This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

When it comes to living on the edge of danger, tossing Vladimir Putin’s daughter several feet into the air might be up there with wrestling a grizzly bear or tightrope-walking with no safety net.

So spare a thought for Dmitry Alekseev, the dance partner of Katerina Tikhonova, who is widely believed to be Putin’s daughter.

Tikhonova, who uses the surname of her maternal grandmother, was “outed” last year by journalists who put together a string of clues to work out her real identity. When asked whether Tikhonova was his daughter, the Russian president refused to comment, saying his family life was private.

Tikhonova has competed in a number of tournaments in acrobatic rock’n’roll, a discipline for couples that involves a mixture of energetic dancing and virtuosic acrobatic moves. On Saturday Russia’s TV Rain showed two clips of Tikhonova and Alekseev dancing in the boogie woogie class of a competition.

Reuters reported that Tikhonova married Kirill Shamalov, son of an old friend of Putin’s, at a top-secret ceremony in 2013. Since the wedding, Shamalov has acquired shares in state-connected companies worth several billions of dollars. Tikhonova is overseeing a huge project to revamp Moscow State University.