Diana Ankudinova

Diana Dmitrievna Ankudinova (, born May 31, 2003) is a Russian singer. Much of her initial fame resulted from her winning two consecutive seasons of "You Are Super!", a talent competition show for disadvantaged children on the Russian NTV network. Diana Ankudinova's performances were posted on the NTV web site and the NTV YouTube channel, where they soon gained hundreds of millions of views around the world. Diana Ankudinova sings mostly in Russian, English and French. She has also sung in Spanish, German, Ukrainian and Arabic.
Early life.
Diana Ankudinova was born on May 31, 2003 in the far eastern Primorsky Territory of Russia in an area north of the city of Vladivostok. Diana's biological mother had several pregnancies, but her other pregnancies were terminated before Diana was born.
At the age of 3, Diana was left at a bus stop in the winter with a broken collarbone. Diana's biological aunt rescued Diana from the street, but was unable to care for the traumatized child. Diana's aunt made a statement about the abuse of Diana to the local prosecutor, and it was agreed that the young Diana should be turned over to the care of the Ussuriysk orphanage, which provided for the care of abandoned young children in the general area.
Children from the orphanage were periodically sent to a sanatorium to help them regain and maintain their physical and mental health. A massage therapist, Irina Ponik, who worked at the sanatorium developed a special affection for Diana. The daughter of Irina Ponik, who assisted her mother with the work at the sanatorium, was the one who first began to insist that her mother adopt Diana.
In 2008, Irina Ponik filed the necessary paperwork to assume formal legal guardianship of Diana Ankudinova with the territorial department of guardianship and trusteeship in the city of Ussuriysk. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to the nearby city of Arsenyev for about four years. In 2012, the family moved far away to the city of Tolyatti in the Samara Oblast of southwestern Russia. The move to Tolyatti was mostly due to Diana's fears that her biological mother might try to find and abuse Diana or even attempt to regain custody of Diana. These fears were so intense that they had been significantly affecting young Diana's mental health.
Musical career.
Career beginnings.
At the age of four-and-a-half years, Diana's speech was extremely poor, with stuttering and other problems. Speech pathologists recommended that she be given singing lessons to improve her general speech and vocal skills. She quickly discovered that she loved singing.
The head of the brass band of the city of Arsenyev, Alexander Varnamov, was the first to say that Diana had an extraordinary and very beautiful voice, and also a perfect ear for music. He predicted a great future for Diana as a singer.
Diana's instructors noticed her unique vocal abilities in her singing. Alexander Varnamov made an agreement with Elena Kazantseva, head the vocal pop ensemble "Zhemchuzhinki" ("Pearls"), so that she would accept Diana into the collective. She also sang in a duet "Malinki" under the direction of Elena Kazantseva.
Diana entered the Elegance vocal and choreographic school under the guidance of Anna Pekhtereva in the city of Arsenyev.
Diana began entering many vocal contests while still very young. She also began singing in public events at every opportunity that was presented to her.
After the move to Tolyatti, Diana continued singing in public at every opportunity and continued to enter many vocal competitions. She began studying vocals at the Melody circle of the Tolyatti House of Culture where she took vocal lessons from Svetlana Wowk.
Diana played one of the main roles in the musical "Teremok" with the Russian orchestra of the Tolyatti Philharmonic in November 2014.
In the theater and music studio at DKIT under the direction of Dmitry Marfin, she played in the musical "Visiting the Fairy Tale", and also played the role of Becky Thatcher in the Jazz musical "Tom Sawyer and His Friends", played the role of Muryonka the cat in the opera "Silver Hoof" in Tolyatti Philharmonic, in the musical "Vovka in the Jazz Kingdom", in the musical "New Adventures of Electronics".
Prizes and diplomas of Diana Ankudinova:
2017 "The Voice Kids Russia".
In 2016, Diana Ankudinova passed the non-televised preliminary auditions for season 4 of the Russian "The Voice Kids". She appeared on the blind auditions of the show that were televised on February 17, 2017. Diana sang "Jodel Time" which was originally performed by the Swiss band Oesch's die Dritten. None of the judges selected Diana, so she was eliminated from the competition. Before Diana left the stage, however, the judges asked her to sing a part of another song. She then sang a part of the Édith Piaf song "Non, je ne regrette rien" in French.
As a result of her televised performance on Russian "The Voice Kids", Diana became so popular with the public that she became the first person on "The Voice" projects to gain more than a million views on YouTube after failing to pass the initial televised blind auditions on the show.
2018-2019 "You Are Super!".
"You Are Super!" ("Ты супер!" in Russian) is a talent competition show on the Russian NTV television network. It is for disadvantaged children who have spent some significant part of their childhood without parental care.
"You Are Super!" has unique rules. There are four jury members, who always sit facing the contestants. At the initial face-to-face stage, the performance of the participants is evaluated by four members of the jury. They vote for the passage of the applicant to the next round by pressing a button. In the first round, the performer needs to get at least three votes, in which case the scene turns green. If the required number of votes has not been received, the stage turns red and the participant is eliminated.
In the second round, each performer must also collect at least three votes, after which the performer goes to the waiting room. At the end of the episode, among all the selected participants, each of the four jury members chooses one performer, who will go to the semifinals. In each of the semifinals, contestants enter the waiting room only if all members of the jury have pressed buttons. (In all of the performances of Diana Ankudinova in both the 2018 and 2019 seasons, all four of the jury members pressed their buttons.) At the end of the semifinal episodes, each of the four judges must again choose one participant, who then gets the right to go to the final.
The winner of the final episode of the televised competition is chosen by the viewers via SMS voting.
Diana Ankudinova won the 2018 season of "You Are Super!" with 49 percent of the vote of the viewing audience. The 2019 season of the show was called a "superseason" and was to consist mostly of winners and finalists from previous seasons. As the 2018 winner, Diana Ankudinova was invited back, and she also won that 2019 "superseason".
Immediately after the announcement of Diana's win of the 2018 season of "You Are Super!", one of the jury members, Igor Krutoy, promised to give Diana an apartment in Moscow so that she could continue her musical studies in Moscow. Diana was given the keys to the new apartment on August 20, 2018, where she continues to live.
After the "You Are Super!" program.
Before and after winning the 2018 season of "You Are Super!" Diana was contacted by her biological mother and some other biological relatives, but she had no desire to communicate with any of them since she already had a loving adoptive family who had happily raised her.
Diana Ankudinova took part and received the Audience Award at the 2018 New Wave Junior international contest for young pop music performers in Artek.
She has done a number of solo concerts in Russia, as well as performances in a few nearby countries (Estonia, Kazakhstan).
On October 18, 2019 Brad Cooney (USA) published a podcast interview with Diana Ankudinova. Diana gave another interview to a vocal сoach Emre Yücelen from Turkey.
On January 23, 2020 the presentation of the first single by Diana Ankudinova took place in Moscow in the bard club "Capercaillie's Nest". It included songs "As Your voice", "In your city", "How are you there" and "On the waves of fate".
On September 10, 2020, the Official Video "Into the sky" was released.
In September, 2020, she was accepted as a student at the Russian Institute of Theater Arts (GITIS).
On October 4, 2020 Diana acted as a guest star of the 4th season of the You Are Super! program with the song "Into the sky".
On October 12, 2020 Diana's voice teacher Olga Donskaya died in Moscow. At the end of 2020, Diana's foster father died.
In December, 2020, she decided to attempt to finance her first full CD music album though crowdfunding using the Russian crowdfunding web site Boomstarter.
When the crowdfunding period expired in early 2021, Diana Ankudinova had reached 236 percent of her goal.
On March 26, 2021, the Official Video "Happiness" was released.
Notes and references.
Some of the information for the "2018-2019 You Are Super!" section, including the rules of the competition, derives directly (although mostly paraphrased) from the Russian-language Wikipedia article on the "Ты супер!" television program. 