Sergei Polunin is the ballet performer on Hozier's Grammy-nominated song "Take Me To Church" viral video; directed by David LaChapelle and choreographed by Jade Hale-Christofi.
Polunin was given the "bad boy" nickname because of his tattooed body. "I just love, for some reason, the body art. I always drew on myself from being a kid," the Kherson-born dancer shared with the Telegraph. In his interview with them in 2013 he has had 11 tattoos, but is still planning on adding a few more. The tattoo is one of his passions; co-owning a tattoo parlor once.
After becoming British Royal Ballet's youngest principal dancer at 19, he quit three years after, shocking both the industry experts and his fans. One of his reasons for quitting is the fact that the hates rehearsals and that he felt, at that moment, that he lost interest in dancing. "In a way, I did feel like the artist in me was dying," he told the BBC.
He was a gymnast first. In 1999, he left Kherson and moved to Kiev to fulfill his mother's request of him becoming a ballet dancer. In 2003, he went to London all by himself to attend the school of Royal Ballet and eventually joining the group in 2007.
Industry experts have expressed their admiration of his talent. His Royal Ballet director Kevin O'Hare told the Telegraph, "He's one of those few dancers who you look at and instantly think, 'Where does this talent come from?' It's a wonderful gift," while his current mentor Zelensky said, "Talent is very rare. Margot Fonteyn is a talent. Maya Plisetskaya is a talent. Baryshnikov is. I don't want to go on too much about Sergei. But it is inside him. He is unusual. Unbelievable."