Mirta Esteny Plá Cabal

Dancer, professor, and ballet maître. One of the four historic dancers of Cuban ballet known as "the four jewels."

Of humble origins, she began piano studies at the Municipal Conservatory of La Habana, given her family's musical tradition; but upon seeing a ballet class at the Conservatory itself, she understood that would be her final destiny. Thus she began in 1950 her training in this specialty.

She attended a call from the Alicia Alonso Ballet Academy to study through a scholarship system for children of low economic resources, and began in 1951 her definitive ballet training, under the direction of Fernando Alonso and the image and mastery of Alicia Alonso.

She received classes from prestigious international teachers Alexandra Fedórova, León Fokin, and Charles Dickson. At the same time, she shared training with the professional company, which allowed her to exchange with the dancers and receive "lessons" in discipline and the dynamics of life in the theater.

Her professional debut took place in 1953, as an Academy student, in the snowflake scene of The Nutcracker, in the version by English Mary Skeaping, with the Ballet Alicia Alonso (today Ballet Nacional de Cuba). In that same year she participated in the world premiere of Estampas cubanas, with choreography by Ramiro Guerra Sánchez.

In 1954 she made her first international tour through Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, as a member of the Ballet Alicia Alonso. During the recess of the Ballet de Cuba, in 1956, she participated in the Experimental Dance Workshop, and the following year she completed her studies at the Alicia Alonso Academy, in whose branch in the Kholy neighborhood she also began her career as a ballet teacher.

In 1957 she was brought by Alicia Alonso, along with other Cuban dancers, to the Greek Theatre in Los Ángeles, in the United States, for the staging of the ballet Coppelia, which was repeated the following year with the presentation of Giselle. On that occasion she also danced with the Ballet Celeste in San Francisco.

When auditions were being held for the restructuring of what is now Ballet Nacional de Cuba in 1959, Mirta Plá obtained first place and was admitted as a soloist. Immediately she performed with the company on an extensive tour through Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Perú, and Ecuador.

On the international level, the visits of Ballet Nacional de Cuba abroad included her presence: Mexico, in 1960 and the countries of Eastern Europe, between 1960 and 1961 and in 1964. She performed the leading role in La fille mal gardée, and the queen of the willis in Giselle, brought to the screen in the film version by the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). In 1963 she was promoted to prima ballerina, the highest category in Cuban ballet.

From then on she assumed starring roles in Giselle, Coppelia, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty of the Forest, in which she gave a memorable performance of Princess Aurora; in twentieth-century works Les Sylphides and Prince Igor, by Mikhail Fokine; Apollo and Theme and Variations, by George Balanchine; In the Night, by Jerome Robbins; and in works by Cuban choreographers: Carmen, Space and Movement, and El güije, by Alberto Alonso Rayneri; Plasmasis and Afternoon in the Siesta, by Alberto Méndez González; Hamlet and La valse, by Iván Tenorio; Cecilia Valdés and Flora, by Gustavo Herrera.

In 1964 she participated in the I International Ballet Competition of Varna, Bulgaria, where she obtained the silver medal, competing with recognized figures of international ballet. With her interpretation, world critics noticed the existence of a new school in the centennial art of ballet: the Cuban school. She obtained the same recognition in 1966, during the III Competition in the Bulgarian spa town; in 1970 she earned the Gold Star for best dancer at the VIII International Dance Festival of the Champs-Élysées, in Paris, and a special mention from the jury for her interpretation of Mlle. Cerito in the Grand Pas de Quatre, another historic role of Mirta Plá in Cuban ballet.

She was a guest dancer in companies from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Mexico, and with Ballet Nacional de Cuba she toured all five continents and received the best reviews from critics and audiences.

Alongside her extraordinary career as a dancer, she developed brilliant work as a teacher that she had begun in 1957; from 1962 at the National Ballet School and later in Mexico, Perú, Italy, Belgium, and Spain, where she spent the last twelve years of her life and where she carried out intense pedagogical work.

She obtained high distinctions in Cuba: the National Dance Prize, the Félix Varela Order, and the Prize of the Gran Teatro de La Habana; and abroad she was awarded the Medal of Merit from the Brazilian Dance Council. Her smile and gentle serenity characterized both her dancing and her personality.

In April 2003 she received, in the company of her inseparable companions Loipa Araújo, Aurora Bosch, and Josefina Méndez, a grand tribute on the occasion of being awarded the National Dance Prize 2003.

Mirta Plá said: "I want them to remember Mirta Plá as a person who has loved ballet very much and who is proud to be Cuban and to have made known, in her Homeland and in many other places, a beautiful art. She is a calm and happy woman because, when she stopped dancing, thanks to the training her teachers gave her, she was able to continue being useful to dance and to the culture of her country."

She passed away in Barcelona on September 21, 2003.