National Ballet
of Cuba: original spirit on its 65th anniversary
Mireya Castañeda
IN the history of ballet, for any
company or school in the world, 65 years are
virtually nothing. The great Russian, French and
Italian schools, for example, have 200-250 years of
tradition behind them.

Alicia and Igor Youskevitch
in The Nutcracker Suite
(Choreography: Lev Ivanov)

Standing: (left to right) Aurora Bosch,
Mirta Pla (1940-2003), Ramona de Saa,
Josefina Méndez
(1941-2007).
Seated (left to right) Loipa Araujo,
Alicia Alonso, Fernando Alonso.

Tarde en la siesta,
a classic
by Alberto Méndez
Photos: COURTESY
BNC |
The exceptional thing about the
National Ballet of Cuba (NBC), in all its splendor,
is its anniversary this 2013 of merely 65 years of
creation, corroborating a prophetic assessment in
El Mundo daily in 1948, by theater and film
critic José M. Valdés Rodríguez (1896-1971), "The
Alicia Alonso Ballet will come to be a first rate
dance company. The marvelous presence of Alicia
Alonso, at the height of her ability… ensures the
growing artistic quality of the Company…"
Naturally, the creation of a
national company in Cuba did not come about by
chance. Ballet’s arrival in Cuba dates back to the
end of the 18th century and the first reference to a
performance was the 1800 premiere of the pantomime
ballet Los leñadores, published by the
Papel Periódico de La Habana.
Havana’s Tacón Theater was
inaugurated in 1838. The famous Austrian ballerina
Fanny Elssler performed there (in La Cachucha,
for example), as did the French Opera and Ballet
Company (Act III of Robert le Diable, among
other pieces).
A long intromission followed, due to
the Wars of Independence initiated in 1868 and which
continued through 1898, until a landmark in the
Cuban ballet scene created by the arrival in 1915 of
the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (she returned in
1917, 1918 and 1919). In the Payret Theater, Pavlova
regaled Havana with ballets such as Giselle,
Death of a Swan, and Chopiniana.
In 1931, the year of the death of
prima ballerina assoluta Pavlova in London,
the Havana Pro-Arte Musical Society Ballet School
was established which, for various reasons, united
the colossal triad of prima ballerina assoluta
Alicia Alonso and the brothers Fernando and Alberto
Alonso, founders in 1948 of the company, initially
the Alicia Alonso Ballet and subsequently, in 1955,
the Ballet of Cuba and, from 1959, the National
Ballet of Cuba.
The opening function included
Afternoon of a Faun, choreography by Vaslav
Nijinsky and the Pas de Quatre (later the
Grand Pas de Quatre), choreographed by Marius
Petipa-Lev Ivanov.
It was the flame which, within a few
decades, made the company one of the finest in the
world, and set the basis for the now eminent Cuban
school of ballet, which also has its seed in the
Alicia Alonso Academy, founded in 1950 to train,
with urgency, Cuban dancers. Alicia herself confided,
"We were convinced that that was the moment to begin
to make our school… That is how I began to elaborate
the methodology with Fernando. I tried to bring to
teaching my ideals of dancing, all the previous
experience I had."
This valuable teaching work produced
figures such as Mirta Plá, Aurora Bosch, Loipa
Araujo and Josefina Méndez (later known as the four
jewels), Ramona de Saá, Laura Alonso, Menia
Martínez, Joaquín Banegas and Adolfo Roval,
essential names in the history of Cuban ballet.
From its founding through 1956, the
company worked intensively, touring and performing
throughout Cuba and in various Latin American
countries, but in that year the dictator Batista
withdrew the paltry state funds it received.
Protests came from diverse sectors, in particular
the Federation of University Students (FEU) which,
on September 15, demanded a redress in the
University of Havana stadium.
The Ballet of Cuba recessed its
activities and Alicia traveled to the United States,
taking with her a group of young and promising
figures in order to continue their training.
As the star of world ballet, Alonso
was invited to dance with many companies, including
the Russian Ballet of Montecarlo, the Los Angeles
Greek Theater, the Washington Ballet, the American
Ballet Theatre itself and, in the Soviet Union, the
Riga State Opera and Ballet Theater, the Leningrad
Kirov, the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater, and the
Moscow Bolshoi, where she danced Giselle, her
legendary ballet.
In 1959, she returned to Cuba and
reorganized the company. A year later, she returned
to the United States for the ABT 20th anniversary
season. She danced Giselle with Igor
Youskevitch and Royes Fernandez.
These performances began a long
period distanced from a company and public highly
significant in her professional life, because, at
that point, the U.S. State Department refused her an
entry visa, through 1975, when she was given entry
to participate in the Gala for the ABT’s 35th
anniversary.
For the gala, Alicia decided to
appear on stage accompanied by first dancer Jorge
Esquivel, and perform the adagio from Act II of
Swan Lake. Clive Barnes wrote in The New York
Times, "She was, once again, and in her own
right, the queen of the night."
From 1961, the company also suffered
from the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba, but it grew
in its artistic range and toured the then socialist
countries of Eastern Europe.
Precisely in Bulgaria, in 1964,
dancers from the Cuban company took part for the
first time in the Varna International Ballet
Competition, in which first Mirta Plá and Josefina
Méndez, and then Aurora Bosch and Loipa Araujo, won
medals and gave world resonance to the Cuban school
of ballet.
The company and school burst onto
world ballet stages in what the critic Arnold
Haskell enthusiastically called "the Cuban miracle."
It was Haskell who referred to Mirta Plá, Josefina
Méndez, Aurora Bosch and Loipa Araujo as "the four
jewels."
The vertiginous success is known
history. The first dancers totally trained in the
country’s arts schools created by the Revolution
graduated in 1986. Current stars of world ballet who
possess their powerful stylistic imprint include
José Manuel Carreño and Carlos Acosta.
Another BNC triumph is the Havana
International Ballet Festival, initiated in 1960,
which has become a major event at the world level.
The first celebration for the BNC’s
65th anniversary is the opening in the Museum of
Dance of an exhibition on the company’s
choreographic creativity, multiplicity of themes and
styles and, as a unique wealth, its versions of the
great traditional repertoires, both romantic and
classical.
The list of choreographers included
in the company’s repertoire is extremely extensive.
Foreigners include Paul Abrahamson, Guillermo
Arriaga, George Balanchine, Maurice Bejart, August
Bournonville, John Cranko, Jean Corelli, Jean
Dauberval, Michel Descombey, Anton Dolin, Leon Bakst
and Mikhail Fokine, William Forsythe, Antonio Gades,
Serge Lifar, Brian Macdonald, Leonide Massine, Asaf
Messerer, Vaclav Nijinsky, Roland Petit, Marius
Petipa, Hilda Riveros, Anthony Tudor, Agripina
Vaganova, Azari Plisetski and Galina Ulanova.
The works of Cuban choreographers
have been much in demand by Alicia Alonso, dating
right back to 1948, for which reason they occupy a
noteworthy place in the BNC’s repertoire. Some names:
Alberto Alonso, Pedro Consuegra, Ramiro Guerra,
Gustavo Herrera, Cuca Martínez, Enrique Martínez,
Menia Martínez, Alberto Méndez and Ivan Tenorio.
Alicia Alonso herself has an
extensive history as a choreographer and many
versions of the so-called classics, in which style,
period spirit and essential conventions are
respected, but new aspects have been assimilated to
bring them close to a contemporary public, thanks to
her work in this context.
it is on account of this that the
performance of works such as Giselle, Swan Lake,
Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Coppelia, the
Nutcracker Suite, La fille mal gardée, Don Quijote
or the Grand Pas de Quatre during BNC seasons
in Havana or its international tours are so
successful.
Three points of international
criticism:
"The BNC… given its energy and skill
in combining classical works with contemporary ones,
today occupies one of the highest places among
European and American ballet companies." (Yuri
Zdanov, Pravda,1964)
"There is something so purely
enchanting in the National Ballet of Cuba… that one
barely knows what name to give it. Would you
estimate simply enchanting adequate? Observing these
Cubans, one is simply overwhelmed by the quality of
the dancing. How can such a small country have
produced so many excellent dancers? The Cuban Ballet
and Alonso are sensational." (Clive Barnes, The
New York Post, 1978)
"…the Cuban company is the
confirmation of an ideal, of a sentiment of dance
which ignores the limits of any social order… the
Cuban dancers are intrepid, take the stage by storm,
and execute fouettes, triple or multiple
pirouettes as if they were nothing…" (Clement Crisp,
The Financial Times, 2005)
Can a mathematical expression be
utilized in the artistic context? If the National
Ballet were a hypothesis, then all the foregoing
would bring us to a LQQD: the Cuban company is
celebrating its 65th anniversary with all of its
original spirit.