Fernando Alonso: The Father of Cuban Ballet

Lorena Feijóo and Lupe Calzad]lla

Part III. Recuerdos (Recollections) 162 unit, to get the best out of people without intimidation, because he put out the maximum effort himself. He was a role model. He was integrated into the revolution, in the militia, standing guard duty all night, teaching class in his uniform, a pistol in his holster. He would take the holster off and he didn’t miss a beat. I owe a lot to him; he was a role model for me. I worked for a year daily with Antony Tudor, William Dollar, first-rate people. None of them rise to the level of Fernando’s balance. Lorena Fe]jóo and Lupe Calzad]lla Born in Havana, Lorena Feijóo trained at the National School of the Arts. She began her career at Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Prior to joining San Francisco Ballet as a principal dancer in 1999, she danced with Ballet de Monterrey , Royal Ballet of Flanders, and the Joffrey Ballet. Feijóo received the 2003 Ensemble Performance Isadora Duncan Dance Award, and has danced as a guest of the Royal Ballet. Lupe Calzadilla says she owes everything she knows about ballet to Alicia and Fernando Alonso. After having graduated from the National Ballet School, Calzadilla danced with Ballet Nacional de Cuba for eleven years. She then taught at the school while raising her daughters Lorena and Lorna Feijóo (principal dancers with San Francisco Ballet and Boston Ballet, respectively). Having taught children and adults for more than thirty-four years, she is now a master teacher at City Ballet School in San Francisco and regularly travels to teach in South America, as well as to Cuba. I was able to interview Lorena Feijóo and Lupe Calzadilla at my home in Oakland, California, on July 22, 2009. What are your first memories of Fernando Alonso? Lupe: I began dancing at the Lyric Theater. My first teacher was Joaquín Banegas, whom I admired, and as his students we presented ourselves at an audition for the Cuban National Ballet Company. Alicia and Fernando wanted to merge the ballet with the opera. I was very nervous when I saw Fernando, but always was a little gutsy and very expressive, and I think that 163 helped me. They took me, and that is how my entrance exam for the Cuban National Ballet went, and my first encounter with Fernando Alonso. Lorena: It was a school festival where he watched a performance. Of course I had seen him fleetingly as a child. But at this festival he had just seen me in my first big role, Almendrita (who lived in an almond shell, a bit like Thumbelina). I thought, “Oh my God, this man I admired so much is watching my first big role”—I was thirteen at the time! Seeing him backstage was memorable. He had a conversation at the theater with my mom after the performance, in which he told her that he had seen only one other person dance like that at that age with such facility: Alicia Alonso. It was not about how everything went perfectly, but how I dealt with the imperfections that occurred that night, the problems, like a professional, and that he was most taken by my response, my ability to solve whatever problem presented itself . At my graduation, he called me over: “Come here, you tropical beauty! Your exam was flawless. Now I have an exercise for you.” I was expecting a foot exercise or something for the arms. Instead he said, “You know, you have this little space between your nose and your mouth that needs to be stretched. Here is an exercise.” He was such a perfectionist, paying attention to the details that could make you better. He is the epitome of striving for perfection. What stood out about his demeanor that was different from your other teachers? Lupe: He had a special way of doing and saying things. He was very strict (perhaps at times too much), but I learned huge lessons that I will value for a lifetime: discipline, respect, love for what one does, the requirements to be met. He left no stone unturned. As for his requirements, he preferred that we not take class while injured because we could not work full-out, and would risk hurting other parts of the body, which carried additional consequences that further delayed recovering and contributed to a lack of discipline in class, where we would work one side, but not the other, not...