Viengsay Valdés Will Be a Jury Member of the Benois de la Danse Award in Moscow

June 22, 2023

As it has done every year since 1991, the competition created by the International Association of Dance in Moscow invites outstanding exponents of the art of ballet to diversify the selection criteria for the award winners.

"It is a great honor and a privilege to have been selected as part of the jury of the Benois de la Danse Award, for its international recognition and because it is presented in Russia, where the tradition and art of ballet has developed for centuries and they have, so to speak, the roots of classical ballet, academic ballet and all the other arts that are involved in ballet very close at hand," the Cuban dancer detailed to Prensa Latina.

Valdés highlighted that the invitation to be part of the roster of evaluators of the competition, recognized as the Oscar of dance, is a very special moment in her professional career.

Feeling that Cuba is also represented through me confirms the importance of our ballet school being part of events of such prestige at the global level, cataloged as the greatest award for a dancer in his or her artistic career, she emphasized.

When asked about the possibility that her presence in the Russian capital opens for continuing to expand cultural ties between the ballet academies of Havana and Moscow, Valdés assured that there is much to be done and this is a key moment to fraternize and consolidate the bonds.

"I believe that now we need to strengthen those cultural relationships more, using scenarios such as our International Ballet Festivals of Havana, but also in other frameworks for exchange, whether of teachers, projects in which we can reciprocate experiences between the two schools, without losing our identity and our way of being and methodology," she emphasized.

In this regard, the leading Caribbean dancer also bet on the possibility of sharing the stage in international galas both on Caribbean soil and in the Eurasian giant.

"These are some of my proposals for the Prima Ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, Svetlana Zakharova, artistic director of the Prix Benois de la Danse, as well as to the leadership of the Bolshoi company, so that we can carry out all these future projects," she concluded.

The general director of the BNC argued that participation in Benois 2023 is also a gift to her company in the year of the 75th anniversary of its founding.

"This year the National Ballet of Cuba is celebrating 75 years. Its anniversary from that first performance as a professional company in 1948, extends to the present day with a prestigious historical trajectory from its founders Alicia, Fernando and Alberto Alonso," she noted.

Valdés commented that as a culmination of the celebrations they are preparing a season of presentations for the month of October with special guests, former BNC dancers who have triumphed in international companies, "but they continue to belong and commemorate the National Ballet and still feel themselves a valuable part of Cuba."

At another point in the conversation, the Caribbean dancer highlighted the ties of Cuban Prima Ballerina Assoluta Alicia Alonso with the Prix Benois de la Danse, as she was the one who inaugurated the award category "For a Lifetime of Work" in the year 2000.

Likewise, she recalled that at the beginning of 2023 it marked 65 years since Alicia's first presentation at the Bolshoi Theater, as well as the influence of Russian teachers in the formation of the mother of Cuban ballet, who later brought these lessons together with Fernando Alonso to what is today the expressivity and musicality of the Caribbean dancer.

Valdés also recalled her ties and presentations with outstanding dancers from the Eurasian nation, such as the master of Russian dance, and also laureate of the Benois de la Danse, Leonid Sarafanov, with whom on March 17, 2009, she danced the complete work Don Quixote at the IX International Ballet Festival of Saint Petersburg, at the Mariinsky Theater.

On September 25, 2016, she performed as a guest at the International Festival of Classical Ballet of the Kremlin, in Moscow, where she performed the leading role of Kitri and the first dancer of the BNC Dani Hernández performed the role of Basilio in the Russian version of Don Quixote, created in that same country in the nineteenth century by the great choreographer Marius Petipa.