Alicia Alonso

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Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martinez Hoya (born December 21, 1921), simply known as Alicia Alonso, is a Cuban prima ballerina assoluta and choreographer. She is considered a legend and is most famous for her portrayals of Giselle and Carmen.[1]

Alicia Alonso
Alicia Alonso

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[edit] Biography

Alonso, the youngesty of five children, was born in Havana, Cuba where she started dancing at the age of nine. She started her ballet studies at Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical in Havana with Sophia Fedorova and danced in Cuba under the name of Alicia Martinez. After marrying her dance partner Fernando Alonso when she was fifteen, she changed her last name to Alonso. When Alicia arrived in New York City she studied with Anatole Vilzak and Ludmilla Shollar at the School of American Ballet, and later with Vera Volkova in London.

Since she was nineteen, Alicia was afflicted with an eye defect and was partially blind. Her partners always had to be in the exact place she expected them to be, and she used lights in different parts of the stage to guide her.

While in New York, Alicia danced in the musicals Great Lady (choreographed by George Balanchine) in 1938 and Stars in Your Eyes in 1939. She was a soloist with American Ballet Caravan in 1939 and 1940.

Alonso was one of the founding members of the American Ballet Theatre (at that time called Ballet Theatre) in 1940, and in 1943 she became one of their leading ballerinas.[2] While with American Ballet Theatre, Alonso created leading roles in Antony Tudor's Undertow (1943), and George Balanchine's Theme and Variations (1947). Because of Nora Kaye's illness, Alonso danced the premier of Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend in 1948. While in American Ballet Theatre she worked with Mikhail Fokine, George Balanchine, Léonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins and Agnes de Mille, among other relevant choreographers of our century. Her partnership with Igor Youskevitch was one of the great teams and together with him she joined Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in 1955.

Between 1955 and 1959, Alicia danced every year with the Ballets Russes 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 (St. Petersburg) 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.[3]

She has staged her versions of Giselle, Grand Pas de Quatre, and Sleeping Beauty for the Paris Opera. She also staged Giselle at the Vienna Opera and the San Carlo Theater of Naples, Italy; La Fille Mal Gardee at the Prague Opera, and Sleeping Beauty at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

Along with her husband, she founded the Alicia Alonso Ballet Company in 1948, now the Cuban National Ballet which she still directs. Some of her former and more famous students are now dancing at the American Ballet Theatre, the Boston Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Washington Ballet, the Cincinnati Ballet and the Royal Ballet, among others. She has created her own works including La Tinaja, Ensayos Sinfonicos, and Lidia. She appeared in a feature-length documentary made in Cuba about her and her work Alicia (1977).

In June 2002 she was designated UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for her outstanding contribution to the development, preservation and popularisation of classical dance and for her devotion to the art-form, through which she has promoted the ideals of UNESCO and the fellowship of the world’s peoples and cultures.

She continues to direct her Ballet Nacional de Cuba, even though she is in her eighties and almost blind. She also has a daughter, Laura Alonso.--65.245.81.9 19:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC) [4]

[edit] Awards (selected)

  • the Dance Magazine Annual Award in 1958
  • Order of Work of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1964
  • Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris in 1966
  • Anna Pavlova Award of the University of Dance, Paris, 1966
  • Gold Medal of the Gran Teatro by Premio Gran Teatro de La Habana in 1985.
  • UNESCO Pablo Picasso Medal for her outstanding contribution to dance in 1999.

[edit] See also

Portal:Cuba
 Cuba Portal

[edit] External links

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