Photo ©Erik Tomasson
Tuesday matinee, December 22nd – Grand Pas de Deux with Gennadi Nedvigin
Wednesday matinee, December 23rd – Sugar Plum Fairy
Thursday matinee, December 24th – Snow Queen with Gennadi Nedvigin
Saturday matinee, December 26th – Grand Pas de Deux with Gennadi Nedvigin
After my matinee on Saturday I’m off to the airport to go to St. Petersburg for a gala with Gennadi here is information
Tuesday night, December 15th – Grand Pas de deux with Gennadi Nedvigin
Wednesday night, December 16th – Snow Queen with Gennadi Nedvigin
Thursday night, December 17th – Sugar Plum Fairy
Friday night, December 18th – Snow Queen with Gennadi Nedvigin
Photo ©Erik Tomasson
Wednesday night, December 9th – Grand Pas de Deux with Davit Karapetyan
Thursday night, December 10th – Sugar Plum Fairy
Friday night, December 11th – Snow Queen with Gennadi Nedvigin (premiere)
Sunday Matinee, December 13th – Grand Pas de Deux with Davit Karapetyan
Upcoming dates for my Nutcracker performances:
Grand Pas de Deux (with Gennadi Nedvigin):
Sunday 14th 2pm
Tuesday 23rd 7pm
Friday 26th 7pm
Sunday 28th 7pm
Sugar Plum Fairy:
Saturday 13th 2pm
Friday 26th 2pm
Saturday 27th 7pm
My performance in the Grand Pas de Deux from last year’s Nutcracker will be broadcast by PBS on Wednesday 17th December at 8pm and is also available on DVD from Amazon.
Casting on IMDB
“Having three tries at perfection didn’t alleviate the extra pressure on 24-year-old principal Maria Kochetkova, who found herself cast in the climactic Grand Pas de Deux opposite hunky, buoyant Davit Karapetyan as one of her first assignments with a brand-new company.“It was a new stage, a new audience, a new ballet to me,” said Kochetkova, who trained at Russia’s Bolshoi School and joined the San Francisco Ballet from the English National Ballet. “I found out I was cast for this two weeks before. In that pas de deux, you have to walk right into the spotlight, you have to dance right away.”
Taking a break after the daily company class, the doll-faced Kochetkova was critical of her sparkling performance after seeing the video a few days earlier. “The film is really beautiful, though of course for myself I see things I would do better,” she said. Still, she was full of praise for the choreography – “It’s really big, and I like big movements” – and gratitude to Tomasson: “He really believes in me and believes I can do it better onstage than in the studio,” she said. “I felt before him I hadn’t realized the things I can actually do.”"
San Francisco Chronicle
Odeon Covent Garden (London)
Sunday 14th December, 11am and 4pm
David Lean Cinema, Croydon (Dec 29/30/31st)
Filmhouse Edinburgh (Dec 28th)
Macrobert, Stirling (Dec 30th)
UK and European Arts Alliance screening locations
Canada and UK DigiScreen screening locations
Casting on IMDB
More information about San Francisco Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’
I did my first Sugar Plum Fairy today, the next performance is on Sunday
Reviews:
“There were surprises to fuel little-girl ballerina dreams and grown-up balletomane ravings alike, and sometimes – especially in the sensational debut of the new Russian-trained principal Maria Kochetkova – both at once.Kochetkova, a 23-year-old recruit from the English National Ballet, is tiny and light, a sparrow. In the closing Grand Pas de Deux, she seemed hardly to touch the floor, and when she leapt toward her Nutcracker cavalier, Davit Karapetyan, for a diabolically difficult shoulder-sit, she landed as though she’d simply flitted to a fresh branch.
Her variation (you know the famous music from the game Tetris and a million TV ads, come on, sing along) was a marvel of birdlike crispness. And don’t forget her fouette turns in the coda: copious doubles so natural you nearly giggled. Now throw on top of all of this Karapetyan’s own virtuosity: sissones so high and split in the air they were like scissors snapping open and shut. The response from parents and children both was rapturous.”
“Maria Kochetkova, the company’s newest import from Russia (via the English National Ballet), is a “different” dancer. Quite without the thin, elongated figure of a typical ballerina, the tiny dancer has it all: a self-possessed, intense, regal artist, she exudes the air of a genuine star.”
“It wasn’t until the Grand Pas de Deux by petite firebrand Maria Kochetkova and Davit Karapetyan that magical Tchiakovsky again met lush, magical dancing. Armenian-born Karapetyan is an athletic yet lyrical dancer who can combine geometrically pure virtuosity with a certain warm irony, as he did Thursday during the Grand Pas de Deux. His turns in second rotatedwith clockwork surety, and his leaps and beats were preternaturally secure. He partnered Russian-born Kochetkova, who combined a sparkling blend of robust attack and precise lyricism, effortlessly. And it was then that full magic of “Nutcracker” returned, the pairsewing up the night with enough wizardry to meet Drosselmeyer toe to toe.”
