Cuban dancer Rafael Quenedit will debut with the Cincinnati Ballet

June 21, 2021

The Cincinnati Ballet announced that Cuban Rafael Quenedit Castro has been hired by the company as a principal dancer.

The Cuban, a graduate of Cuba's National Ballet School in 2014 and with experience in the National Ballet of Cuba, will make his debut in Bold Moves Plus at the Aronoff Center for the Arts, from June 16-20.

The dancer has worked with internationally renowned choreographers such as Alicia Alonso, Alexei Ratmansky, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Giuliano Peparini, and Alberto Mendez.

The dance company highlights that Quenedit Castro has been recognized with a Bronze Medal in the International Ballet Competition in Havana, Cuba; Gold Medal in the international ballet competition in Cape Town, South Africa; Gold Medal in the XX International Ballet Competition in Havana, Cuba and was the winner of the Amici World Dance competition in Italy in 2019.

Quenedit comes from a talented family of Cuban dancers: his brother Carlos is principal dancer of Miami Ballet and his uncles Ernesto and Alejandro also had careers as dancers in various companies around the world.

In 2014, it became known that Rafael Quenedit participated in an intensive summer course at the Cuban Ballet School of Sarasota where students from Cuba's National Ballet School were present.

The exchange program concluded with a gala in which the Cubans, then dance prodigies, showed their talent to the American public.