Cuba’s 75 year old ballet company ‘never for the elite’

The National Ballet of Cuba is celebrating its 75th anniversary with performances culminating in a tribute to its late founder Alicia Alonso, who used her global star power to implant an art form with aristocratic roots into the Communist-run Caribbean island.

“Giselle,” the Romantic ballet whose title role Alonso is best known for and performed through her 70s, will cap a special gala on October 28, at the National Theatre of Cuba.

Company members rehearsed without air conditioning in the sultry Caribbean heat in aging facilities where the visually impaired Alonso directed dancers with the help of trusted artists until her death in 2019 at age 98.

“Ballet was never (for the) elite in Cuba,” said Leonardo Vinageras, a Havana resident and ballet aficionado who attended a recent anniversary event.

Alonso forged the world’s largest ballet school with a unique bravura style and technique rivaling that of the French, who created ballet in the court of King Louis XIV, and the Russians, whose top-tier Bolshoi and Mariinsky ballet companies were formed in the 1700s.

Now directed by prima ballerina Viengsay Valdes, the National Ballet of Cuba and its associated school have produced an outsized share of dance stars, including Carlos Acosta and Jose Manuel Carreno, for a small island nation of 11 million inhabitants.

Alonso founded her namesake National Ballet Academy in Cuba in 1948 soon after becoming a star in the New York company that would become the American Ballet Theatre. Inspired by Fidel Castro, Alonso identified herself with his 1959 revolution and moved permanently to Cuba, becoming allies in popularising ballet with strong government support for the renamed National Ballet of Cuba.

After decades of growth, “I feel that we are on a different path and hope that 100 years can be something more wonderful than now,” said Grettel Morejon, the last principal dancer promoted by Alonso, after a rehearsal for the gala.