# Joaquín Banegas 

**Date of birth:** August 16, 1935

**Date of death:** June 20, 2023

**Categories:** Arts, Dance, Ballet, choreographer, professor, dancer, Society

Joaquín Banegas in 1951, travels to La Habana, where he begins his dance studies at the Municipal Conservatory of La Habana, under the direction of Alberto Alonso and continued them in 1952, at the Ballet School of the Pro-arte Musical Society of La Habana, under the direction of George Milenoff.

In 1953, he obtained a scholarship to study at the Alicia Alonso Ballet Academy, and there, under the guidance of Alicia and Fernando Alonso, José Parés, Cuca Martínez and other foreign teachers, such as the Russians Alexandra Fedorova, León Fokine and Ana Ivanova; and the English Mary Skeaping and Phyllis Bedells, he solidly established his unshakeable vocation.

That same year, he became part of the then Ballet Alicia Alonso, today Ballet Nacional de Cuba participates in the National Protest Tour against the aggression of the Batista tyranny against Alicia and the Ballet of Cuba.

The following year he joins the Experimental Dance Workshop. After the company's activities were interrupted in 1956, he joined the Experimental Dance Theater and, subsequently, went to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, together with his teacher José Parés, and other Cuban dancers to found the José Parés Dance Theater.

There he meets the Puerto Rican dancer and teacher Sylvia Marichal, another of the essential figures of Cuban ballet. Whom he united sentimentally in 1958. From that relationship two children were born.

After the Ballet Nacional de Cuba was reorganized in 1959, the performance of Master Banegas was fundamental: he became part of its cast as a Soloist, and in 1962, he was promoted to the artistic category of First Dancer.

As a dancer, Banegas participated in the premiere of several titles at the BNC, among them, Estampas cubanas, by Cuca Martínez based on an idea by Ramiro Guerra; Sóngoro cosongo, by Cuca Martínez; El despertar, by Enrique Martínez, which he performed alongside Alicia Alonso; Romeo y Julieta, and El Güije, by Alberto Alonso, and the complete versions Cascanueces and El lago de los cisnes in the version by the English Mary Skeaping, based on the original choreographies by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov.

Among his performances with the BNC, the following also stand out: Hilarión, in Giselle and the sorcerer Von Rotbarth, in El lago de los cisnes (roles he danced on September 17 and 25, 1959, respectively, in the first stagings of those ballets after the company was reorganized in 1959); Prince Siegfried in the second act of El lago de los cisnes; Desiré, in Las bodas de Aurora; the pas de deux from Don Quijote and Cascanueces, as well as the main male roles in Un concierto en blanco y negro; Las sílfides, and Capricho español, among other ballets.

In 1968, Banegas was Regisseur of the company, a responsibility he assumed at various stages.

In the sixties, he left the stage to dedicate himself entirely to teaching, an area in which he has developed very important work. He was one of the professors who founded the Provincial Ballet School of La Habana and the National Ballet School. His admirable teaching work extended to other dance groups in Cuba such as the National Ensemble of Modern Dance (today Contemporary Dance of Cuba), the Cuban Television Ballet and the Experimental Dance Ensemble of La Habana, which was directed by Alberto Alonso.

Joaquín Banegas was a teacher to many of the main figures of Cuban ballet. Among his most brilliant students are: Amparo Brito, Jorge Esquivel, Ofelia González, María Elena Llorente, Caridad Martínez, Alberto Méndez, Pablo Moré, Francisco Salgado, Orlando Salgado, Gabriel Sánchez, Rosario Suárez, Iván Tenorio, Andrés Williams and José Zamorano, among others.

In 1969, without disassociating himself from the BNC, he was appointed general director and one of the principal maîtres of the Ballet de Camagüey. His work as director of the agramontina company—which extended until early 1975—was decisive for the consolidation of that dance ensemble.

As a guest Maître, he provided his services at The Tchaikovsky Tokyo Ballet Company, the National Dance Company of Mexico (of which he was also Artistic Director), the Ballet of the National Theater of Prague, the Slovak National Ballet, the Ballet of Cali, Colombia; the Ballet Academy of Coyoacán, the Neoclassical Ballet of Latin America and in other dance centers in Mexico in Guadalajara, Mérida, Veracruz, Córdoba, Jalapa and Tuxpan; as well as the Alicia Alonso Dance Chair at the Complutense University of Madrid, today the Alicia Alonso Institute of Dance. In some of these institutions he also had the responsibility of staging some of the choreographic versions by Alicia Alonso, of the great classics of the nineteenth century, among them, for example, Giselle and La fille mal gardée in former Czechoslovakia.

Occasionally, Joaquín Banegas ventured into choreography. His ballets Divertimento (in collaboration with Loipa Araújo), conceived especially for the Gala for the 50th anniversary of Alicia Alonso's stage debut, on December 29, 1981; and Estudio, with music by Norwegian composer and violinist Johan Svendsen, premiered in 1984, during the 9th International Ballet Festival of La Habana, are due to this work.

Distinctions
On October 28, 2017, within the framework of the celebrations for the 69th anniversary of the founding of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the Ministry of Culture granted, in a solemn ceremony held at the Palacio de Convenciones, the Distinction for National Culture.