Through the Eyes of a Dancer: Selected Writings

Enchanted by Cuba

246 | Enchanted by Cuba Feature, Dance Magazine, March 2007 Havana is a city where, when you tell a taxi driver to take you to the theater to see a ballet, he (or she) asks, “Who is dancing tonight?” Tickets for the biannual International Ballet Festival of Havana are sold out weeks in advance . The audience, a mix of all economic classes, bursts into applause when their favorites appear. There’s yelling and clapping even before the dancers enter the stage—just the first notes of familiar recorded music can drive the crowd into a frenzy. In this country where buildings are made of ancient stone and the cars hark back to the American fifties, ballet is king. Or rather queen. When Alicia Alonso, the former Ballet Theatre superstar who founded the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, arrives to take her seat in the house, she is greeted with applause befitting a people’s heroine. There’s even a popular ice cream called Coppelia, so named in her honor. During the twentieth edition of the festival last fall, stars from around the world—except, of course, the United States—came to share in this feast of dancing. Carlos Acosta, Julio Bocca, Carla Fracci, Jose Manuel Carreño, and the latest young partners from the Bolshoi, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, added luster to the festival, which spread out over several venues. the comPAny Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the world-famous company that produces the festival, occupies a building of light-filled studios in the lively Vedado district . The doors and windows of the rehearsal rooms are wide open in this tropical climate. Sunlight streams through the stained-glass transoms, projecting aqua and red patches on the floor. In the second-floor studio, dancers can step outside onto a narrow terrace and take in even more sun. American Ballet Theatre’s Jose Manuel Carreño, who comes from a ballet family here, takes class from ballet mistress Carmen Hechavarria, a former classmate. Fresh from class, he told this visitor, “I love the energy here. I always recharge my batteries when I come.” What is that energy? How does the Cuban training produce so many exciting dancers? There’s Acosta, Carreño, Lorena and Lorna Feijoo, and younger ones like Rolando Sarabia, now at Houston Ballet, and many more in other companies. The short answer, I would say, is the combination of a culture that loves to dance and the ironclad discipline of Alicia Alonso. From 2004 to 2007 | 247 Clean lines and fast footwork lie at the heart of Alonso’s approach, says Hechavarria, who has written a book on the technique. For example in passé, the toe must point to the knee and never cross it. But she also teaches dancers to interact onstage in a way that makes the characters as real as everyday life. What is the secret of the super-long balances of the women (most spectacularly of reigning star Viengsay Valdés) and the endless pirouettes of the men? “Alicia taught us to concentrate with our eyes closed,” Hechavarria said through a translator. (Alonso started losing her eyesight at a young age.) She also pointed out, with charming candor, that the body type of the Cuban women necessitates lots of pulling up. Undoubtedly, this training accounts for the exquisite effect of BnC in Fokine’s Les Sylphides during the festival.With feather-light arms, the corps de ballet breathed as one. They were constantly, subtly, in motion—a rapturous vision of femininity in a forest. The company also gave a strong performance of Don Quixote in an outdoor plaza with an eighteenth-century cathedral as backdrop. Although the choreography did not take advantage of the potential humor of the ballet, Anette Delgado’s saucy Kitri and Romel Frometa’s Basilio showed stunning virtuosity. The biggest surprise was the last three seconds: Frometa tossed Delgado high in the air, where she did a lightning-fast split before falling into the final fish dive. A dramatic situation unfolded when Viengsay Valdés danced Diana and Jose Manuel Carreño taking class at the studios of Ballet Nacional de Cuba, in Havana, 2006: “I always recharge my batteries when I come.” (© Nan Melville for Dance Magazine) 248 | Through the Eyes of a Dancer Acteon with Carlos Acosta even though she was sick with allergies. She managed the turns and lifts in the first half, but only marked the coda...