Alicia Alonso, glory and school: Biographical notes of a being of light

February 19, 2022

"…the intimate reason for her feat always remains in our hands, like the dust of an elusive butterfly that defends at all costs the height of its flight".

Juan Marinello

Alicia Alonso and Cuba are one and the same word. The Prima Ballerina Assoluta is a metaphor for light, as Mirtha Aguirre defined her; the greatest and most transcendent artist of this island. And although much has already been written about her, it is never enough. This Friday, in the Sala Villena of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, the book Alicia Alonso. Glory and School, by Pedro Simón Martínez, was presented.

According to the also director of the National Dance Museum, the name of the book is a play on words based on a quote by Juan Marinello about the dancer:

"Alicia Alonso has made glory, but also school".

The Ediciones Cubanas copy offers a biographical synthesis with a selection of evaluative texts and images of special eloquence, which facilitate an approach to Alicia Alonso's artistic and human personality.

At the book presentation, intellectual and poet Miguel Barnet asserted that Alicia Alonso is in the spirit of all Cubans, especially those who love art. He highlighted her contributions to Cuban culture.

Likewise, he spoke of her life, which was not always a bed of roses, and how in her final years "she danced from darkness and that very darkness turned her into a prodigious light".

Barnet emphasized that this first biographical attempt will pave the way for someone in the immediate future to write a complete biography of Alicia Alonso, which is ultimately a biography of Cuba.

"No dancer was more complete than she; a great militant in that vanguard. That places her in a position that enhances art. There is no artist more patriotic, revolutionary, and Cuban than Alicia Alonso", he stressed.

For his part, Pedro Simón recounted how when taking on this book he encountered the main problem faced by all who write about Alicia Alonso: ordering her entire career chronologically.

"She was a great performer, but at the same time a choreographer, teacher, and she drove the movement of the Cuban school of ballet. When you try to recreate that in a text it is difficult, because she did things in parallel in several places".

On the other hand, he noted that almost all the photos have a double reading, beyond their aesthetic contribution. "That the book be enjoyed and after reading it, that people know more about her, is my greatest aspiration", he concluded.