San Francisco Chronicle
June 22 2005
S.F. Ballet dancers move up through the ranks
David Wiegand
The San Francisco Ballet has three newly promoted soloists in advance
of the 2006 season.
Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson has promoted Frances Chung, Moises
Martin and Hansuke Yamamoto from the corps de ballet to soloists.
Andrea McGinnis, Shannon Roberts, Lily Rogers and Danielle Santos
have been promoted from apprentice positions to the corps. In
addition, Tomasson has hired two new principal dancers, Tiit Helimets
and Davit Karapetyan. Helimets is a native of Estonia who comes to
SFB from the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Karapetyan is a native of
Yerevan, Armenia, and comes to San Francisco from the Zurich Ballet.
Three former San Francisco Ballet School students will join the
company as apprentices next year. They are Daniel Deivison, Jennifer
Stahl and Quinn Wharton.
Score one more for Keeping Score, the San Francisco Symphony’s
multimedia program designed to build new audiences. Last week, the
Symphony received a $1. 65 million grant from the James Irvine
Foundation that is part of the $10 million challenge grant from the
Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund. The first part of the Irvine
Foundation money will support the program’s educational component
The pilot program for Keeping Score’s educational component will
start in Fresno this next school year. Twenty teachers from grades
kindergarten through 12 have been chosen to participate and will use
the Keeping Score multimedia programs to add classical music to the
core curriculum.