Lázaro Gacio Revuelta

Dancer and teacher.

For more than 30 years he was ballet master of the Vienna Opera. In Cuba he was a dancer and partner of Alicia Alonso, Josefina Méndez, Aurora Bosch and other dazzling dancers. In Europe, but also in Australia and the United States, he has been a teacher to great personalities of classical dance. The government of Austria, the country where he became naturalized, has awarded him the highest decorations.

He was born in Santiago de las Vegas on a day of San Lázaro, which is why his official name is Lázaro Gacio. At that time, Miriam Gómez Acevedo, with whom he had a youthful romance, told him that she had always dreamed that her boyfriend would be called "Carlos". And without thinking twice he told her: "Well, from now on that Carlos is me".

He studied at the Academia Gacio, in Santiago de las Vegas where he completed his primary and secondary studies. To make a living as a young man he worked as a tobacco factory reader.

As he has always been persevering, he found out from a dancer that on 5th street and Baños, in El Vedado, there was an academy directed by Raúl Díaz. He showed up there and Raúl received him in person, who announced to him that the cost of the courses was 12 to 15 pesos a month, money that he did not have. He told him the truth and Raúl accepted him because he had a good figure and potential, making clear that he would pay him little by little as his possibilities allowed.

He then began to take classes with Carlota Pereira and Luis Trápaga. Almost in parallel he enrolled in the National Dramatic Art Academy where he studied for three years with students such as Roberto Fandiño (future filmmaker who died a few years ago in Madrid), Ramonín Valenzuela, Manolo Yánez (who still lives in Paris), actor Julio Martínez Aparicio and many others. He remembers that he would walk then from El Vedado to El Cerro, which was where he was staying at that time. Of course, since he didn't want his father to find out about his studies, he had changed his name and appeared as Gregory Casale, a name with which he is mentioned in the first ballet program in which he participated years later. Until one day Fernando Alonso called him and asked him: "Come here, finally what is your name?" And then he became Carlos Gacio until this day.

It was upon seeing Alicia Alonso dance with Igor Youskevitch, she in the role of Odette and he in the role of Prince Siegfried when his life changed, and that had left him dazzled. The elegance, the gestures of refined romanticism, the general aesthetics, everything contributed to his fascination. Having seen something so beautiful and having to catch the bus on route 76 to get to my house in Santiago de las Vegas, where we lived then, was the most contrasting thing in the world. It was then that, at 18 years old, I dared to tell my father that I wanted to study ballet. And very seriously he looked at me, frowned and said: "Well, very good, if that is what you want to study, you take your suitcases and you get out of here".

He also worked as a dancer and teacher at Dulce Anaya School of Ballet, in Jacksonville, Florida.

The Prize A Life for Dance (created in 1998) in the XXI edition of the Miami International Ballet Festival (IBFM) went to Cuban Carlos Gacio, based in Europe since 1967