Alicia Alonso brings Cuba to Birmingham

Apr 23 2010 By Donald Hutera

At nearly 90, the ballet diva Alicia Alonso is a living legend – Donald Hutera talks to her as she brings her Ballet Nacional de Cuba to the region.

Interviewing Alicia Alonso, the artistic director of Ballet Nacional de Cuba, is akin to arranging an audience with the president.

Indeed, as the ballet superstar Carlos Acosta has written that the power this legendary woman wields within her native land can only be compared to that role.

Alonso founded Ballet Nacional more than 60 years ago, having already made a name for herself in New York working both on Broadway and with the likes of iconic dance figures like George Balanchine and Agnes de Mille.

While still in her twenties, the acclaimed ballerina returned to Cuba to start up its first serious ballet school and in the process she helped turn this island nation into one of the world’s great centres of classical dance.

Alonso and her stellar company are about to perform in Birmingham for the first time as part of the company’s first ever UK tour with Acosta as its headline attraction.

We meet in her office, cool and blue-tinted as the baking sun filters through the coloured glass of the windows. She sits behind a desk in a purple headscarf, her mouth a red gash of lipstick and a bangle on her wrist (a gift, she notes, from the Royal Ballet director Monica Mason).

Nearly 90, this ballet diva is a Cuban institution. She only stopped dancing in the early 1990s despite having been virtually blind for much of her remarkable career. This is reputedly one of the reasons Cuban males make such superbly attentive partners – their careful handling of Alonso became a technique.

Half a century ago, at the dawn of the Revolution and with Fidel Castro’s complete support, she was ready to bring ballet to the masses.

Cuba can now boast some of the most passionately informed dance audiences on the planet. But most importantly, Alonso stresses, she and her colleagues were on a mission to find and nurture young talent. The process continues.

“We pick out children from all over Cuba,” she explains, “bring them here to Havana and teach them in our school. And it is for free. This doesn’t happen all over the world.”

Just outside her office in Ballet Nacional’s studios the dancers are either taking class or rehearsing, the young and unseasoned ones thronging together to scrutinise more experienced company members in full flight. They are all, in a sense, Alonso’s thoroughbred offspring.

“I am alive because of this company,” she avows. “The wonderful thing is I was a dancer, so I know all the things they go through. And I feel like I am still dancing with them, with my heart.”