When it comes to doing boring household chores, Anastasia Evsigneeva likes to mix things up a bit by bending her body into weird shapes as she does them.
The 28-year-old is so flexible that some of the ways she manages to bend her body makes her friends "sick to their stomachs" while her husband Andrey Kashaed, 32, is nervous as the more dangerous positions could be fatal.
Born hyperflexible, Anastasia, who grew up in southern Russia and now lives in Winnipeg, Canada, started out practising backbends at home, while performing everyday tasks like peeling potatoes, typing at her computer or even filing her nails.
She said: "It's a good time saver - there are never enough hours in the day to train and work on my art, as well as doing house duties.
"It's not how I usually practise but I have a very busy schedule and I sometimes have to do things at the same time."
To make extra good use of her time, Anastasia also posts videos of herself combining chores and training on her Instagram page.
She laughed: "24 hours is not enough!"
Honing her skills further, she took just three days of lessons to learn the Marinelli bend - widely considered to be one of the most dangerous and difficult positions, where the performer supports their whole body weight on their mouth, then bends until sitting on the back of their own head.
Anastasia said of the scary move: "There is a risk of fatality. People can injure their necks and that can injure the spinal cord so it is very dangerous.
"My coach warned my husband that people have died doing it and he was quite terrified.
“People see it for the first time and make comments like ‘does she even have bones?’
“I get all of the range of reactions from disgust and repulsion to shock and surprise and admiration.
“Some people cannot even see it. I have a couple of friends who cannot watch as it makes them sick to their stomachs.
“My spouse got headaches even from knowing I was practising it as he felt so compassionate to me, he couldn’t stand it."
But Anastasia says the secret to bending her body is to stay calm.
“It’s almost like performing extreme yoga," she explained. It is about managing fear and anxiety.
"It’s important to feel very relaxed and calm but also feel the energy flowing through you.”
Anastasia, who grew up in Rostov-on-Don, a coastal city in southern Russia, was just five years old when she first realised her body could do more extreme bends than her classmates in her dance lessons.
She said: "It felt natural and easy to do. I never had back pain or any aches."
But she didn't take much notice of her special skill until she was much older, saying: "The full realisation came when I was 17 and dancing in a theatre in my home town.
"That's when the choreographer told me not to bend too much more than the others - especially in backbends."
Anastasia's first love was dance, rather than contortion - seeming to take after her mum Marina, now 58, who is a dancer, more than her dad Sergei, 64, a circus performer.
In November 2009, she met software developer Andrey at a party for her cousin's birthday in Rostov-on-Don, marrying in 2012, and the two moved to Canada in 2015 so she could spend four years training at the School of Contemporary Dancers in Winnipeg.
After graduating, she worked as a dancer in around ten productions by other choreographers – before founding her own performance company, Moving Roots, in June 2020.
But Anastasia found her hyper flexibility caused issues for her when she was dancing.
She said: “I was often told as a dancer that I shouldn’t be standing out.”
Keen to make better use of her bendy skills, throughout her time at the dance college she also took separate circus classes in the evenings, before eventually signing up to classes with the Canadian contortionist Samantha Halas in 2020.
"I was curious as to how far I could push it – thinking what is my limit? Can I go past that?” she said.
Soon she was spending between two to four hours a day, six days a week practising her triple folds, one-armed handstand and contortionist push ups - and discovered household chores gave her excellent training opportunities.
She said some of her videos are of her demonstrating moves she has already mastered, warning: "I never practise for real on kitchen counters."
But she added: "I do train for real in some odd places - I have an office chair which has really good grip for practising headstands.
"And I have done a photoshoot in a friend's car."
Anastasia has been warned by a worried Andrey to beware of putting her toes too near water boiling in pots when she is doing bends in their kitchen.
But she said: "I feel pretty confident and don't feel it's risky.
"I'm very comfortable with where I'm placing my feet and when something feels very natural it doesn't feel dangerous."
In the summer of 2020, Anastasia and her coach decided she was finally ready to take on the Marinelli bend, booking three days’ worth of classes with Samantha to nail the skill.
The move requires a specialist piece of equipment, known as a mouthpiece - a leather ‘bite’ mounted on a metal pole, attached to a wide, unmoving base - which the performer grips between their teeth.
Anastasia said: "The mouthpiece belonged to my coach which she gave to me but I had to get the stand made specially by a friend of mine.
"It took him a month to make it from wood and cost me $150 (£110).
"And before I could start learning I had to have a coach with me so it took some time to prepare."
The first time Anastasia tried, she was unable to get into the pose from a bridge position - meaning she had to kick her legs over instead, which is less stable and more dangerous.
It also initially gave her a pain in her gums - which she described as "like a toothache when you bite down on something" - but with practice, the uncomfortable feeling disappeared.
She continued: "After my three classes, I couldn’t fully balance alone but I was confident enough that I could safely enter and exit the pose, to start practising on my own.
“On my seventh practice, I got my hands off the floor and performed the full Marinelli bend.”
Now Anastasia is working on holding the bend for longer.
“My record is 36 seconds as of now,” she said.
“The world record is four minutes and thirty-eight seconds – which is very rare to be able to do.
“I consider 36 seconds to be a good amount and I’ll keep practising.”
While some friends can't bear to watch Anastasia do the Marinelli bend, luckily her spouse has become more relaxed about it - and his headaches have gone away.
"He got used to it over time and now he’s more into me practising it," she said.
“My family are very supportive too.”
Now committed to building her skills, Anastasia said: "I like the feeling of being a little bit different than everyone else.
"It’s my duty to keep it up and develop my talent.
“The risk factor and this borderline risking of your life and being extreme, to perform something physically demanding, gets a great reaction on social media."
