Josefina María Méndez Suárez

Considered one of the great figures of American ballet in the twentieth century and a prominent figure in Cuban ballet.

She was born in La Habana, in a middle-class home. She began her ballet studies in 1948 at the Sociedad Pro Arte Musical, as a student of Alberto Alonso Rayneri and continued them at the Academia Alicia Alonso with Fernando Alonso, León Fokin and José Parés, her principal teachers.

Upon joining the Academia de Ballet Alicia Alonso in 1955, Fernando Alonso selected her to dance the Neapolitan dance from Swan Lake, with the Ballet de Cuba, on March 27, 1955, in which she performed as a boy, due to the scarcity of male dancers in the company in those years, a result of the prejudices that existed at the time.

At the academy and the company, she underwent her true preparation for a life dedicated to ballet, despite having completed studies as a Professor of Physical Education. During the recess of the Ballet de Cuba, in 1956, she joined the Taller Experimental de Danza and traveled to the United States in 1957, 1958 and 1959 with Alicia Alonso, who presented her versions of Coppelia and Giselle in Los Angeles, at the Greek Theatre in that North American city.

Josefina Méndez also danced with the Ballet Celeste de San Francisco, in 1958. When the Ballet Nacional de Cuba was reconstituted in 1959, she placed third in the auditions and joined performances in Cuba and international tours throughout South America, Eastern European countries and Mexico.

In 1960 she was promoted to the rank of soloist of the company and two years later to prima ballerina, the highest category in Cuban ballet. She performed the role of Willy Zylma in the filming of Giselle, by the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) and made her debut in Coppelia in 1963.

Her repertoire as a dancer encompasses the important works Giselle, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, La fille mal gardée, Grand Pas de Quatre (her interpretation of the role of Mme. Taglioni earned her great successes and excellent reviews); the twentieth-century classics, The Dying Swan and Les Sylphides, by Mikhail Fokin; Apollo, by George Balanchine; Lilac Garden, by Anthony Tudor; In the Night, by Jerome Robbins; and works by important Cuban choreographers: El güije, Conjugación, Destiny in Carmen, by Alberto Alonso Rayneri; La noche de Penélope (created especially for her), by Iván Tenorio; and Flora and Dionaea, by Gustavo Herrera. In 1964 she participated in the I International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, where she won the bronze medal competing with the most important ballerinas of international ballet. Her performance within Cuba's delegation evidenced the emergence of a new school in ballet: the Cuban school.

During the II Competition in the Bulgarian seaside resort, in 1965, she won the silver medal; and in 1970, the Gold Star for best ballerina of the VIII International Dance Festival of the Champs Elysées in Paris, for her interpretation of Mme. Taglioni.

She performed with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba throughout the world and as a guest artist at the Ballet Arabesque in Bulgaria, in 1969; at the Opera and Ballet theatres of Odessa and Alma Atá in the former Soviet Union, in 1971; at the Compañía Nacional de Danza de México, in 1976.

She also performed at the international galas in Chicago, in 1977; in Santander, Spain and in Verona, Italy, in 1980, and at the Enescu Festival, in Romania, in 1981. But without a doubt, her performances in Giselle in 1972 and 1973, and in Grand Pas de Quatre, in 1973, with the ballet of the Opéra National de Paris, were milestones in her career that made her the second ballerina of the continent to perform at that iconic French theater, after Alicia Alonso.

Her collaborations with the main French company revealed another important facet of Méndez's career; that of maître de ballet.

During her long career spanning more than forty years she received important national and foreign recognitions: the National Prize for Dance; the Orden Félix Varela and the Prize of the Gran Teatro de La Habana; Medal of Merit from the Brazilian Council of Dance; the Golden Sagittarius, in Italy and the Cross of the Legion of Honor of France. Retired from the stage in 1996, she continued her work as maître of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba to continue contributing her knowledge about the styles, with the objective of preserving the company's choreographic heritage.

She died on January 26, 2007, in La Habana.