Kokorin, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, spoke about the hype around his playing

The excitement around the ballet "The Nutcracker" has led to the emergence of a new star on the Internet - a video of a performance by Ivan Kokorin, a 30-year-old percussionist and soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, is garnering hundreds of thousands of views on social networks. In an interview with Izvestia, Kokorin spoke about the excitement around his playing.

"It's great that there is such interest in the Bolshoi Theater, in art, in creativity and especially in my creativity. I'm generally happy that all this can now be shown to people, that they are now enjoying and energized by it all. For many years my colleagues looked at me from the parterre, but there was no excitement, and now it's like this. I think it's God's decision - that's it, now you are ready to give something wonderful to people, show them, don't be shy," he commented on the situation.

The percussionist added that there are actually a lot of musicians who are shy to put themselves out there, trying to achieve perfect playing first. He called this process self-digging, which is inherent in colleagues in the field.

"And now there's a boom, especially drummers and a lot of people are posting the part from The Nutcracker, all my chips and tricks do. It's great and cool that people got some creativity and stopped being afraid," the musician added.

The full text of the interview with Ivan Kokorin will be published on January 8 at 00:00 (Moscow time) on the Izvestia website.