Natalya Petrescu

Natalya was one of the pupils of Albert & Fiona Dietrich, the amazing contortion duo who performed in Canada in the 19th century, during their teen years, and became teachers of contortion later, after their retirement from the circus arena:

Natalya's parents were immigrants from Romania and she started taking contortion lessons from the Dietrich twins since the age of 11 to discover a great talent hidden within her body. Unlike most of other pupils who wanted to learn folding their spines backwards until it couldn't go any further, Natalya actually enjoyed frontbending the most.

It was kind of unusual as frontbending was mostly demonstrated by men at the time and was considered kind of "manly". But Natalya proved that frontbending has a very graceful, feminine side, too, and left a great example for the girls of the future of how soft and soothing female frontbending can be, while at the same time demonstrating the most unbelievable miracles of body stretching.

Natalya was actively performing for over twelve years since her very first performance at the age of 13. Her fans really enjoyed following her transformation from a little prodigy girl into an impossibly flexible beauty.

The last mention of her in a newspaper was about her happy marriage and retirement from official performances. Answering one of the questions in her final interview, she said that it wasn't because her husband was jealous but because she was pregnant and she couldn't wait to have a baby. When the journalist asked if she planned her children to also become contortionists, Natalya said that it would be their own choice, but if they wanted to, she'd be happy to personally help them to become the best contortionists in the world.

A lot of thanks to Filter-GX for sharing the historical information about the Dietrich twins and Natalya!