Fernando Alonso: The Father of Cuban Ballet

Tania Vergara

Part III. Recuerdos (Recollections) 140 repetiteur doesn’t curate the style, form, or story, what can he tell the dancer? Only elements of the choreography, but that’s all. When I’m in charge, when I’m artistic director, I begin to explain details that perhaps they’ve never heard. That’s because I have plenty of knowledge about the character, story, style, but not everyone can do that. That’s the difference between a master and a teacher. Fernando did everything in a colossal manner. We have lost this, and mainly for men, because more guidance has always existed for the women. If you could turn back the clock and bring Fernando Alonso back into playing a central role again in the company today, what role would that be? Lázaro: Artistic director. Yoel: Artistic director. Tan]a Vergara Tania Bolivia Vergara Pérez is artistic director of Endedans, a contemporary ballet company in Camagüey, Cuba. She is also professor of character dance at the Instituto Superior de Artes and the Academia de Artes “Vicentina de la Torre,” Camagüey, and a member of the National Artists Union of Cuba. She was awarded the 2008 Ibero-American Choreography Prize. I was able to interview Tania Vergara by e-mail on November 6, 2008, after having met her at the Twenty-First International Festival of Ballet in October and November 2008, where Endedans was performing. Please speak about your experience with Fernando Alonso in Camagüey. Right from the beginning, Fernando Alonso’s image has been a substantial part of my career within ballet, his name having been invoked by professors, teachers, dancers, historians, aficionados, all the way to the people who follow the comings and goings of dance in Cuba. He becomes someone distant, unreachable, yet at the same time close at hand and tangible: end-of-year exams, demonstration classes, or some important rehearsal were formal 141 occasions on which to notice the maestro in attendance. Sometimes very serious, sometimes not so much, as he would walk down the hallways, and perhaps ask you a question. Most astonishing from my girlhood memories was to notice how he never forgot a face, even after having overseen hundreds of students in his pedagogic work. Once I found myself in Havana with a friend in a Cuballet summer course. When we saw Fernando there surrounded by people, we just sat timidly in our seats thinking he wasn’t going to recognize us. To our surprise, he turned to us and said “Hey, Camag üeyanas, aren’t you going to say ‘Hello’?” After finishing my studies and beginning my tenure as a teacher at the Vocational School of Art Luis Casas Romero, our encounters assumed another tone. I was no longer alongside someone who executes and is corrected , but rather with ballet students seeking support to perfect their technique . Now, I could stand alongside all the teachers, listening to everything they had to say related to one step, each correction of a mistake, each reflection upon a movement. Their interventions were sacred to us. I even remember the teacher Beatríz Martínez, who wrote down the most trivial words, such as “open the window more” or “I need a little water.” Merit wasn’t won by simply having an important name, nor founding a Cuban school of ballet, nor even directing the Ballet de Camagüey, the country’s “second company”; he won respect and veneration thanks to the precision of his analysis, his faithfulness in keeping up with the development of different groups of students, his infusion of vitality into the very center of the school of ballet, his scientific knowledge, and even more, because nothing relevant within the teaching system was separate from him. There were no promotions, methodology meetings, demonstrations, performances, or festivals that he did not attend; he was there with his athletic gait and sharp eyes. He was so demanding that he even participated in the young children’s physical entry exam, and would point out the orthopedic problems, or curvatures of the spine that others failed to note. How would you describe his teaching method? His teaching method is ruled by a firm scientific conviction in the wisdom of centripetal force inside a turn, the angle necessary to turn out, the laws of equilibrium, in which muscles intervene in every step, a sense of the “y” in jumps, turns, and other movements. He knew the importance of the standing leg, the various head placements...