Episode 34 - Fernanda
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In this episode of Strip Journey, I talk with Fernanda Sibaja - a 32-year-old dancer from Costa Rica and official frame-up representative.
Fernanda’s path to dance wasn’t a straight line: childhood dance and theater groups, a failed contemporary dance university audition at 18, years working as a yoga and Pilates instructor - and then, at 27, discovering heel dance and falling for frame-up almost immediately. At 29 she went back to school for a three-year professional dance program in Costa Rica, trained herself online in between classes, and this year became one of the dancers selected for Nastya Yurasova’s very first certification held outside of Russia, in London.
We talk about the intensity of training directly under Nastya’s eye, the honest - and humbling - feedback that pushed her to keep going, what it’s like to introduce frame-up to Costa Rica almost from scratch, and her own history with an eating disorder and body image as a former yoga/Pilates instructor - and how that experience now shapes the way she teaches women.
Fernanda also opens up about her love of acrobatics, the frame-up dancers who inspire her, and the advice she’d give anyone starting out, wherever in the world they happen to be.
Fernanda’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fer.femfit/
00:00 – Introduction & welcome
00:45 – Fernanda’s background: early dance, theater & a university audition setback
03:45 – University of Costa Rica’s three-year professional dance program
07:00 – Getting selected for the London certification
10:30 – Teaching her first class back home; Costa Rica’s frame-up scene (
14:30 – Body image, disordered eating & training philosophy
24:00 – Acrobatics as her teaching specialty
25:30 – Advice for beginners & frame-up inspirations
33:30 – Final message & wrap-up
