Vanessa Zahorian

Mrs. Vanessa attended the Kirov Academy in 1992-1995.

 

Her teacher was Ludmila Morkovina. She performed the princess Clara/sugarplum fairy on tour with the Kirov Academy in the Nutcracker.

 

When the lights went out on my performance in San Jose in the afternoon, Olga Chenchikova and Makhar Vaziev gave her their performance that evening to dance.

 

In 1995 she was given a sponsorship by the Prince of Monaco as the first American to join the Kirov Ballet in St. Peterburg, Russia as an apprentice.

 

Selected by Oleg Vinogradov and La Fondation Ballets Russes as the 1st American recipient of the Kirov Ballet Russian-American Young Dancers performing scholarship in 1995.

 

She is currently a Co-Artistic Director of the Pennsylvania Ballet Academy with her husband Davit Karapetyan. They opened the brand new school in 2017 after retiring from dancing with the San Francisco Ballet for 20 years.

 

She was a principal dancer at SFB for 15 of those years. She joined San Francisco Ballet in 1997 -2017.

 

She started in the corps de ballet dancing lead principal roles like sugar plum fairy and classical full length ballets right from the beginning and was promoted to soloist two years later and principal three years after that.

 

Her repertoire included principal roles in all of the classical full length ballets, George Balanchine ballets and contemporary and modern ballets with well known choreographers from around the world.

 

She was awarded the Erik Bruhn prize in 1999 gold medal. She was also awarded the best couple award with Davit Karapetyan at the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson in 2006.

 

Before that, she was awarded a bronze medal in Nagoya, Japan at the 2nd International Ballet and Modern Competition in 1996.

 

She was also awarded the Best Young Soloist in 1996 at the International Ballet Competition honoring Nureyev in Budapest, and silver medal and Love of Audience award at Arabesk Competition in Perm, Russia, in 1996.