# Loipa Araujo Honored on Her 80th Birthday

**Date:** 05/28/2021

At over 80 years of fruitful existence, Loipa Araújo, a historic figure in our scenic dance, arrives, considered one of the jewels of the National Ballet of Cuba.



In London, the city where since 2014 she has served as Artistic Director of the English National Ballet, Loipa Araújo, a historic figure in our scenic dance, arrives at over 80 years of fruitful existence, considered one of the jewels of the National Ballet of Cuba.



Born in Havana on May 27, 1941, she began her dance studies at the Ballet School of the Pro-Arte Musical Society, under the guidance of León Fokine and Alberto Alonso, until in 1955, in search of new horizons, she entered the Alicia Alonso Ballet Academy.



From then on, her life would be completely linked to the vicissitudes and victories of the Cuban ballet movement, which despite official apathy, misunderstandings and aggression from successive governments, would become one of the most beautiful achievements of national culture.



It was the logical consequence of a strong and early vocation, which would find its true channel in the historic endeavor of the Alonsos to ensure that in Cuba ballet would not only be a true art, but also the right of an entire people.



With the encouragement provided by the triumphant Revolution in 1959, her work as a dancer –as Prima Ballerina since 1967–, rehearsal director and trainer of new generations, has achieved the highest goals. Her most notable career is linked to the great triumphs of Cuban ballet in the decades from the 60s to the 90s, in performances with the National Ballet of Cuba in more than fifty countries in America, Europe, Asia, Australia and as a guest artist of prestigious foreign dance groups and festivals, among them: Ballets de Marseille, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Ballet of Denmark, Ballet of Fine Arts of Mexico, Edinburgh Festival, World Ballet Festival of Japan and the Bejart Ballet of Lausanne.



She has been an artist who has not confined her art to rigid molds or ivory towers, because she has always considered it a means of communication with her contemporaries, an instrument to enrich the spiritual life of all human beings and not a dogma or privilege of the initiated. Faithful to that creed, she has known how to reconcile respect for traditions with bold pursuit of an answer –formal or in content– to the demands of her time. Many times, throughout her long artistic career, we have seen her devoted to the endeavor of making our ballet audience ever broader and more knowledgeable. The workshop, the factory, a classroom, a freshly opened furrow of earth or rustic stages in the most remote corners of our Island have been stages where she has been seen carrying out such a noble task.



For her valuable artistic performance she has earned important awards in competitive events, among them the Gold Medal in the International Ballet Competition of Varna –which made her in 1965 the first Latin American dancer to win such a high distinction–, the Silver Medal in the International Ballet Competition of Moscow (1969) and the Golden Star Award at the International Dance Festival of Paris (1970). In her Country she has been honored with the Distinction for National Culture, the Alejo Carpentier Medal, the Félix Varela Order, the Annual Award from the Gran Teatro de La Habana, the Fernando Ortiz Medal, the National Dance Prize, the Title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Art and the category of Emeritus Member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), among many others.



After her retirement from the stage as a performer, starting in 1997, her international pedagogical work has achieved the highest recognition in institutions of such high caliber as the Paris Opera, the Royal Ballet of Denmark, the Royal Ballet of London, the Scala of Milan, the San Carlo Theater of Naples, the Rome Opera, the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow and the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires. In 2010 the French Republic decorated her with the National Order of the Legion of Honor, in the Rank of Knight.



In this special celebration of Loipa it is fitting to remember the words of English critic Arnold Haskell, who defined her as "an exotic orchid in the garden of ballet," because autochthony and cosmopolitanism have characterized her work as a malleable interpreter first and solid maître later. But while it is true that this international projection has kept her away from her Alma Mater –the National Ballet of Cuba– more than desired, to the joy of her compatriots, she, with a high degree of sentiment, loyalty and intelligence, has known how to demonstrate throughout all these years of distance and diaspora her conviction that the "garden" to which she belongs, definitively, is none other than that of Cuban ballet.