“Without dancing, I feel bad. You let all feeling out and you feel good afterwards,” says Sonya Mohova. When the Ukraine-based Russian realised that she couldn’t be a classical dancer, after years of taking ballet lessons, she repositioned herself as a dancer without a genre. Instagram videos show the now 19-year-old in action, contorting her body with flair and masses of glossy brown hair flying in all directions, soundtracked by anything from The Prodigy to Prokofiev. Beauty for Mohova, who also models, is self-confidence and even though her personal make-up use is limited to maybe mascara at night, she sometimes colours her hair red. Now that the dancer no longer does ballet and isn’t constantly on pointe, she can finally have pedicures again.

In the photo story below, photographer Hazel Gaskin shoots Mohova at a dance studio in Kiev.