Alicia Alonso

Early life

Alonso was born in Havana in 1921 and began dancing there as a child. In June 1931 she began studying ballet at Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical in Havana with Nikolai Yavorsky.^[5][6] She was youngest of two sisters, the other named Blanca María Martínez del Hoyo, born in 1918 (nicknamed "Cuca") and two brothers (Elizardo and Antonio).^[7]

She performed publicly for the first time on 29 December 1931, aged 10.^[8] Her first serious debut was in Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty at the Teatro Auditorium on 26 October 1932.^[9] She originally danced in Cuba under the name of Alicia Martínez.

Rapid progress in her lessons came to an abrupt halt in 1937, when the teenager fell in love with a fellow ballet student, Fernando Alonso, whom she married at age 16. After her marriage, she changed her surname to Alonso. The new couple moved to New York City, hoping to begin their professional careers.

There they found a home with relatives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near Riverside Drive. She gave birth to a daughter, Laura, in 1938, but continued her training at the School of American Ballet. In 1938, she made her debut in the U.S., performing in the musical comedies Great Lady and Stars In Your Eyes.^[10]

She arranged to travel to London to study with Vera Volkova. Meanwhile, her husband had joined the newly formed Mordkin Ballet Company in New York.

Vision problems

After seeing the doctor for worsening vision problems, Alonso was diagnosed in 1941 with a detached retina. She had surgery to correct the problem. This surgery consisted of completely removing the eyeball, injecting it with an antibiotic and putting it back in^[4]

She was ordered to lie motionless in bed for 3 months so her eyes could completely heal. Unable to comply completely, Alonso practiced with her feet alone, pointing and stretching to, as she put it, "keep my feet alive". When the bandages came off, she was dismayed to find that the operation had not been completely successful. The doctors performed a second surgery, but its failure caused them to conclude that the dancer would never have peripheral vision. Finally, she consented to a third procedure in Havana, but this time was ordered to lie completely motionless in bed for an entire year. She was not permitted to play with Laura, chew food too hard, laugh or cry, or move her head. Her husband sat with her every day, using their fingers to teach her the great dancing roles of classical ballet. She recalled of that period, "I danced in my mind. Blinded, motionless, flat on my back, I taught myself to dance Giselle."^[4]

Finally, she was allowed to leave her bed, although dancing was still out of the question. Instead, she walked with her dogs and, against doctor's orders, went to the ballet studio down the street every day to begin practicing again. Then, just as her hope was returning, Alonso was injured when a hurricane shattered a door in her home, spraying glass splinters onto her head and face. Amazingly, her eyes were not injured. When her doctor saw this, he cleared Alonso to begin dancing, figuring if she could survive an explosion of glass, dancing could do no harm.

Back to work

Alonso traveled back to New York City in 1943 to begin rebuilding her skills.^[11] However, before she had barely settled, out of the blue she was asked to dance Giselle to replace the Ballet Theatre's injured prima ballerina Alicia Markova. Alonso accepted and gave such a performance that the critics immediately declared her a star.

She was promoted to principal dancer of the company in 1946 and danced the role of Giselle until 1948, also performing in Swan Lake, Antony Tudor's Undertow (1943), Balanchine's Theme and Variations (1947),^[11] and in such world premieres as deMille's dramatic ballet Fall River Legend (1948), in which she starred as the Accused. By this time in her career, she had developed a reputation as an intensely dramatic dancer, as well as an ultra-pure technician and a supremely skilled interpreter of classical and romantic repertories.

The Ballet Theatre's Igor Youskevitch and her other partners quickly became expert at helping Alonso conceal her handicap. To compensate for only partial sight in one eye and no peripheral vision, the ballerina trained her partners to be exactly where she needed them without exception. She also had the set designers install strong spotlights in different colors to serve as guides for her movements.

She knew, for instance, that if she stepped into the glow of the spotlights near the front of the stage, she was getting too close to the orchestra pit. There was also a thin wire stretched across the edge of the stage at waist height as another marker for her, but in general she danced within the encircling arms of her partners and was led by them from point to point. Audiences were reportedly never the wiser as they watched her dance.

A new endeavor in Havana

Alonso's desire to develop ballet in Cuba led her to return to Havana in 1948 to found her own company, the Alicia Alonso Ballet Company, which she maintained with little financial support, this company eventually became Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Fernando was general director of the company, which was at that time composed mainly of Ballet Theater dancers temporarily out of work due to a reorganization in the New York company. Fernando's brother Alberto, a choreographer, served as artistic director for the company^[12] The company debuted briefly in the capital and then departed for a tour of South America. While Alicia was happy with the success of the company, she wanted to showcase more Cuban dancers than non-Cuban dancers. Therefore, she opened a ballet academy in Havana.^[12]

The performances were a hit with audiences everywhere, but Alonso found herself funding the company with her savings to keep it going despite donations from wealthy families and a modest subsidy from the Cuban Ministry of Education. Meanwhile, she commuted between Havana and New York to recruit the world's best teachers to train her new students. She remained a sought-after prima ballerina during this hectic time, dancing twice in Russia in 1952 and then producing and starring in Giselle for the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1953.

From 1955-59, she danced annually with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo as guest star. She was the first dancer of the Western Hemisphere to perform in the Soviet Union, and the first American representative to dance with the Bolshoi and Kirov Theaters of Moscow and Leningrad respectively in 1957 and 1958. During the decades to follow Alicia Alonso had cross-world tours through West and East European countries, Asia, North and South America, and she danced as guest star with the Opera de Paris, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Bolshoi and with other companies.^[10]

She staged versions of Giselle, Pas de Quatre, and Sleeping Beauty for the Paris Opera. She staged Giselle at the Vienna State Opera and the San Carlo Theater of Naples, Italy, as well as La Fille Mal Gardée at the Prague State Opera, and Sleeping Beauty at La Scala.

Political change in Cuba

Alonso worked with the Ballet Russe until 1959, during which time she performed in a 10-week tour of the Soviet Union, dancing in Giselle, the Leningrad Opera Ballet's Path of Thunder, and other pieces. Her performances earned her the coveted Dance Magazine Award in 1958.

Return to Cuba

Cuba in the 1950s was the center of modern Latin American entertainment and art. When Fidel Castro took power from the Batista government on 1 January 1959, Castro vowed to increase funding to the nation's languishing cultural programs. Encouraged by this sudden change and eager to see her homeland from which she was never exiled, Alonso returned to Cuba and in March 1959 received $200,000 in funding to form a new dance school, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, along with a guarantee of annual financial support.

Alonso has since described receiving a message from Castro in 1958 sent from the Sierra Maestra inviting her to head the company upon the triumph of the July 26 Movement.^[13] Alonso officially founded the school in 1960, and within several years her dancers were winning international dance competitions.

Disappearance from American artistic scene

Due to Alonso's affiliation with the new regime in Havana, audiences in the USA largely turned their backs on her. The Cuban government from the 1960s through the 1980s did not allow Cubans to perform in the United States, to some extent for fear of defectors, and monitored those with contacts outside Cuba via phone cables and letters. Her company continued to build its powers and achievements in both Eastern and Western Europe. In 1967 and 1971 she performed in Canada, where reviewers noted that Alonso was still the greatest ballerina of her time.

When the Vietnam War ended and Richard Nixon left the presidency, Fidel Castro permitted Alonso to perform again in the United States in 1975 and 1976. An American reviewer said of the dancer, then 54 years old and a grandmother, "she creates more sexual promise than ballerinas half her age."

Legacy

Alonso danced solos in Europe and elsewhere well into her 70s. She continued to serve as the director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba until the early 21st-century. As director and leading dancer of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, she taught many now notable dancers in Cuba and beyond. Some of her former students have danced or dance with the American Ballet Theatre, the Boston Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Washington Ballet, the Cincinnati Ballet and the Royal Ballet, among others.

Numerous books have been written on the ballerina, including Alicia Alonso: At Home and Abroad (1970), Alicia Alonso: The Story of a Ballerina (1979), Alicia Alonso: A Passionate Life of Dance (1984) and Alicia Alonso: First Lady of the Ballet (1993). The 2015 documentary film Horizontes features her life, as well as that of a middle-aged and a young dancer in Cuba.

Recognitions (selected)

• Honorary doctorate in art from the University of Havana, 1973
• Received an international homage in Paris, organized by UNESCO, 1980
• Council of State of the Republic of Cuba gave her the Order Felix Varela, 1981
• Honorary doctorate in dancing art from the Superior Institute of Arts of Cuba, 1987
• Received the Commendation of Isabel Catholic Order, given by the King of Spain Juan Carlos I, 1993
• Public recognition was given in her honor at the Scientific, Artistic, and Literary Ateneo of Madrid for her valuable artistic and cultural creations, 1996
• The Ballet Nacional de Cuba honored Alicia Alonso on the 50th anniversary of Theme & Variations, a ballet created by George Balanchine for her and Igor Youskevitch, 1997
• Honorary degree from the Universidad Politecnica of Valencia, 1998
• Art & Letters Order, Commander Degree, from the Ministry of Culture and Communication of France, 1998
• Prix Benois de la Danse for lifetime achievement, 2000
• Order of José Marti by the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba, 2000
• Received the highest official awards from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Panama: the Order Aguila Azteca, the Order Duarte, Sanchez, and Mella, and the Order Vasco Nunez de Balboa, respectively
• Named National Hero of Labor in Cuba
• Holds membership in the Advisory Council to the Ministry of Culture in the National Committee of Writers and Artists Union of Cuba
• Holds membership in the Collaborating Council of the Governing Boards of the Federation of Cuban Women
• Honorary Citizen of Mérida (México) and Messenger of Peace, 2011
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Costa Rica, 2017

Notes

Sources

• Magazine Cuba in the Ballet (1970); ISSN 0864-1307
• Cuba Magazine in the Ballet ISSN 0864-1307. Cultural Publication specialized in the world of the Cuban ballet - includes critical, chronicle, and comments..., as well as a news section.
• National Ballet of Cuba: half a century of glory - collection of fifty years of the company. Written by Miguel Cabrera (Punta Bava, Havana, 1941), BNC historian, it summarizes the most outstanding aspects in five decades where generations of dancers, choreographers and specialized personnel have given the best. The book provides good information of the NBC, including tours, ballets throughout its history (published by Ediciones Cuba in the Ballet).
• University for All (Tabloid). History and Appreciation of the Ballet - a cultural publication with texts that support the telelectures delivered by specialists of the National Ballet of Cuba and other guest personalities.
• DIALOGUES WITH THE DANCE by Alicia Alonso - fourth edition of this title, in which the reader will be able to find memories of the initial moments of her career, brief impressions on some works of her repertoire, testimonies about famous personalities with whom she had worked, as well as points of view concerning the dancer's profession and the art of the dance in general (published by Política).^[1]