Natalya Vetlitskaya
She studied at the Moscow School No.856, and, a self-described 'ugly duckling', hated sports lessons there, because, being the smallest in the class, had to stand always the last in the line.
A year later, after the sisters Bazykins left the rock band Rondo, Mikhail Litvin invited to the auditioning Sveta Kolesnikova from the Vizit group, who brought in her friend, Natalya Vetlitskaya.
So with a great deal of mutual help, in a ten days' time we prepared our own little show, got ourselves into our old school uniforms, drastically cut, and were welcomed in, she remembered.
[5] Vetlitskaya worked there as choreographer, dancer and backing vocalist, and took part in the recording of four songs which made it into the 1986 Rondo-86 album.
In Mirage I earned a certain sum, 90 per cent of which I gave to my parents for them to buy a car, and the rest kept for myself, hoping this money will keep me afloat until something else comes my way, Vetlitskaya remembered.
[5] Natalya Vetlitskaya's breakthrough came in 1992 when a video for Look Me into the Eyes, her debut album's title track received the Gran Prix at the Moscow Generation-92 Festival and launched the career of Fyodor Bondarchuk, who made the clip with Tigran Keosayan and Sergey Kozlov, the latter as a cameraman.
The clip, nominated for the MTV Video Music Award as well as the Eurovideo Grand Prix, made the singer famous in Russia and known in Europe.
Vetlitskaya's second album Playboy came out in 1994, the video for the title track, made by Sergey Kalvarsky, premiered on the New Year Eve to become a huge hit.
In 1997 Vetlitskaya starred in the film The New Adventures of Buratino (as Alisa the Fox) and recorded three songs for the soundtrack, including Taj Mahal, a duo with Sergey Mazayev.
[5] In 2003 Vetlitskaya starred as Princess Natalia in Maksim Papernik's musical Snow Queen, for which she recorded the song "Lanterns", a duet with Vadim Azarkh.
In 2009 Vetlitskaya retired from the Russian music scene and went on to reside in Spain where since then she's been leading the life of a recluse, contacting only those who share her passions for yoga and Eastern philosophies.
The mystery of the sudden departure of Russia's most stylish pop singer, remained fogged in Indian incense, Muz-TV reported.
Not its mainstream version, but the one that could be called a shadowy, underground one, music critic Alexey Mazhayev argued, reviewing her 2004 The Best Of compilation.
According to the composer Lyubov Voropayeva, who worked closely with Belousov, the latter was deeply in love with Vetliyskaya and experienced shock when, on his return from a short New Year tour, found a note informing him that the marriage was over.
[18][19] Vetlitskaya, who once had a hit with a song called Playboy, appeared in the Russian version of this magazine twice, but the result produced nothing scandalous.
[21][22] In August 2011 Natalya Vetlitskaya found herself in the center of major controversy after her satyrical 'fable' describing a private all-star concert taking place at some secret residence, appeared in her blog.
[24][25][26][27] In 2012, after the death of her father, who spent 54 years working for ITEP, Natalya in her blog[28] accused the head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko and Director of ITEP Yuri Kozlov in her father's harassment, financial fraud and deliberate bringing Russia's nuclear industry to collapse.
[29][30][31] She called Kiriyenko the Rosatom's mafiosi general and stated that the reason of her father's death from heart attack in May 2011 was the document he'd received notifying him that his monthly salary was being cut from 4,4 to 2,8 thousand rubles.
[33] Highly contentious proved to be Vetlitskaya's 9 May 2016 Facebook post in which she argued that "only idiots can jump madly with joy, celebrating the Victory Day.
