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PAQUITA BALLET pas de trois solo LEARN TOGETHER with Maria Khoreva

20:101,531 summary words · ~8 min readEnglishTranscribed Jul 27, 2026
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Summary

Maria Khoreva teaches the Paquita pas de trois first girl solo variation, emphasizing its character-style arm work, the demanding glissade-cabriole sequence, and the final diagonal that builds to a double pirouette into attitude.

Mastering this variation requires coordinating character-style styling with advanced technical elements, and understanding its structure prepares dancers for one of the most challenging solo pieces in the classical repertoire.

Section summaries

0:01-0:46

Introduction and Story Context

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Maria Khoreva introduces herself and explains that she will teach the first girl solo from the Paquita pas de trois. She clarifies that this solo is commonly known as the Paquita second act variation because Paquita herself dances it when the gypsies perform in front of noble people. She notes that the Mariinsky Theater staging has a slightly different ballet structure that places this variation in a specific structural position. She then transitions into the actual choreography instruction.

  • The variation is the first girl's solo within the Paquita pas de trois, set during the gypsy scene in act two.
  • The Mariinsky Theater staging differs from other companies in where this variation sits in the ballet's structure.

The story context helps with character interpretation but is not essential for learning the steps.

1:00-3:04

Opening Steps: Entrance, Relevé Preparation, and Entrechassé

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Maria demonstrates the entrance from the wings stepping onto the right foot with the left leg extended behind and arms in one left and right position. She teaches the introduction counts one through four with a relevé preparation on count four featuring an accentuated wrist motion. On counts three and four, she emphasizes sharp relevé with wrist accents. She then shows the entrechassé with arms in third position, finishing on plié with the left leg forward and arms opening to an elongated arabesque-like position. She transitions into a tourbuchon with the left leg and character arm positions, then demonstrates the entrechassé and relevé sequence twice to the other side.

  • The relevé preparation on count four uses a sharp wrist accent to create the character-style attack.
  • The entrechassé finishes with an open arm position that is more elongated than a standard classical finish, with one arm higher.

This section establishes the foundational movement vocabulary for the entire variation.

3:04-5:29

Tombe Balancé, Chasse, and Character Arm Work

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After the entrechassé and relevé, Maria shows the tombe balancé followed by two options: a harder battu version or a simpler dégagé version. She then demonstrates a chasse-like movement across the floor without significant jumping, or alternatively a series of dégagés run in succession. She teaches the character-style arm work where one hand stays on the waist while the other opens outward, repeated with the legs in a chasse pattern. After completing this sequence, she instructs to repeat the first part of the variation again from the beginning.

  • The tombe balancé offers a battu or dégagé option, letting dancers choose difficulty based on their level.
  • The character arm work with one hand on the waist and the other opening is a recurring motif throughout the variation.

This section contains the variation's signature character styling and the decision point for difficulty options.

5:48-7:09

Turning Section and Second Pass Through the Opening

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Maria teaches the turning portion where the dancer repeats the opening jumps but turns around and runs into the corner, preparing for the next section. She marks the triceps accent on the left leg and right arm, then repeats the jumps a second time. On the second pass, she turns, places the right arm in third position, and prepares through fourth position with a small jump before transitioning into the next section of the variation.

  • The second pass through the opening includes a turn and a run into the corner, changing the spatial direction.
  • The right arm moves to third position on the second pass, creating a contrast with the first iteration.

The directional change and arm contrast on the second pass are essential for the variation's choreographic structure.

7:37-9:18

Glissade-Cabriole Sequence and Jete Entre Nous

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Maria introduces what she considers the hardest section of the variation: glissade into big cabriole with arms in third and first position, followed by tombé and double dégagé finishing in fourth position with hands in arabesque. She emphasizes that the right arm should be higher than normal to create a more prominent accent. The sequence repeats three times with cabriole, pirouette, and dégagé, then transitions to susu in fifth position with arms on the waist and a run. She then marks the jeté entre nous, noting that the next section will be the jeté entre nous portion. She also demonstrates the port de bras through third position on the music before the next part begins.

  • The glissade-cabriole sequence repeats three times with a pirouette and dégagé each time, then a susu and run between cycles.
  • The double dégagé finish in fourth position is non-standard, requiring an elongated line with the right arm elevated for emphasis.

This is the most technically demanding section and the core challenge of the variation.

9:47-13:02

Jete Entre Nous, Chainé, and Tombe Jete Sequence

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Maria teaches the jeté entre nous performed three times, followed by chainé turns. She demonstrates small arms for the jeté and big arms for the chainé, with the chainé done either in first position or on the waist. She then shows the tombe jeté repeated twice, followed by a roll away into an arabesque on the right leg with a character arm accent using the right wrist. She teaches a chasse to the left side and marks a potential fourth jeté, noting that some ballerinas skip the chainé and do four jetés instead, though space may be limited. The section ends with chainé, chainé, and relevé, followed by a run and preparation for the final diagonal.

  • Some ballerinas replace the chainé with a fourth jeté, but this depends on available stage space.
  • The roll away into arabesque uses a character-style wrist accent on the right arm, maintaining the folk-influenced styling.

This section bridges the cabriole sequence to the final diagonal and contains important spatial and staging decisions.

13:22-15:05

Final Diagonal: Pirouettes and Attitude Finish

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Maria teaches the final diagonal consisting of single pirouettes d'agage building to a double pirouette on the tenth count. After the double, the dancer relevés into an attitude position with specific arm placements. She notes that the arms can be played with creatively, either staying in first position or alternating between third and first. She shares her personal choice of doing four pirouettes with arms in first position, then alternating third-first-third-first. She emphasizes that the final pose is the relevé in attitude, where the dancer should stay as long as possible with a good body twist and hip pull-up.

  • The double pirouette should land on the tenth count of the music for the strongest musical and dramatic effect.
  • Arm placement for the pirouettes can alternate between first and third positions, or remain in first throughout, depending on the dancer's choice.

The final diagonal is the solo's climax and determines the quality of the ending.

15:30-16:49

Full Run-Through with Music

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Maria attempts the complete variation with music, initially thinking she landed the double pirouette on the ninth count. She then confirms that the tenth count is musically more correct, counting aloud to ten on the final double pirouette to verify the timing.

  • The tenth pirouette is musically and choreographically more correct than the ninth, creating a stronger finish.
  • Running the variation with music reveals timing issues that are not apparent when practicing without it.

The run-through confirms musical placement but a dancer can learn the timing from the action_items and key_ideas sections.

16:49-19:41

Outro and Reflection on Difficulty

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Maria closes by asking viewers to leave questions and share their opinions about the variation. She reflects that this is one of the most difficult variations, particularly because of the interaction with another dancer who performs before this solo and also includes cabrioles and jumps. She encourages viewers to subscribe for more videos and says goodbye.

The outro is a standard sign-off with no additional instructional content.

Key points

  • Variation context and story — The solo is performed by Paquita in the second act when gypsies dance before noble people, with the Mariinsky Theater staging placing it in a slightly different structural position than other companies.
  • Entrechassé built on relevé preparation — The opening movement uses a relevé preparation on count four with an accentuated wrist motion, followed by an entrechassé, establishing the sharp, precise quality that defines the variation's character.
  • Character-style arm work as a defining feature — Throughout the variation, one arm rests on the waist while the other opens in a character gesture, creating a stylized, folk-influenced quality distinct from classical ballet's standard positions.
  • Glissade-cabriole-tombé-degagé as the most demanding section — The middle section chains glissade into big cabriole, then tombé into pirouette and dégagé, repeated three times with a susu fifth position and run between each cycle, requiring speed and precision.
  • Final diagonal building to a double pirouette into attitude — The last section consists of single pirouettes d'agage building to a double on the tenth count, followed by a relevé into attitude with expressive arm options, serving as the solo's climactic finish.
“So, after we did these jumps back, we repeat the first part again.” — Maria Khoreva
“So cabriole, pirouette, degage. It's quite fast.” — Maria Khoreva

AI-generated from the transcript. May contain errors.

0:01

Hello friends! My name is Maria Khoriva and welcome back to my channel. Today together we are going to learn the steps of Paquita pas de trois first girl solo. So we are more familiar with this solo as a Paquita second act variation because the main character Paquita herself dances this solo in the pas de trois in the second act of ballet when the gypsies are dancing in front of noble people. So yeah that's the story about

0:29

Hello everyone, my name is Maria Khoreva, welcome to my channel. Today we will learn a variation from the Pachita from Pas de Trois. This will be the variation of the first girl from Pas de Trois, but I am more familiar with this variation as the variation of the Pachita from the second act.

0:46

because we have a slightly different ballet structure in the Mariinsky Theater. And in the second act, Pachito dances this variation when gypsies dance in front of noble people. So let's get down to the video itself.

1:00

Okay, so you're going to just go out of the wings just like you normally do. And then you step on the right foot and left leg is straight behind you. And arms go one left and right.

1:23

And for the few introduction notes, you do one and two and three and four and. So, on and after the four, you do relevé in preparation for the entrechassis. So, you stay, you wait,

1:50

Three, with accent, this preparation with an accent of your wrists. Four, and again, sharp releve with the accent.

2:02

And the arms in the third position. You finish on plie, you go left leg forward on plie, you open the arms, FSA position, position FSA, open your arms.

2:24

And then, railway, left leg goes into a tourbuchon.

2:32

And arms in this character position, left arm third position, right arm on the waist. So entre chaussées and relevé. So, and entre chaussées and relevé and then to the other side. And entre chaussées, and relevé. So, two times.

2:58

FSA you show on your foot.

3:04

and entrechausse and on one relevé and then tombe balancé. After the second jump tombe balancé. And here you have two options. You can do two options of the next movement. You can do harder one with battu. Difficult option with a bring. Or you can do just with dégagé. You can do it just with the foot's attention.

3:33

And a little step.

4:00

It's like a chasse, but just on the floor. Это как шоссе, но на полу. Не сильно подпрыгивая, not jumping a lot. Or again, you can do дегажей, дегажей, and дегажей, run, run, run. And you come, stand on the right leg again. И снова приходим и встаем на правую ногу. So let me show it to you like this. So you do the relevé.

4:31

Balancing and then run, run, run and stay and prepare. Okay, good. And the arms after this balance you open and then you open it's like a very character move here. So one arm on the waist and the other arm is opening.

5:00

One and two. One hand on the waist, the other one opens. So with the legs. One and two. Chasse. And then you open the arms like a very, again, character move. And then on the top of the back, open your arms. You go here again. So, one more time. Legs and arms. Once again, legs and arms. So, after you did this.

5:29

And like this. And then after we did these jumps back, we repeat the first part again.

5:48

So here and again on triceps left leg up and arm accent on triceps right and again these jumps but this time turn around and run into the corner and do a preparation. So the first time you do this

6:18

And then you're gonna run and do a preparation in the left upper corner. В левом верхнем углу сделаем препарасьон. Okay, let's try listening to it with the music. Послушаем музыку. Okay, you come without the music. Встали без музыки.

6:41

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

7:09

Kind of like this. So yeah, this is very lively variation. Again, the second time you did this, you turn, right arm goes to the third position. And then you do a preparation through the fourth position.

7:37

and with a small jump. The next part is quite hard for me, in my opinion. So here we open, we go glissade, cabriole with these arms, cabriole, with hands in the third and first position.

7:58

Cabriol, then tombé and double dégagé finish in the fourth position. Double dégagé. We finish in the fourth position. Hands in arabesque. So here it's not like your normal period finishing position, but it's a little bit more elongated and the right arm is a little bit higher. Here we will have the right hand a little higher to make a more significant accent, to make the accent more prominent.

8:24

So once again from here we go glissade big cabriole and then from here we go tombe, pirouette, degage finish in the fourth position. Okay, so cabriole, pirouette, degage. It's quite fast. You do third cabriole.

8:49

And susu in the fifth position, arms on the waist. So you don't do the pirouette de gage the third time. After cabriolet, straight away into the susu fifth position. Let me mark like this. Glissade, cabriolet.

9:18

And dégagé, fourth position. Three times like this basically. And then after the third time, sissou and you run. После третьего раза бежим. Step on the right foot forward and do a port de bras through the third position. Становимся на правую ногу. Порт де бра через третью позицию, на музыку перед следующей частью. The next part is going to be jati entre nous.

9:47

Следующая часть это же Таян Турнан. Okay, let's try hearing the music. Послушаем музыку в этой части. The second time, jumps, run, run, run, preparation. Cabral, period, accent.

10:15

Good, хорошо. Okay, so you hear this. This is the preparation for the third part. Это препарационная третья часть. That's when you're supposed to do the port de bras. Это когда нужно делать нам порт де бра. Okay, so for the next part, everything is simple.

10:46

for the steps but not very simple for the execution of these steps. Especially knowing that it's not the first part of the variation already. Okay, so we just do jeté entre nous three times. Jeté entre nous and chainé, chainé, chainé. So, here I did

11:18

Small arms, big arms, big arms and Chennai I did both in the first position or on the waist for the Chennai. Okay, so Tombe jeté, tombe jeté entre nous, tombe jeté entre nous.

11:37

Then you go roll away into an arabesque. Roll away on the right leg. With the character arm, right arm is doing the accent with the wrist. Here.

12:04

Chasse and on the left. Ok, so let me mark it for you. One, two, three, preparation. You can do the jeté fourth time. And some ballerinas in our future

12:32

do not do the Chenet and just do the Jeté four times but usually there is not a lot of space left so I think sometimes it's better to do Chenet. So, Chenet, Chenet, and Relevé

13:02

And run, run, run, run Preparation. Let's hear the music for that.

13:22

Like this

13:40

Хорошо. So after an arabesque you run, you prepare for the last diagonal. And it's very simple, just single pirouettes d'agagé. And the tenth pirouette is going to be double. And then we're going to releve into an attitude. Последняя диагональ довольно простая. Это просто одинарный пируэтт и д'агажэ. И на десятый пируэтт мы с вами делаем двойной. И вскакиваем в атитюд с такими руками. И заканчиваем эту вариацию. So you can play with the arms a little bit here.

14:08

Well, play. You can do them either always in the first position or you can change them third first, third first. Можно делать разные руки: первая, третья позиция или просто всегда в первую. Я делала четыре пируэта с руками в первую позицию, потом чередовала третья, первая, третья, первая. I did four pirouettes in the first position and then changed third first, third first. Okay, so let's hear it with the music first. Сначала послушаем с музыкой.

14:40

That's your Releve. One and now to the left and now you run, run, prepare and one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five. Double Releve. So the final pose, последняя поза этой вариации is Releve.

15:05

We try to stay here as long as possible. A good twist in the body and pull-ups on the hip. After the double pirouette, the tenth time, we do

15:30

How many minutes? I'll try to do everything with music now.

16:00

I think I did the 9th double pirouette. But you can either do 9th or the 10th. But I think musically it's more right to do the 10th pirouette. Okay, let's hear it one more time maybe.

16:27

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

16:49

Yes, the tenth time is more right in my opinion. Десятый раз, по-моему, более правильно, более верно. Хорошо музыкально получается. Okay, I think that's it. I hope you learned this solo. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, please. Or I would love to hear your opinion. And I would love to hear what you think about this variation because

17:14

Well, that's all for today. I hope we managed to learn this variation.

17:38

If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. And I would be very pleased to know your opinion. And in general, tell me what you think about this variation, because it seems to me that it is one of the most difficult, especially when there is a small piece of interaction with another girl, who needs to dance before this variation, also with cabrioles, also with some jumps.

18:01

So tell me what you think and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this. I love you very much, have a good day and see you in the next videos. Bye Bye!

18:16

♪♪

18:49

¶¶

19:04

Thank you.

19:41

Thank you.

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