Alicia Alonso receives insignia from Colegio de Arquitectos de Valencia

June 2, 2019

The prima ballerina assoluta cubana, Alicia Alonso, received last Friday the insignia of the Official College of Architects of the Valencian Community, Spain.

According to a letter from the dean of the center, Luis Sendra Mengual, the emblem is conferred in recognition of her professional and personal trajectory, and in defense of the Fine Arts.

As stated in the text, such merits are supported, among other distinctions, by the declaration of the prestigious National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) as Cultural Heritage of Cuba and international intangible cultural heritage.

The professor, chair holder and president of the Commission of Sciences of the Valencian Council of Culture, José María Lozano, presented the insignia to Alonso at the home of the Cuban ballerina herself, in this capital, the city where she was born 98 years ago.

It's hard for me to speak, I prefer to dance more, declared the director of the BNC before thanking repeatedly for the distinction and the gift of the first 15 copies of a new edition of the book titled Alicia Alonso, Beyond Technique, by María del Carmen Hechavarría.

With this new edition, the Polytechnic University of Valencia commemorates the 20 years since the awarding of the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to this living legend of dance, and to differentiate the work it enriched it with the aim of presenting a bilingual volume (Spanish-English) and with some bibliographic updates.

The director of the Dance Museum, Pedro Simón, explained that the title of the book states a creed of the ballerina since Alonso has always defended that technique is worth nothing if it is not converted into art, into a resource to build a character, a style, express sensitivity.

The work contains a rigorous investigative process by Hechavarría, former ballerina and maître of the BNC, on Alonso's technique, analyzed with a historical-methodological sense and demonstrates that the artist's technique was far ahead of the era in which she shone on the greatest stages of the world.

Alonso is still the general director of the BNC, a company founded in 1948 by her and her brothers Alberto and Fernando Alonso.

At the moment, the ensemble is on tour in Spain, under the guidance of prima ballerina Viengsay Valdés, who in January of this year was appointed artistic subdirector to support the work of one of her great teachers and the maximum figure of dance in Cuba.