  The convolution of indicators of two conjugacy classes on the symmetric group
S_q is usually a complicated linear combination of indicators of many conjugacy
classes. Similarly, a product of the moments of the Jucys--Murphy element
involves many conjugacy classes with complicated coefficients. In this article
we consider a combinatorial setup which allows us to manipulate such products
easily: to each conjugacy class we associate a two-dimensional surface and the
asymptotic properties of the conjugacy class depend only on the genus of the
resulting surface. This construction closely resembles the genus expansion from
the random matrix theory. As the main application we study irreducible
representations of symmetric groups S_q for large q. We find the asymptotic
behavior of characters when the corresponding Young diagram rescaled by a
factor q^{-1/2} converge to a prescribed shape. The character formula (known as
the Kerov polynomial) can be viewed as a power series, the terms of which
correspond to two-dimensional surfaces with prescribed genus and we compute
explicitly the first two terms, thus we prove a conjecture of Biane.

Combinatorics;Representation Theory