Cuba Honors Alicia Alonso on Ibero-American Dance Day

Cuba celebrates today the 105th anniversary of the birth of its most globally recognized artist: Alicia Alonso, in whose honor the Ibero-American Dance Day was established on this date.

The commemoration highlights the legacy and influence of the prima ballerina assoluta, and in her memory, the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) will perform the classic Don Quixote this Sunday, featuring principal dancers Anette Delgado and Dani Hernández in the leading roles.

Alicia dedicated her life to dance—first to training as a respectable dancer, then to developing her own style, and later to perpetuating ballet within Cuban culture as an integral and now inseparable part of it.

Together with her brothers Fernando and Alonso—an extraordinary pedagogue and choreographer, respectively—she founded Cuba’s first professional ballet company 77 years ago, when that art form was scarcely understood in Latin societies.

Despite social, political, and health challenges she faced, this woman’s determination and courage drove her to persist in elevating her rank as a dancer.

Alonso supported the social revolution that began in Cuba in 1959 and rose above bourgeois prejudices and ideologies to bring her art to the people, to factories, fields, forests, valleys, and any street.

In the dance world, she gained fame for her prodigious turns and unique way of mastering technique, becoming the subject of legends.

Some still speak of "la quinta Alonso" to refer to a specific foot position, while longtime ballet lovers particularly cherish the times they saw her transform into Giselle and Carmen.

Until her death on October 17, 2019, the artist remained active as a teacher, choreographer, and director of the BNC and the International Ballet Festival of Havana, which attracts the world’s most renowned dancers.

Few realized her love for animals, especially a great passion for dogs, or her extraordinary sense of humor, which led her to play pranks on some of her onstage partners.

In her youth, she painted, and from childhood, she loved the color blue and world literature.

She also always rejected the idea that humans inhabit this universe alone and counted among her longings the wish to sit on Havana’s Malecón to enjoy the breeze and a spectacle of waves, as fame prevented her from going unnoticed.

Since 2015, the Gran Teatro de La Habana has added the name of the distinguished artist to its title.

The applause and ovations with which the Cuban public greeted Alonso upon her arrival at that venue, or at any theater in the country, also build a legend difficult to match.