpose.

“If the opening pose isn’t done properly, you’re more likely to look like a frog than a spider,” she explained.

Frogs might be less creepy!

While Sidorova has coached another young ballerina to dance it, she said many people have also taken her choreography without permission and used it in competitions, which is unfortunate. Choreographers own their work, just like authors, and while dancers are welcome to learn it and she’s likely to give permission to perform it for charity purposes, using it in public requires her explicit permission.

For those of us who will never be flexible enough to attempt it, watching Sidarova’s video is enough. In fact, for some, it was enough to trigger their arachnophobia.

That’s got to be a choreography compliment if we’ve ever heard one!

Be sure to scroll down and see her unique “Spider Dance.”

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Source: Opera Ballet, Milena Sidorova, waltzish via YouTube