Cuba Honors Alicia Alonso on Her 101st Anniversary

December 21, 2021

For the second year, Iberoamerican Dance Day celebrates the imperishable legacy of Cuba's master, choreographer, and prima ballerina assoluta, Alicia Alonso, who would be celebrating her 101st birthday today.

To commemorate the influence of Cuba's most internationally recognized artist, the National Ballet of Cuba is preparing several tributes to its exceptional founder in collaboration with other institutions such as the National Dance Museum, the Casa de la Obra Pía, and the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Standing out is the photographic exhibition by Argentine photographer Óscar Pipkin, resident in Spain, comprised of snapshots that recreate the performance of two 20th-century dance legends: Alicia Alonso and Rudolf Nureyev, a major cultural event that took place in Palma de Mallorca in 1990.

The exhibition, which will open tomorrow at the Casa de la Obra Pía Museum in Old Havana, documents the first and only time that both dancers combined their talent in this performance to execute the piece Poem of Love and the Sea, by Alberto Méndez with music by Frenchman Ernest Chausson.

Another relevant initiative will be a discussion about the book "The Choreographic Art of Alicia Alonso" by Dr. Pedro Simón Martínez, recently published by Cumbres editions of Madrid, which on this occasion includes interventions by Cuban critics Pedro de la Hoz and Yuris Nórido.

The presentation, held at the theater of the National Museum of Fine Arts, will include the distribution of copies to various specialists and personalities who contributed to the work as well as donations to important libraries throughout the country, beginning on December 29th.

The author not only compiled 800 pages with notable illustrations and specialized assessments regarding Alonso's choreographic work, but also highlighted her solid training as a respectable dancer, which led her to develop her own style and later, to perpetuate ballet within Cuban culture.

Together with her brothers Fernando and Alberto Alonso, she founded—in the 1940s—the first professional ballet company in Cuba, when that art was barely understood in Latin American societies and in a country where social contradictions and prejudices around this dance form persisted.

Alonso supported the social revolution that began in 1959, and overcame obstacles to achieve fame through her prodigious performances and her particular way of mastering technique, which made her a legend until the moment of her death on October 17, 2019.