Irina Prokofieva

 

International Ballet Mistress

Irina entered the Vaganova Ballet Academy, where she graduated with honorsin 2001 with a Bachelor degree. Right after graduation Irina was accepted into the Mariinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg, Russia) as a ballet dancer where she have worked for almost 19 years and has performed, among others, a number of solo roles.

In 2009 she enrolled in the Faculty of Education at the Vaganova Ballet Academy and has obtained a Master degree in Education in 2012.

In 2012, Irina worked as a ballet teacher at the Children’s Ballet School of Ilya Kuznetsov.

In 2010, she gave a masterclass in classical ballet in Changchun, China and have been granted the title Emeritus Professor of the Jilin Institute of Art.

Between 2013 and 2022, she gave several masterclasses in classical ballet as well as a seminar-lecture: Hunan Pedagogical University (Changsha, China, 2013); Nanjing University of Arts (China, 2014); Seoul and Busan (Korea, 2015); Rapallo (Italy, 2016), where she had transferred and taught scenes from several classical choreographies of the Mariinsky Theatre such as Giselle, Paquita, Don Quixote; Dezhou and Suzhou (China, 2018); Zürich (Switzerland, 2022); and recently, Budapest (2020, 2021, 2022).

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In 2019 Irina was invited by the director of the Hungarian State Opera’s ballet company, Tamás Solymosi, to move to Hungary and join the company as a ballet master, which she has readily accepted. 

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The productions she worked on at the Hungarian State Opera include Swan Lake, Giselle, The Nutcracker, Laurencia, The Flames of Paris, Don-Quixote, Scheherezade, Trois Gnossiennes, Études, La fille mal gardée, Mayerling, Petit mort and her own choreography, the Paquita Suite (based on Petipa’s version).

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In 2022 Irina has also published a book dedicated to the ballet classes held by one of the great ballet masters of his time, Sergei Vikharev which has been in the works for a long time.

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In April 2022 together with Ballet Director Solymosi and Mirzoyan Albert Irina have created a beautiful ballet Paquita Suite specifically for the Hungarian State Opera.