by Dance Magazine | Oct 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
Alicia has died. I walked around my apartment feeling her spirit, but knowing something had changed utterly. My father, the late conductor Benjamin Steinberg, was the first music director of the Ballet de Cuba, as it was called then. I grew up in Vedado on la Calle...
by Marina Harss For Dance Magazine | Oct 17, 2019 | Career, Profiles
For decades the name Alicia Alonso has been virtually synonymous with Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the company she co-founded in Havana in 1948. Alonso died on October 17, just shy of what would have been her 99th birthday. In recent years, she had stepped back from...
by Toba Singer | Oct 16, 2019 | Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, News, Profiles
Her Dying Swan was as fragile as her Juliet was rebellious; her Odile, scheming, her Swanilda, insouciant. Her Belle was joyous, and her Carmen, both brooding and full-blooded. But there was one role in particular that prompted dance critic Arnold Haskell to ask,...
by Amy Brandt | Dec 23, 2018 | Profiles
During the Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s tour to Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center earlier this year, the company brought longtime artistic director Alicia Alonso’s Giselle. And while the production was admittedly well-worn and the style of dancing...
by Toba Singer | Nov 15, 2018 | News, Profiles
Anyone attending the National Ballet of Cuba’s biennial Havana International Ballet Festival can expect an adventure that is equal parts treasure hunt and lottery, amidst a cornucopia of choices. This year’s festival, the 26th, was no exception, offering...
by Toba Singer | Jun 11, 2018 | Profiles
Grettel Morejón and Sadaise Arencibía, principal ballerinas with the National Ballet of Cuba, danced the title role of Giselle in the company’s performances on June 6 and 8 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York. SPAC was the...
by Carrie Seidman | May 14, 2018 | News
Forty years ago, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba made its U.S. debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers was its iconic founder, Alicia Alonso, then in her late 50s and already nearly blind. This month the historic company will return for a tour...
by Amy Brandt | Dec 18, 2017 | Uncategorized
Ever since President Obama reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2014, the two countries’ dance communities have been eager to strengthen relationships. Now, in spite of tightened travel and business restrictions by the Trump administration, an...