Havana Ballet Festival, a celebration to join all the arts

To celebrate the 28th International Ballet Festival of Havana “Alicia Alonso”, to be held October 28 to November 10 in Havana, not only dance will be the protagonist, but there will be collateral activities where other artistic manifestations will prevail.

Lillitsy Hernandez, deputy minister of culture, explained that several institutions will join this biennial celebration, among them the National Ballet School, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, visual arts entities, the National Council of Performing Arts and the Cuban Book Institute.

The program includes two photographic exhibitions, one of them dedicated to the first figures of the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) in the piece “Swan Lake”, and the other to the choreographic works created with the collaboration of the British Friends of the BNC.

There will also be posters about ballet and the film “Giselle” (1964), directed by Enrique Pineda Barnet and starring the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso and the masters Azari Plisetsky, from Russia, Aurora Bosch, one of the four jewels of Cuban ballet, and Fernando Alonso, founder of the company that today stands as Cultural Heritage of the Nation, will be shown at the Chaplin Cinema.

Literature will also be part of the Festival, through the presentation of the books “Alicia Alonso, la Diva. Maria Callas in memoriam“, by Pedro Simon, and the texts 'Alicia, the ballet and me” and “Ballet Nacional de Cuba: seven decades of choreographic creation”, both by Miguel Cabrera, BNC historian.

During the 28th edition, dancers of the level of Azari Plisetsky himself, Russian Daniil Simkin, Argentine Julio Bocca, Spaniard Lucía Lacarra, Mexican Elisa Carrillo and Brazilian Marcelo Gomes will be in Havana.

Heriberto Cabezas, coordinator of the Festival, stressed that it will be a diverse event that will bring together Cuban companies such as the National Ballet with others of great relevance in the panorama of the performing arts of the Caribbean nation, among them Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, the National Folkloric Ensemble, Mi Compañia, the Camagüey Ballet, Malpaso and Otrolado.

They will be joined by guests from Austria's Vienna State Ballet, Australia's Queensland Ballet, Germany's Bavarian State Ballet and Russia's Bolshoi Ballet.