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.

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)