Argentina’s ballet superstar Herman Cornejo will dance the title role of The Nutcracker in two performances of American Ballet Theater’s holiday spectacular playing at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California from Friday, Dec. 10 through Sunday, Dec. 19.

Taking to the barre at the tender age of 8 at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, young Cornejo demonstrated a virtuosic gift for dance. At age 16, Cornejo was awarded the Gold Medal of the VIII International Dance Competition in Moscow in 1997, the youngest dancer to ever do so. Two years later he joined American Ballet Theater and by 2003 became a principal dancer performing the title roles in Apollo, Petrouchka, The Pied Piper, Prodigal Son and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Cornejo’s exquisite movement has him globetrotting, performing as a guest artist with the premier ballet companies of Italy, Korea, Japan, Russia, Spain and Cuba. Today Herman is counted among the art’s most illustrious talents who joyfully brings his trademark brilliance to The Nutcracker.  

“This Nutcracker is cracking good!” raved the New York Post when American Ballet Theatre premiered this delectable holiday favorite. As the lights dim and Tchaikovsky’s lush score fills the air, young Clara enters a dreamlike journey amid magical toy soldiers, mischievous mice, sparkling snowflakes, a glittering Christmas tree and a dashing nutcracker (Cornejo) who comes to life! With an impressive cast of more than 100 performers, the Orange County Register praised it as a “… colorful, cinematic creation filled with spectacle, humor and eye-popping costumes.” For anyone out to start the holidays in grand style, this is the theatrical event of the season. Not to be missed.  

So, walk, run, pirouette to see Herman Cornejo and a host of the world’s most celebrated dancers in American Ballet Theater’s spectacular The Nutcracker.

For show information click here.

Herman Cornejo in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (Photo: Rosalie O’Connor/Courtesy of ABT)

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In March of 1976, a military junta seized control of Argentina. Those opposed to the new government were told “to make themselves invisible, or they would be made to vanish.” By September of that year, the regime was already responsible for an average of 30 abductions each day. From these abductions, a new word came into common usage: desaparecidos, the “disappeareds.” Among those detained and tortured were young pregnant women who rarely survived, and whose babies were then stolen and illegally adopted out to “politically acceptable” parents. Despite the atmosphere of fear promoted by the junta regime, two groups of women — representing the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared — began protesting the disappearances of their relatives and striving for the reunification of their families. “The Madres” embarked on a crusade to obtain information about their missing children, demanding both the return of their children and punishment for their captors; “The Abuelas” have a sharper focus: to find the living. They call them los desaparecidos con vida (“the living disappeared”), referring to the babies who had been taken from their murdered daughters and sons. 

Developed in the Antaeus Playwright’s Lab, The Abuelas was a semi-finalist for the 2017 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the winner of the 2018 Ashland New Plays Festival, and received its world premiere earlier this year from Teatro Vista at Victory Gardens in Chicago. It was written as a stand-alone companion piece to Walker’s The Madres, which was produced in 2018 by four theaters across the U.S. (including the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles) as part of a “Rolling World Premiere” from the National New Play Network. “Walker is a powerful and compassionate writer: both of these plays explore how ordinary people can and do become caught up in political horrors, even as they somehow have to keep living their lives,” wrote Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune.

The Abuelas opens on Friday, October 11th and continues through November 25th. Performances take place on Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. and Mondays at 8 p.m. through Oct. 31 (dark Monday, Oct. 13); check the website for the performance schedule between Oct. 31 and Nov. 25, when performances will run in rotation with Eight Nights. Preview performances of The Abuelas begin Oct. 3. Seating is reserved, with all tickets priced at $35 except preview tickets, which are $15. Visit www.Antaeus.org for more information.

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