TODAY is Alicia-Giselle's day

November 2, 2020

How can you dance Giselle, if Giselle is you?, asked the renowned English critic Arnold Haskell, upon seeing that willi-dancer who crossed the stage without touching it with her soft slippers…

One day in June of 1967 he wrote to her: "It was something so full in body and spirit, an ecstasy of happiness, suffering and perfect love, that it cannot be described in words. I could not applaud. I wept during both acts for the drama that became our suffering: and also because I believed, notwithstanding science, that you were gliding beyond the ground, and emerging floating from the arms of your partner...".

That dancer of Haskell's dreams, on November 2nd of the year 1943, changed her name without realizing it, upon substituting for Alicia Márkova during a season of the Ballet Theater of New York.
On the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, first she was an innocent and tender peasant girl, then, a spirit that vanished before emotion. Upon awakening from that performance, another dawned. She was no longer Alicia Alonso. She was Giselle...
From then on, she elevated the character over the long path traveled by the work, summarizing entire generations of artists, since la Grisi premiered it in 1841, and bringing new dimensions to it.

Today, in the Centennial year of the prima ballerina assoluta, let us remember, then, that November the second, is the day of Giselle, although 77 years separate her from that memorable date.
For this reason, the famous dancer, always celebrated from then on two birthdays, that of Giselle, in November and that of Alicia, in December.

That indisputable success of the Ballet Theater's autumn season was also the just reward for a talent, a vocation and a courage determined not to be defeated by the cruelest adversity.

Alicia, together with Fernando and Alberto Alonso founded, five years after that debut, in 1948, the Ballet Alicia Alonso, which became, after the revolutionary triumph, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Today, it traverses the world showcasing the paths of the Cuban School of Ballet. Many generations have passed through its ranks bearing the mark of its "progenitor", as a symbol that the seed sown germinated.

Many characters Alicia Alonso embodied on stage, but Giselle proves to be her greatest symbol. And when Giselle dances with Alicia… What to say of the sea when it goes mad and makes the shore moan. Or the forest in its dramatic union with the storm. What to say of that supreme instant of happiness when one believes to see the air itself. What to say before the challenge of the artist with the stage, when she manages to demolish, without barely a trace, the walls of the theater, to rise with life. What to say of all this and, yet, how much feeling demands words. The divine Alicia in her Giselle. The best reality that seems to us a dream. In her is Giselle, so discussed and still so inspiring of our Alicia Alonso.

Two unforgettable acts deliver to us as perhaps their creators of the nineteenth century dreamed it. Gautier, Adams, Coralli, Perrot. She revived the character with new blood through her unparalleled version. Her conception of the fragile peasant girl and then of the ethereal willi is exceptional and the most prestigious specialists from around the world have confirmed it in recent times.

Talented dancers have given their all to the interpretation of the unforgettable role of this love story, for almost 180 years. Many have danced Giselle, but only with Alicia does Giselle dance.

Monuments are constructed of varied materials, this one that Alicia sculpts in Giselle is eternal, it comes from feeling itself. For this reason, now, in this, her Centennial year, let us draw close memories, recollections, emotions to, through art, illuminate the light that dances….