i

THE CUBAN BALLET: ITS RATIONALE, AESTHETICS AND ARTISTIC IDENTITY AS FORMULATED BY ALICIA ALONSO

A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by Lester Tomé January, 2011

Examining Committee Members:

Joellen Meglin, Advisory Chair, Dance Karen Bond, Dance Michael Klein, Music Theory Heather Levi, External Member, Anthropology ii

© Copyright 2011 by Lester Tomé All Rights Reserved

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ABSTRACT

In the 1940s, Alicia Alonso became the first Latin American dancer to achieve

international prominence in the field of ballet, until then dominated by Europeans.

Promoted by Alonso, ballet took firm roots in Cuba in the following decades, particularly

after the Cuban Revolution (1959). This dissertation integrates the methods of historical

research, postcolonial critique and discourse analysis to explore the performative and

discursive strategies through which Alonso defined her artistic identity and the collective

identity of the Cuban ballet. The present study also examines the historical context of the

development of ballet in Cuba, Alonso’s rationale for the practice of ballet on the Island,

and the relationship between the Cuban ballet and the European ballet. Alonso defended

the legitimacy of Cuban dancers to practice ballet and, in specific, perform European

classics such as Giselle and Swan Lake. She opposed the notion that ballet was the

exclusive patrimony of Europeans. She also insisted that the cultivation of this dance

form on the Island was not an act of cultural colonialism. In her view, the development of

ballet in Cuba consisted, instead, of an exploration of a distinctive Cuban voice within

this dance form, a reformulation of a European legacy from a postcolonial perspective.

Her rationale for the practice of ballet in Cuba captured the tension between

cosmopolitan and nationalist forces that defined the country’s artistic production

throughout the twentieth century. The cosmopolitanism of Cuban artists was evident in their openness to assimilate foreign artistic languages. Simultaneously, nationalist

attitudes within the local artistic community sanctioned such assimilation only if it iv resulted in artworks that expressed a Cuban ethos. Thus, in formulating the artistic identity of the Cuban ballet, Alonso cast Cuban dancers as both heirs of the European nineteenth-century classics and proponents of a distinctive national aesthetics defined by the accents that they brought to the performance of this repertory and that, in Alonso’s opinion, were expressive of the Cuban culture. In her description of such aesthetics,

Alonso proposed that, among other elements, a special sense of musicality distinguished

Cuban dancers—she recycled the image of Cubans as a musical people, a trope that commonly informs representations of Cubans and their culture. The phenomenon of

Alonso and the Cuban ballet redrew the geopolitical boundaries of this dance form, disassociating the notion of ownership of ballet’s legacy from its geographic and cultural origins in Europe. In today’s dance world, increasingly marked by the international flow of dance genres, the study of Alonso’s promotion of ballet in Cuba sheds light on the practices and discourses through which dancers assimilate and take ownership of foreign traditions.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Dr. Joellen Meglin, this dissertation’s advisory committee chair, for her insightful guidance through the process of choosing the topic, refining the research questions, analyzing the sources, and writing and editing the text. I have benefited from her generous feedback and high academic standards, which not only inform this dissertation but also serve as model of excellence that I try to emulate in my own work as a pedagogue. She has been a true mentor and an invaluable source of encouragement. I thank the other members of the committee, Dr. Karen Bond and Dr. Michael Klein, for their input, which enriched this project, as well for their support. Dr. Marion Kant, who took an interest in my work and invited me to contribute an article on Alicia Alonso to

The Cambridge Companion to Ballet has been another valuable mentor to whom I am deeply grateful as well.

I am very thankful for the fellowships and grants that Temple University and its

Dance Department conferred upon me, which made the completion of this degree possible. Also, I am grateful for travel awards from the Society of Dance History

Scholars, University of the Arts and Smith College that allowed me to present my ongoing research on Alonso in scholarly conferences.

Dance historian Ahmed Piñeiro, from the magazine Cuba en el Ballet and the

National Dance Museum, in Havana, answered my questions and helped me access sources that were geographically outside my reach. Dr. Mike Masci assisted me in the analysis of musical scores. I thank them too. vi Finally, I am grateful for the advice, inspiration, assurance and encouragement that came from relatives, friends, colleagues and students as I worked on this project.

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To my parents, Francisco and Zenia, who instilled in me a love for studying, and to my brother, Julio, who introduced me to the performing arts.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... v

DEDICATION...... vii

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. NATIONALIST VOICES AND EUROPEAN CONNECTIONS: ALICIA ALONSO AND THE CUBAN BALLET IN CONTEXT ...... 30

Nationalism in the Early Decades of the Cuban Republic ...... 31 The Search for a Cuban Identity in the Arts ...... 46 The Pro-Arte Musical Society: Imported or Home-Made Ballet? ...... 67 The United States: From “Ballets Americains” to American Ballet ...... 80 The Cuban Revolution’s Policies on National Culture and the Arts ...... 100

3. IN DEFENSE OF THE CUBAN BALLET: ALONSO’S RATIONALE FOR THE PRACTICE OF BALLET IN CUBA ...... 119

Approaching Ballet as an International Art Fom ...... 128 Cuba’s Spanish Heritage: A Conduit to European Culture ...... 135 Taking Ballet Across Cultures, Races and Social Classes ...... 151 Cubanizing Ballet, Provincializing Europe ...... 167

4. ALONSO’S PERFORMANCE AND NARRATIVE OF HER CLASSICIST IDENTITY ...... 181

Career-shaping Decisions in Pursuit of the Classics...... 184 Self-portrait: Custodian of the Romantic and Classical Styles...... 218 Ballet Genealogies: Continuous Tradition or Fractured History? ...... 227 Referencing Ballet’s History in Performances and Political Maps ...... 247 Tribute Galas: The Staging of a Historical Persona ...... 256

5. MUSICALITY, SIGNIFIER OF A CUBAN AESTHETICS IN BALLET ...... 269

ix Ballet Aesthetics and the Tropes of a Cuban Identity ...... 275 Features of a Cuban Musicality: Phrasing, Melody and Tempo ...... 283

A Cuban Musicality Imagined or Acquired? ...... 297 Music in the Blood: Imagining a Cuban Musicality ...... 302 Dissonant Notes: a Counter-narrative, a Genealogy, a Pedagogy ...... 313

CONCLUSIONS ...... 329

REFERENCES CITED ...... 339

APPENDIX: ALICIA ALONSO’S REPERTORY ...... 364

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

New York, November 2, 1943: Hailing from Cuba, Alicia Alonso debuted in the title role of Giselle in a performance of Ballet Theatre, replacing the British star Alicia

Markova, who was sick. At the time, a Cuban ballet dancer was a rarity, even more so if

she starred in a work considered the epitome of European Romantic ballet. Though

Cuban dances were immensely popular in the United States in the 1940s, the Island was

by no means associated with ballet. Since the early 1920s, Hollywood, Broadway and the

US record industry had familiarized Americans with images of Cuba as an exotic

destination: a land that lured the visitor with beaches, casinos and endless nights of

romance and inebriation, and where life unfolded to hot rumba and conga rhythms. That

evening, while Alonso performed in the Metropolitan Opera House, it is likely that a few

blocks away Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra played Cuban music at the Waldorf Astoria

Hotel. Hits such as “The Peanut Vendor” and “Always in My Heart,” arrangements in

English of Cuban songs, surely played in radios and gramophones in countless American homes. Patrons in dance halls across the country, from New York to Los Angeles, probably swayed their hips to Cuban rhythms.

Cuba is still known as the country that created and exported habanera, bolero,

son, conga, rumba, mambo and cha-cha-chá. Today, however, the Island is also recognized as an important center for ballet. It is the home of the reputed National Ballet of Cuba and the International Ballet Festival of Havana, as well as the birthplace of many 2 artists who enjoy the status of stars with ballet ensembles all over the world. The best

known among them are Carlos Acosta and José Carreño, but the list also includes

Xiomara Reyes, the sisters Lorna and Lorena Feijóo, Caterine Suaznábar, Yosvani

Ramos, Miguel Blanco and Rolando Sarabia, to name just a few. They work for the

Royal Ballet in London, the English National Ballet, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne, the

American Ballet Theatre, the San Francisco Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, Les Grands Ballets

Canadiens and the Australian Ballet, among other companies.

Much of the credit for the transformation of Cuba into a successful center for

ballet goes to Alicia Alonso, who advocated for the cultivation of the dance form in the country. In 1948 she founded the Ballet Alicia Alonso in Havana. After 1959, with the support of Fidel Castro’s government, she established a rigorous national network of ballet schools and her ensemble, renamed National Ballet of Cuba, became one of the

largest ballet companies in the world. Throughout her career as one of the most

charismatic ballet dancers of the twentieth century, Alonso showed that Latinos could

succeed in an art form narrowly associated with European culture. Not only did she pave

the way for Cuban ballet dancers but also for the many dancers from Argentina, Brazil,

Colombia, Venezuela and other Latin American countries who in recent years, and in

significant numbers, have joined the group of international ballet celebrities.

In a letter to Alonso from 1970, choreographer Maurice Béjart proposed creating a ballet about her life. He saw in her an extraordinary ballerina with an extraordinary personality, who could be found dancing Giselle in the Paris Opera or Carmen in Havana, who was almost blind and yet a visionary, who embodied the image of a glamorous diva 3 and at the same time wore boots and fatigues in the trenches of the Cuban Revolution.1

Béjart’s letter exemplifies the fascination that Alonso exerted on fellow artists, writers and audiences, a fascination that stemmed from her artistic achievements, but also from the particularities of her life and career. In spite of being Cuban, she rose to the glamorous position of marquee dancer of the American Ballet Theatre and the Ballet

Russe de Montecarlo. Nevertheless, she gave up her international career to join the

Cuban Revolution and soon emerged as a cultural ambassador of Castro’s communist regime. She suffered from detachment of her retinas and became almost blind; yet, she overcame this limitation, learned to dance in the dark and remained one of the world’s best classical dancers. In an exceptional tour de force, she continued to dance into her seventies, an unprecedented retirement age among ballet dancers. The details of Alonso’s legendary life have filled several books and countless articles. In this dissertation, therefore, I do not seek to contribute another biographic account of her trajectory as a human being and as an artist.

This research project gives continuation to my long-time involvement with the

Cuban ballet. As a dancer, I began my training at the Prodanza Ballet School in Havana.

As a spectator, I had the opportunity to witness Alonso’s performances in that city throughout the final years of her stage career. As a journalist and dance critic, I often chronicled the activities of the National Ballet of Cuba and reviewed its performances between 1991 and 1995, when I worked for the Cuban radio station CMBF-Radio

Musical Nacional. I moved to Chile in 1995, but five years later I returned to Cuba to

1 A facsimile of Béjart’s letter is reproduced in XLV Aniversario de Alicia Alonso en el personaje de Giselle [XLV Anniversary of Alicia Alonso in the role of Giselle] (Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de la Habana, 1988), no page numbers. 4 interview Alonso and report on the International Ballet Festival of Havana for the

Chilean newspaper El Mercurio.2 Having worked as a dance critic and scholar in Cuba,

Chile and the United States, I see myself as a writer traveling in a globalized world. The

international dimension of dance in today’s global environment reignites my interest in

the Cuban ballet, an example of the cross-Atlantic adoption of a European art.

This is a study about Alonso and the phenomenon of the Cuban ballet in the context of the internationalization of ballet. The last decades have witnessed increasing transnationalism in the practice of many dance forms. Salsa, tango, capoeira, hip-hop, modern dance, flamenco, belly dancing and bharata natyam are among a number of dance traditions that are now geographically recurrent: ubiquitous fixtures in a global dance landscape. They are practiced far from the places where they originated and outside the cultures with which they have been associated. Tokyo is deemed the second capital of tango, after Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, Buenos Aires hosts a large modern dance community. London is home to hundreds of bharata natyam dancers. San Francisco is a hub for capoeiristas. Montreal features an active salsa scene. Moscow is the location of

frequent contact improvisation jams. And so the list of the improbable places where these

and other forms flourish could go on—it includes not only large urban centers, but also

smaller cities and remote towns.

The insertion of ballet in Cuba, which started in the late 1930s and accelerated

after the advent of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, predates the ever-present, fast-paced

circulation of dance forms in today’s world. Yet, as a precedent for more recent dance

flows, the case of the Cuban ballet illuminates some of the issues that arise when dance

2 A. Alonso “Bailar ha sido vivir” [To dance has been to live], interview by L. Tomé in El Mercurio (Santiago, Chile), Nov. 19, 2000, E24. 5 traditions are practiced and assimilated outside their place and culture of origin. Even if

the Cuban ballet developed amidst unique circumstances, many of the questions that it

gave and continues to give rise to are similar to those we pose today when we see

Japanese dancers performing flamenco, French artists doing butoh or Turkish performers

practicing hip-hop. Why are these dance traditions adopted outside of their birthplaces?

How can they be meaningful beyond their original cultural context? What makes these

borrowings valid or questionable? Where does the distinction between appropriation and

assimilation lie? What do these international flows mean in terms of the authenticity and

preservation of the disseminated dance heritages? Within now global communities of

practitioners, who owns these dance legacies? How do these importations affect

intellectual property? How do these transferences reproduce or challenge colonialist/imperialist structures of power? Who gets to dance what, and why? These general questions invite more specific queries about how individual artists and artistic communities exert agency in imagining and reinventing themselves beyond their ethnic and geographic markers, engage in the transformation and hybridization of adopted dance legacies, and reconcile the increasing internationalization of dance with the articulation of local cultural identities.

In view of the widespread internationalization of ballet, I identify a research problem in the lack of understanding of how non-European countries have negotiated

their adoption of this dance form. Since the 1930s, ballet began to proliferate in Cuba, the

United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Australia and other countries in

the Americas and the British Commonwealth. Today, ballet also thrives in Asian nations

such as China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. However, there is little 6 knowledge about the cultural debates that have surrounded the adoption of ballet in

these countries, the aesthetics that ballet has developed in these locations, and the role

that ballet has played in the articulation of cultural identities in these nations.3 The

analysis of the Cuban ballet is a step towards expanding knowledge of these issues.

The development of the Cuban ballet took place amidst the counterpoint between

nationalism and cosmopolitanism that characterized artistic production in Cuba

throughout the twentieth century. After the inauguration of the Cuban Republic in 1902,

nationalism became a shaping force of the intellectual, artistic and political life of the country for the remainder of the century. For the Island’s artists, nationalist attitudes translated into the exploration of a distinctively Cuban aesthetics. Still, as a former colony of a European metropolis, Cuba retained its strong connection with European culture. In an expression of cosmopolitanism, Cuban artists embraced many genres and styles of European provenance. For ballet artists, these two parallel trends meant that they had to find a point of convergence between their practice of a European dance form and their formulation of a Cuban cultural identity. Meanwhile, at an international level, the

Cuban ballet had to find its place within the global ballet community and, specifically, define its relationship with the European ballet. It also had to justify its very existence before foreign audiences and critics that, seeing the Island as a cultural “other” in relationship to Europe, did not expect Cubans to practice this dance form.

In accordance with such paradoxes and tensions, the following research questions guide this study:

3 Ying-Chu Chen advanced the understanding of these issues in a dissertation in which she discussed the various directions that ballet has taken in Taiwan. As part of her research, she interviewed the artistic directors of several Taiwanese ballet ensembles. Chen, Ying-Chu, When Ballet Meets Taiwan: The Development and Survival of the Taiwanese Ballet (PhD diss., Temple Univ., 2008). 7 - - How did nationalist and cosmopolitan forces shape the historical context of

Alicia Alonso’s career and affect the development of ballet in Cuba throughout

the twentieth century?

- - What was Alonso’s rationale for the practice of ballet in Cuba? How did she

negotiate the tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, while countering

skeptical views about the practice of this dance form by Cubans?

- - How did Alonso and the Cuban ballet articulate a Cuban cultural identity within

this dance form? How did she envision the relationship of the Cuban ballet with

the European ballet tradition?

These questions belong within two larger areas of inquiry: the cultural

relationships between former colonies and metropolises, and the formulation of

identities—from large-scale identities, as in the case of a Cuban cultural identity, to the

specific identities of individuals, as in the case of Alonso’s artistic persona. A number of

premises underlie my approach to these topics.

First, European culture is a constituent of Cuban culture. As anthropologist

Fernando Ortiz indicated, Cuban culture is the result of transculturation, the process of

interaction between the different cultures and ethnicities that have encountered one

another on the Island.4 Europeans and Africans were the main actors in this process—

together with Cuban aborigines, although most of them were exterminated. Therefore, regardless of the fact that Europeans view Cuba as a cultural “other,” Cubans see

European culture as an inherited legacy. Such recognition, far from connoting

4 F. Ortiz, “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad” [The human factors of Cubanness], in Revista Bimestre Cubana (Havana), vol. XLV, no. 2 (Mar.-Apr. 1940), 161-186, reprinted in Órbita de Fernando Ortiz, ed. J. Le Riverend (Havana: Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1973), 149-157. 8 Eurocentrism or acceptance of European cultural hegemony, reflects the undisputable entanglement of the cultures of former colonizer and colonized, as postcolonial theorists

Arif Dirlik and Roberto Fernández Retamar have acknowledged.5

Second, Cuban culture is not a finished product, but an ongoing process. In his analysis of Cuban cultural processes, initiated several decades before the current debates on hybridization, Ortiz had already observed that cultures are not static, but malleable, changeable and open to incorporating new elements. The assimilation of ballet on the

Island points to this ongoing hybridization. Although the ballet school of the Pro-Arte

Musical Society—the first in the country—opened only in 1931, by the 1960s the practice of this dance form had become an essential part of cultural and artistic life in

Cuba.

Third, the critical reformulation of European artistic forms or models can result in distinctively Cuban artistic products. Literary critic Gustavo Pérez Firmat argues that the adaptation of European artistic genres and styles, carried forward with a critical spirit and with the intention of expressing a national voice, has been a successful strategy for the Island’s artists to craft uniquely Cuban products.6 In transformative processes like this one, as Dipesh Chakravarty observes, the former colonies exert agency in renovating

5 R. Fernández Retamar, “Contra la leyenda negra,” in Casa de las Américas (Havana), no. 99 (Nov.-Dec. 1979), reprinted as “Against the Black Legend,” in Calibán and Other Essays, trans. E. Baker (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1989), 56-73; A. Dirlik, “How the Grinch Hijacked Radicalism: Further Thoughts on the Postcolonial,” in Postcolonial Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (Jul. 1999), 149-163, and “Rethinking Colonialism: Globalization, Postcolonialism, and The Nation,” in Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 4, no. 3 (Nov. 2002): 428-448.

6 G. Pérez Firmat, The Cuban Condition, Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989). 9 European legacies from the margins and for the margins, reshaping these legacies to

conform with local realities and needs.7

Fourth, identities are articulated through narrative and discourse. Benedict

Anderson’s dictum that nations are imagined communities encapsulates his proposition

that envisioning a nation as such precedes and determines its very existence.8 In

imagining themselves as constituting a nation, the nationals profess their belief that they

are members of the same community and partakers of the same national culture. Stuart

Hall and Anthony D. Smith explain that such a process takes place discursively: national

identities rely on the circulation of shared beliefs, memories, stories, imagery and myths.

Similarly, narratives are essential to the articulation of an individual’s identity.9 Writing

from a hermeneutical perspective, Paul Ricoeur and Jerome Bruner assert that selfhood is

created and recreated in the stories that are part of an individual’s self-representation and

social interactions.10 This does not mean that identities are fictitious but rather that they

manifest in the form of stories.

In this study I followed a historiographic methodology based on discovering,

assessing and interpreting primary sources. At an early stage, I indexed the sources

7 D. Chakravarty, Provincializing European: Postcolonial Thought and Political Difference (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000).

8 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised and extended second edition (New York: Verso, 1991).

9 A. D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: Univ. of Nevada Press, 1991); and S. Hall, “The Question of Cultural Identity,” in Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, ed. S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 595-634.

10 P. Ricoeur, “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,” trans. J. N. Kraay and A. J. Scholten, in Facts and Values: Philosophical Reflections from Western and Non-Western Perspectives, ed. M. C Doeser and J. N. Kraay (Dordrecht, Netherland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 121-32, reprinted in P. Ricouer, A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. M. J. Valdés (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1991), 425-37; and J. Bruner, Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002). 10 according to their content. Such a process of comprehensive indexing, which allowed me detailed identification of topics and subtopics within the area of study, anteceded my articulation and analysis of the research questions. To a certain degree, this approach facilitated the emergence of the research questions in an inductive manner. Primary sources, therefore, were at the center of the inquiry, helping to dictate its direction. In this sense, my research conformed to one of the tenets of empiricist historiography, as encapsulated in Geoffrey Elton’s recommendation that the questions arise from the sources.11 Postmodern historians, however, have criticized the empiricists’ belief that closeness to the sources and inductive methods guarantee impartial research and produce, in the end, accurate and objective accounts of the past. Keith Jenkins argues, from this postmodern perspective, that historians must acknowledge the epistemological contradiction at the heart of their work: their task is to chronicle and explain the past, but the truth about the past cannot be rendered completely and objectively because of the limitations of the sources, the historians’ selectivity in gathering information, present-day assumptions informing the research methods, the subjective nature of historical interpretation, the ideological motivations of all historical accounts and the artificity of historical narratives aiming to shape the past into cohesive stories.12 Taking this into consideration, it would be misleading to pretend that the sources alone shaped the contours of this study, for even my indexing of the sources was subjective and, therefore, the research questions that emerged through this procedure reflected my outlook on the

11 G. R. Elton, The Practice of History (Sydney: Sydney Univ. Press, 1967), 34-5.

12 K. Jenkins, Rethinking History (London: Routledge, 1991), 5-20. 11 topic. I undertook the formulation of questions and the interpretation of materials from the critical perspective of postcolonial historiography.

Today’s historians face the incertainties of writing in the wake of the postmodern era’s skepticism and relativism, with awareness that any attempt to reconstruct the past objectively may be futile and that any reading of it is just one among many possible readings. Questioning the orthodox view that history can unveil the past with certainty, however, is not paramount to questioning the meaningfulness of producing historical knowledge. Writing history retains its significance—even more so now that it gives a voice to women and the formerly slaved and colonized peoples, among many other groups that have begun to contribute their own narratives of the past. While doing history remains a valid undertaking, today it entails a reflexive discussion of epistemology and methodology. As Jenkins observes, the recognition that all readings are highly subjective calls for researchers to be transparent and disclose their own biases and positions. Also, the understanding that history is always written from the vantage point of the present, through the lens of contemporary concerns and constructs, demands an appreciation of history as being, in itself, historicized.13

As stated above, I approached my topic from the position of postcolonial

discourse. Postcolonial historiography questions the cultural, economic and political

legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Such legacies are still responsible for an

international asymmetry of power: former colonial and imperial powers continue to

occupy a position in the center, while former colonies continue to lie in the periphery.

Postcolonial historians subvert this model by placing the former colonized people at the

13 Ibid., 65-70. 12 center, as narrators of their own history. This is an attempt to correct historical

narratives that, for centuries, depicted the colonized through the eyes of the colonizer.14

The adoption of ballet in Cuba prompts a discussion about whether Alicia Alonso’s enterprise promoted Eurocentric culture on the Island or constituted an act of postcolonial emancipation. Independently of how one answers this question, the fact remains that

Alonso took control of the debate. Exemplifying a postcolonial attitude, she contributed her own account of historical events, defended her choice to develop ballet on the Island and gave her own explanation of the elements that defined the Cuban ballet’s identity.

Therefore, this dissertation brings her testimony to the forefront and interprets it as a postcolonial strategy of reaffirmation. Yet, postcolonial historiography is a project of not only placing the periphery at the center, but also of blurring the binary that these two positions represent. It is with this mind that this study stresses the cultural entanglement between former colonizers and colonized, brought to attention by Dirlik, Chakravarty and

Fernández Retamar. Such an entanglement presupposes a bidirectionality that undermines the binary.

My study reflects the scholarly currency of postcolonial discourse and, in a broader sense, identitarian discourses. Thus, the final product of this dissertation is what

Jenkins calls “historicized history” that approaches its subject bearing contemporary concerns in mind. Ramsay Burt warns us that writing dance history from the perspective of identitarian discourses can be reductionist as it may render dancers’ work one- dimensionally, highlighting issues of identity at the expense of obscuring other aspects of

14 This categorization of postcolonial history is based on Anne Green and Kathleen Throup’s definition. A. Green and K. Throup, The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1999), 278. 13 the art of dance.15 Such a cautionary statement is valid. Nonetheless, the postcolonial

concerns that the global circulation of dance forms brings to the fore are equally valid,

even if they narrow the angle from which the internationalization of dance genres such as

ballet can be discussed. Obviously, this dissertation does not exhaust the discussion of the

Cuban ballet. This is only one of the histories that could be written about Cuban ballet

dancers. Yet, approaching the topic from my own perspective did not entail departing

from the historian’s classic tools: collecting a representative sample of sources,

evaluating and documenting these sources, crosschecking the information contained in

them, disclosing the existence of any conflicting data, interpreting the information in light

of a historical context, and considering alternative interpretations when the evidence was

not conclusive. As Georg G. Iggers explains, historians today are pressured to reconcile

their freedom to look at the past subjectively with their observance of rigorous scholarly

standards, ensuring that what they write is not an abuse of that freedom.16

In Chapters 4 and 5, which inquire into how Alonso and the Cuban ballet

articulated artistic and national identities, I worked within the research paradigm of

discourse analysis. This choice is a reflection of the premise, acknowledged above, that

discourse is central to the formulation of identities. Ruth Wodak and Norman Fairclough

define discourse as a social practice. In their view, discursive events exist in a dialectical

relationship with social situations, institutions and structures:

15 R. Burt, “Dance Theory, Sociology and Aesthetics,” in Dance Research Journal vol. 32, no. 1 (Summer 2000), 125-30.

16 G. G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan Univ. Press and Univ. Press of New England, 1997), 15, 144. 14 Discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned—it constitutes situations, objects of knowledge, and the social identities of and relationships between peoples and groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social status quo, and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it. Since discourse is so socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power.17

The issues of power embedded in the Cuban ballet’s discourse refer not only, as indicated

earlier, to the postcolonial negotiation of the relationship between the Cuban ballet and

the European ballet, but also to the enunciation of a Cuban cultural identity in ballet in the context of nationalist ideology defining artistic production in Cuba. In this study, I pay attention to both verbal and non-verbal discursive events: written texts, speeches, conversations/interviews, individual narratives, Cuban popular myths, performances, galas, photographs and graphic representations of dance genealogies, to name only the most salient examples. The variety of these communicative events reflects the fact that

discourse, as Theo van Leeuwen indicates, is realized multimodally, through text and talk

and also images and practices.18

Critical discourse analysis, as Wodak and Michael Meyer explain, is not a

methodology in itself. Nor does it rely on a single theorical background. In critical

discourse analysis these authors see a multifarious research paradigm within which a

variety of methods and theoretical approaches are feasible, depending on the nature of the

problems under study.19 For instance, in their inquiry into the discursive construction of

17 N. Fairclough and R. Wodak, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in Discourse as Social Interaction, Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, vol. 2, ed. T. A. van Dijk (London: Sage, 1997), 258.

18 T. van Leeuwen, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. K. Brown, second edition, vol. 3 (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006), 292.

19 R. Wodak and M. Meyer, “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology,” in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. R. Wodak and M. Meyer (London: Sage, 2009), 2-33. 15 the Austrian national identity, Wodak and her collaborators relied on linguistic and ethnographic methods, while, Joellen Meglin—whose research exemplifies discourse analysis applied to dance—used historiographic methods to dissect the discourse of gender in an eighteenth-century opera-ballet.20 Like Meglin, in this dissertation I tied

dance historiography and critical discourse analysis. Like Wodak and her collaborators, I

looked at my data through the lense of theories by Ricoeur and Hall sustaining that

identity is narratively constructed. For Ricoeur, narratives are the means by which

individuals formulate their identities, linking through plots what is fragmentary,

contradictory and discontinuous about the self and life’s events.21 Extrapolating this view

to the formation of national identities, Hall expounds that it is narrative that brings

together disparate stories, myths, symbols, landscapes, rituals and historical events into

an identity that the members of the nation recognize as shared collectively.22

The sources examined in this project, including the sections that do not feature

discourse analysis, are grouped in the following categories:

- Articles by Alicia Alonso, as well her speeches in various public events, essays

for souvenir programs, press conferences, talks in master classes, and interviews

for newspapers, magazines, documentaries, television shows and oral history

archives.

20 R. Wodak et al., The Discursive Construction of National Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1999). J. Meglin, “Galanterie and Gloire: Women’s Will and the Eighteenth-Century Worldview in Les indes galantes,” in Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800, ed. L. M. Brooks (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 228-56.

21 P. Ricouer, “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator.” A more detailed explanation of Ricouer’s theory can be found in the section titled “Dissonant Notes: A Counter-narrative, a Genealogy, a Pedagogy” in Chapter 5 of this dissertation.

22 S. Hall, “The Question of Cultural Identity.” I elaborate on this idea in the introduction to Chapter 5. 16 - Testimonials of dancers, musicians, artists and intellectuals, in the form of

personal correspondence, memoirs, journals, interviews and other publications.

- Letters and messages to Alonso by fellow dancers, choreographers and artistic

and political figures.

- Records of performances such as newspaper and magazine ads, films and

videorecordings, souvenir programs, reviews and other written accounts by

dancers and critics.

- Press articles such as news stories, columns, surveys and obituaries.

- Governmental records such as congressional acts, laws and constitutional

articles and amendments.

- Texts documenting cultural policies in Cuba such as speeches by political

figures and policy makers, and the acts of congresses of artists and writers.

- Institutional documents of political and artistic organizations, in the form of

manifestos, public declarations and announcements.

- Sources documenting the discourse of the Cuban ballet, such as essays, articles,

books, interviews and talks by dancers, teachers and writers associated to the

National Ballet of Cuba.

- Graphic materials such as photographs, illustrations and genealogical trees.

- Artistic products such as paintings, music recordings and scores, ballet libretti,

song lyrics, plays, poems and other literary texts.

Many of Alonso’s most important texts have been compiled in her book Diálogos con la danza (Dialogues with dance, 2004).23 A key bibliographic reference, this volume

23 A. Alonso, Diálogos con la danza, fourth edition (Mexico City: Océano, 2004). 17 contains materials not previously published, as well as texts originally published

elsewhere—some of them revised especially for this edition. Insofar as Alonso deemed

the interviews, essays and speeches in the book publishable or republishable, Diálogos

captures her very personal perspective on the value of the materials, the acceptability of

the public picture that they render of her, and their conformity with the political ideology

to which a regulatory government subjects the publishing industry in Cuba.24 To

compensate for this slanted perspective, I located and analyzed interviews of Alonso that

are not part of the book, some of which were conducted for publications and oral history

archives outside Cuba.

The archive of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public

Library proved to be a valuable resource in locating information about Alonso and the

National Ballet of Cuba. Its holdings include interviews of Alonso for the Dance

Division’s oral history project, as well as for radio and television stations in the United

States. Also available are souvenir programs of performances by the dancer and her

ensemble in Cuba, Latin America, Europe and the United States. Additionally, the

collection’s clipping files on Alonso contain numerous articles, interviews and reviews.

A few audiovisual materials that are not available commercially, such as films of

Alonso’s performances and publicly-aired documentaries on the ballerina and the Cuban ballet, are part of the collection as well.

Because of restrictions in traveling to Cuba from the United States, I did not conduct on-site work at the National Museum of Dance in Havana, which houses an important archive for the study of Alonso and the Cuban ballet. This is a limitation of this

24 The fourth edition of Diálogos was printed in Mexico, but the book was edited and sold in Cuba. 18 research project. However, through correspondence with Ahmed Piñero, one of that

institution’s resident historians, I was able to obtain video materials, magazines and

digital copies of articles relevant to my topic. Additionally, I relied on the personal

collection of programs, books, magazines and press materials that I amassed during the

year when I worked as a dance critic in Havana. To further compensate for not carrying

out archival research in Cuba, I drew extensively on the magazine Cuba en el Ballet, the official websites of Alicia Alonso and the National Ballet of Cuba, and books by Miguel

Cabrera, historian of this ballet company.25 These sources contain comprehensive chronologies; filmographies; lists of repertory works, tours, company members, guest dancers and choreographers; and rosters of distinctions and awards accompanying the

narrative on Alonso and the ensemble. Cabrera’s books were particularly helpful; they

reproduce source materials that document the foundation and development of the

National Ballet of Cuba.26

The envisioned readership for this dissertation is a community of scholars, critics,

dancers and students interested in the history of ballet, cultural studies in dance,

nationalism and globalization in dance, postcolonial studies, and Cuban and Latin

American studies. It seems that more books on dance are being published than ever

25 Cuba en el Ballet, the official magazine of the National Ballet of Cuba, has been regularly published since 1970. The official websites of Alonso and the National Ballet of Cuba are http://www. portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/index.htm and http://www.balletcuba.cult.cu. See M. Cabrera, Órbita del Ballet Nacional de Cuba [Orbit of the National Ballet of Cuba] (Havana: Editorial Orbe, 1978), and Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria [National Ballet of Cuba: half a century of glory] (Havana: Ediciones Cuba en el Ballet, 2000).

26 After the research work for this dissertation was completed, I secured a faculty development grant from Smith College for conducting archival research on Alonso at the Bibliothèque de l’Opera de Paris and the National Museum of Dance in Havana. In July 2010, I worked for two weeks at the Library of the Paris Opera, and in May 2011 I will travel to Havana to do research at the National Dance Museum. Although this archival work does not inform this dissertation, it will feed the book or articles into which the dissertation will hopefully evolve. 19 before as a result of the consolidation and maturity of the field of dance studies. In

spite of this—and the fact that ballet is the dance genre that attracts the largest audiences

and possibly the greatest number of students—there are not many books or articles that

are cultural studies of ballet in the second half of the twentieth century. I would like to

think that this dissertation, if it leads to the publication of a book or articles, will help to

fill that void and be of interest to ballet aficionados curious about late twentieth-century

developments within this dance genre. Those readers seeking to gain an understanding of

the history of ballet outside Europe and the United States would find this work

particularly relevant. Although Latin American ballet dancers are under the spotlight on

international stages, the development of ballet in Latin America is practically a virgin

topic in terms of scholarly publications. In the specific case of the Cuban ballet, as

acknowledged earlier, there are a few books in existence and these are mainly in

Spanish.27 This dissertation enriches the existing bibliography on Alonso and the Cuban

ballet with the multidisciplinary and critical perspective of cultural studies. Readers

interested in more than biographic and official accounts of Alonso’s life and the Cuban

ballet’s evolution will find in this dissertation an analysis that problematizes the history

of the ballerina and ballet in Cuba and, for the first time, looks at it the context of the

Island’s political, artistic and cultural life. Another niche of readers exists in the

international community of researchers and practitioners of Latin American dance forms.

27 See W. Terry, Alicia and her Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1981); J. Baquero, Alicia Alonso (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1984); R. Ruiz, Alicia: la maravilla de la danza [Alicia: the wonder of dance] (Havana: Gente Nueva, 1988); S. Martin Arnold, Alicia Alonso, First Lady of the Ballet (New York: Walker, 1993); F. Rey and P. Simón’s Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda [Alicia Alonso: orbit of a legend] (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores de España, 1996); M. del C. Hechavarría, Alicia Alonso, más allá de la técnica [Alicia Alonso, beyond technique] (Valencia, Spain: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 1998), and R. Ruiz, Fernando Alonso: danza con la vida [Fernando Alonso: dance with life] (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2000). Also, see M. Cabrera, Órbita del Ballet Nacional de Cuba and Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria. 20 While the worldwide dissemination of Latin American dances such as salsa and tango is frequently discussed in scholarly circles, there is less awareness of how Latin

Americans have assimilated dance traditions from other continents—aside from the cases related to the dance influx that accompanied the African diaspora. To those readers captivated by the dance dialogues between Latin America and the rest of the world, the present examination of how ballet has flourished in Cuba will offer a more complete, bidirectional understanding of those international exchanges. Similarly, this dissertation could be enriching for artists, intellectuals and academics who study postcolonial debates in Latin America. Those debates have primarily played out within the fields of literature, cinema and the visual arts. Here, I take the analysis of postcolonial questions in Latin

America to the field of dance. The summary below outlines, with more specifity, what these various types of readers will find in this text.

Chapter 2, “Nationalist Voices and European Connections: Alicia Alonso and the

Cuban Ballet in Context,” examines the counterpoint between nationalist and Europeanist projects in the various milieus in which Alonso lived, trained and worked. It also discusses the repercussions of such counterpoint for the development of ballet in Cuba.

The chapter documents the emergence of nationalism as an influential ideology in Cuba in the 1920s and 1930s—the result of the consolidation of a national identity in the early decades of the Cuban Republic, as well as of widespread anti-imperialist feelings against the United States’ military, economic and political presence on the Island following the

Spanish-American War. A nationalist platform informed Cuban arts for decades to follow. Between the 1930s and 1950s, local painters, composers, playwrights and writers pursued a Cuban voice in their artistic production. Yet, these artists were cosmopolitan 21 and assimilated the aesthetic innovations of the European avant-gardes. This generated a cultural debate about what the relationship between Cuban artists and European arts should be. Within Havana’s Pro-Arte Musical Society, where Alonso received her early training and performed as a professional dancer, this debate manifested in the confrontation of, on one side, a board of directors who promoted a traditional European aesthetics and, on the other side, a group of artists invested in the creation of Cuban ballets with local subject matter, music and designs. Similar tensions characterized the ballet scene in the United States during Alonso’s years with Ballet Caravan and Ballet

Theatre, from the late 1930s to the 1950s. The ballet dancers and choreographers who attempted to develop a North American language faced the opposition of other dancers, impresarios and audiences who wanted the genre to retain its European and specifically

Russian character. Later, in the context of the Cuban Revolution, the National Ballet of

Cuba attempted to reconcile the seemingly opposite demands of continuing a European tradition and developing it into a national expression. After 1959, the postcolonial character of the Cuban Revolution translated into cultural policies supporting the creation of art that reaffirmed the national identity. Nevertheless, the respect for aesthetic diversity in these policies and the regime’s alignment with the European communist bloc facilitated a dialogue between the Cuban ballet and its European counterparts.

Chapter 3, “In Defense of the Cuban Ballet: Alonso’s Rationale for the Practice of

Ballet in Cuba,” analyzes how the ballerina countered the opinions of those who thought that, by virtue of its geographic, ethnic and cultural origins, ballet did not have a place in

Latin American countries. Not content with letting others judge the legitimacy of the

Cuban ballet, Alonso exerted great agency in this discussion through her numerous 22 writings, interviews and speeches. This chapter examines her ideas on the topic vis-à- vis Latin American postcolonial discourse—represented here by a 1982 interview by the

Peruvian magazine QueHacer and the writings of the Cuban poet Roberto Fernández

Retamar. Alonso repudiated nativist attitudes that regarded the practice of European arts in Latin America as cultural colonialism. Instead, she aligned herself with a cosmopolitan strand in postcolonial thought that saw the dialogue between Latin America and Europe as a constitutive element of the region’s hybrid cultures. Alonso embraced the partially

European makeup of Cuban culture and cultivated narrow professional links with Spain, the Island’s former metropolis. The dancer regarded ballet as an artistic trove that, independently of having originated in European courts, belonged to humanity as a whole—a heritage that transcended a particular social class, ethnicity or region. Not only did Alonso assert the right of Cubans to practice ballet but she also proclaimed their fitness to do so: she criticized the notion that the bodily types favored within ballet aesthetics could only be found among Caucasians. Far from seeing the dance form as irrelevant to the reality of a Caribbean proletarian regime, Alonso strengthened the development of ballet in her country thanks to policies of the Cuban Revolution that promoted racial and social class equality and fostered access to education and culture for all citizens. However, her defense of the Cuban ballet adhered to a prevalent nationalist stance within the Island’s artistic community that sanctioned the assimilation of European vocabularies only if carried out in a critical manner that ultimately served the purpose of voicing a Cuban ethos. Accordingly, Alonso proposed that the fusion of ballet and Cuban folklore was an avenue for reformulating a European legacy. Yet, in her opinion, confining the Cuban ballet to folkloric hybridization perpetuated the colonial perspective 23 of non-Europeans as purveyors of folklore and exoticism. In view of this, she defended

the Cuban dancers’ right to perform European classics such as Giselle and Swan Lake in

parallel to developing a strictly Cuban repertory.28 Alonso believed that even in their performances of these imported classics Cuban dancers could explore a national

aesthetics. She expressed confidence that Latin Americans had a contribution to make to

the art of ballet and cited the success of the Cuban ballet in Europe as one measure of

such a contribution. In this regard, Alonso and the Cuban ballet unsettled the paradigm of

cultural flow between Europe as a cultural center that exports high art and Latin America

as a peripheral locale that exports exotic products.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine Alonso and the Cuban ballet’s engagement with the

European classics. I focus on this aspect of the Cuban ballet—over its hybridization of a

classical vocabulary with local culture and folklore—because the twentieth-century

pursuit of a Cuban identity within the European nineteenth-century repertory is more

controversial than the modernist strategy of hybridization. These dancers’ identification

with the classics exposes, in a more dramatic manner, the contradictions and challenges

intrinsic to ballet in Cuba. (In itself, this delimitation is not a judgment about whether

either of these two approaches to the formulation of a Cuban identity in ballet is more

effective or appropriate. In spite of the delimitation, I discuss some examples of the

hybridization of ballet and Cuban culture in Chapters 2 and 3.)

28 This text frequently refers to the repertory of nineteenth-century ballet classics. In this context, these classics signify all the surviving masterpieces that conform a ballet canon from that century. This study makes a distinction between ballet classics and Classical ballets (also known as Russian Classical ballets or Petipa-style ballets). The latter terminology refers to the style of choreographers such as Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, who worked in Russia in the last decades of the same century. Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker are examples of this style. Classical ballets are a subset of the nineteenth- century classics or masterpieces, together with other works, such as the Romantic ballets Giselle and La Sylphide. In order to make this distinction clear, the dissertation follows the convention of capitalizing the names of styles or periods in ballet (e.g., Baroque, Romantic, Classical). 24 Alonso’s claim that it is possible for Cuban dancers to articulate a national identity in the classics may seem paradoxical, for how can a European repertory be faithfully preserved while being rendered through a Cuban aesthetics. This paradox is reflective of how, in the performing arts, the tension between text and interpretation, original and reproduction, is an integral part of restaging a historical repertory. In terms of identity construction, Alonso and the Cuban ballet dealt with this problem by establishing two parallel narratives: one that asserted the Cuban dancers’ preservationist role in keeping the classics alive, and one that formulated a Cuban identity in the classics as a series of subtle nuances and accents that do not undermine the authenticity of these dancers’ performances of this repertory.

Chapter 4, “Alonso’s Performance and Narrative of Her Classicist’s Identity,” analyzes the ballerina’s self-representation as the inheritor of a nineteenth-century choreographic legacy. In order to explain why Alonso was in a position to depict herself as an heir of European classicism, this chapter first chronicles how she became one of the most respected performers of this repertory among the dancers of her generation. Here, the performance of her classicist persona is understood in a broad sense that encompasses not only her stage work, but also the actions that she performed toward making this repertory her own. She carefully planned her career so that the classics occupied a central place in it. The decisions that she made towards this end related to her affiliation with specific ballet troupes, development of an individual repertory, negotiation of contracts, collaboration with choreographers, direction of her own company and restaging of the classics, among other aspects of her career. A combination of talent, steadfast determination and strategic planning allowed Alonso to triumph in nineteenth-century 25 roles that until the 1940s had been out of reach for dancers from the Americas. By the

1980s, after decades of international success in these roles, Alonso began to

systematically articulate a narrative of her identity as a classicist. Such narrative emerged

in writings, interviews and speeches, as well as in the iconography of souvenir programs

and other publications. She adopted different means of self-representation: self-portraits

as the custodian of endangered nineteenth-century ballet styles, genealogical trees

connecting her to choreographers and works from the past, pictorial representations

depicting her as a modern reincarnation of Carlotta Grisi (the famous ballerina who

premiered Giselle), and a recurrent manner of mapping her career that highlighted her

links with emblematic European ballet institutions such as the Paris Opera. Further

consolidating her public image as the vessel of European traditions, Alonso participated

in symbolic recreations of lost works from the nineteenth century and even earlier periods

in ballet history, such as La Péri (1843) and Didon Abandonnée (1766). Moreover, she

sanctioned a series of tribute galas that glorified her as the embodiment of Romantic

ballet. Alonso’s classicist identity was projected on the Cuban ballet. Her individual

narrative overlapped with institutional accounts of the identity of the National Ballet of

Cuba that affirmed the company’s association with the centuries-old ballet tradition. On

the one hand, this emphasis on keeping tradition alive stressed the importance of continuity within an art form that is transmitted orally and bodily. On the other hand, these narratives also acknowledged the discontinuities and lacunae inherent in the process

of reconstruction of the classics.

Chapter 5, “Musicality, Signifier of a Cuban Aesthetics in Ballet,” inquires into how Alonso cast a number of stylistic elements as distinctive markers of a Cuban 26 aesthetics in the classics. For instance, she posited the multiracial composition of the

National Ballet of Cuba as a definite marker of the Cuban ballet. She also contended that

the dancers from the Island acted in a particularly expressive manner stemming from a

certain Latin American eloquence in the use of the body. Additionally, she appropriated

the codes of machismo to claim that the femininity of ballerinas and masculinity of male

dancers were unquestionable in the Cuban dancers’ performances of the pas de deux

(duet scenes of heterosexual love) of the classics. Moreover, the popular belief that Cuba

is a land of talented dancers and musicians surfaced in Alonso’s notions that Cuban ballet

dancers especially value technical virtuosity and are in possession of a sophisticated

sense of musicality. Because these features did not, per se, depart from the overall

aesthetics of the European classics, it was possible for Alonso to reconcile her

proposition of a Cuban aesthetics with the claim that the Cuban ballet faithfully preserved

this repertory and its styles. Her description of a Cuban aesthetics points to the significance of discourse in the construction of identities, insofar as she recycled imagery, myths and popular beliefs that were and continue to be a part of the national discourse on

Cuban culture. This chapter examines Alonso’s description of the musicality of Cuban

ballet dancers as an example of this. She postulated that these artists were particularly

responsive to melody, stressing a sense of flow in their phrasing of movement and

frequently playing with a contrasting use of fast and slow tempos. The ballerina avowed

that these features reflected the Cuban culture and environment and, drawing on common

imagery in the representation of Cubans, equated flow, phrasing and tempo changes with

a sensual, warm and temperamental quality. Alonso’s account of her own musicality

reproduced the trope of the musical Cuban: the myth that Cubans carry music in their 27 blood. She applied to herself a narrative popular among musicians from the Island, according to which Cubans are born with musical talent and fulfill that talent effortlessly.

Furthermore, that narrative proposes that Cubans cannot repress their acute responsiveness to music and that they remain musical until their death. Alonso was not alone in referring to music as a signifier of a Cuban ethos, as painters, poets and playwrights from the Island have often made music and musicality symbols of a Cuban identity. While her discussion of musicality illustrates the place of narrative and discourse in the construction of identities, it also directs attention to the fractures and contradictions of identity discourses. For instance, her insistence on the melodic responsiveness of Cuban dancers stood in opposition to the predominant view that rhythm, not melody, is the driving element of Cuban music. Also, by crediting Russian teachers for cultivating her sense of musicality, she contradicted the contention that her musicality was a reflection of the Cuban culture. Moreover, in view of her acknowledgment that she provided a model upon which the Cuban ballet’s features were styled, it is difficult to ascertain whether the musicality of Cuban ballet dancers was culturally conditioned or pedagogically acquired through their imitation of Alonso’s style of dancing.

In this discussion of a Cuban aesthetics in ballet I do not attempt to verify the elements of such aesthetic distinctions as described by Alonso. Confirming the existence of a Cuban aesthetics would require an exhaustive comparative observation of Cuban dancers and dancers from other nationalities in performances and classes. This is not feasible within the limits of the dissertation and it is not ultimately relevant to the study’s focus on narratives of representation. It should not come as a surprise that throughout this 28 study I discuss literary sources as frequently as performances, even if the subject is

dance. This is a reflection of the premise that identities are articulated in discourse and

narratives. The analyses of choreography and performance are subordinated to this

inquiry into identities. Still, I highlight the links between discourses and the practices of

dance whenever possible within the limits of the research questions and methodology.

As the previous summary of chapters makes clear, this is a study of not only

Alonso but also the Cuban ballet. Yet, it must be clarified that the discussion of the

Cuban ballet is conducted, mainly, around the analysis of Alonso’s work as the most

outstanding promoter of the dance form on the Island, founder and director of the

National Ballet of Cuba, and its emblematic dancer, pedagogue and choreographer. The

relationship between Alonso and the Cuban ballet is symbiotic and, thus, one cannot be

examined independently from the other. While this project pays considerable attention to

key events in the history of ballet in Cuba, the activities of the National Ballet of Cuba

and the philosophy of the Cuban school of ballet, it does not fully represent the voices of

the many choreographers, dancers, teachers and artists who have realized Alonso’s vision

of developing this dance form on the Island. A polyvocal study of that sort would require

ethnographic fieldwork and historical research beyond the scope of this project.

This dissertation often praises the achievements of Alonso and the Cuban ballet.

Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the Cuban ballet has experienced setbacks in

the last decade as a result of the country’s chronic economic depression and steady brain

drain. Possibly, ballet in Cuba has also suffered from a lack of renewal in the leadership

of the National Ballet of Cuba. A high number of the ensemble’s dancers have left to live

in countries with democratic governments and better economic opportunities. Apart from 29 political and economic reasons, they have been driven by the aspiration to work in

troupes with the type of up-to-date, varied repertory that the National Ballet of Cuba

cannot afford—due to its inability to pay royalties to top choreographers. In recent years,

generally, promising dancers have not stayed with the troupe long enough to bloom into

seasoned artists. They dance with the ensemble early in their careers, when they are in

command of excellent bodily skills but still lack maturity as performers. Once they leave,

they are replaced with the next crop of young dancers, who in turn quickly defect as well.

While watching the superbly trained young dancers can be exhilarating, performances

have become less artistically rewarding due to this trend. Migration has also created gaps

in the multigenerational chain of oral transmission on which a ballet company relies for

the preservation of knowledge. Current generations do not enjoy the benefit of interacting

with many of the best Cuban teachers, choreographers, regisseurs and experienced

dancers, who now live abroad. This jeopardizes the level of artistry of National Ballet of

Cuba. A discussion of the current state of the Cuban ballet should address, too, how well

a ninety-year-old Alonso, at her age and being blind, can lead the ensemble, and whether

her prolonged tenure as artistic director has caused ossification. However, as crucial as

these issues are to the subsistence and flourishing of the Cuban ballet, they fall outside

the scope of this dissertation.29

29 Other delimitations, definitions and qualifications are included, as pertinent, in the following chapters. 30

CHAPTER 2

NATIONALIST VOICES AND EUROPEAN CONNECTIONS:

ALICIA ALONSO AND THE CUBAN BALLET IN CONTEXT

The absence of a ballet tradition in Cuba at the moment when Alicia Alonso became a preeminent dancer has led critics and historians to cast her career as a serendipitous phenomenon. An observation by Pedro Simón, editor of the magazine Cuba

en el ballet, epitomizes this attitude: “That an artist of her height hails from an

underdeveloped country that until then had no theatrical dance tradition will always

remain an enigma explainable only as a coincidental phenomenon of statistic

probabilities.”30 The improbability of Alonso’s achievements suggests that historical

circumstances, far from propitiating her career, had to be overcome. Alonso certainly did

so. Much of what she accomplished was the result of reacting against the limitations of

the environment. The lack of access to good ballet training in Havana prompted her to

study with outstanding teachers and choreographers in New York. Sparse performance

opportunities in Cuba forced her to project her career internationally. The poor situation

of ballet on the Island inspired her to found a national company and a network of ballet

schools. Seen in this light, an unfavorable historical context was a determining factor in

the fulfillment of her international career and in the growth of the Cuban ballet. However,

30 F. Rey and P. Simón’s Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda [Alicia Alonso: orbit of a legend] (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores de España, 1996), 13. Unless otherwise specified, translations from Spanish to English are by the dissertation’s author. A footnote with a full citation indicates the first reference to a source in the chapter. For the sake of keeping footnotes to a minimum, the source is cited with the author-date system in subsequent references.

31 in Alonso’s case historical context was more than something to reckon with. Her development of ballet in Cuba, undertaken in parallel to the quest to express a national voice in this imported dance form, reflected the intersection of cosmopolitan, Eurocentric and nationalist trends that characterized artistic life in Cuba during most of the twentieth century. Similar forces defined the evolution of ballet in the United States during the period when Alonso worked there. In this sense, the dancer’s aspiration to develop a national brand of ballet was shaped and made possible by the historical context of her life. Grounding the study of Alonso’s work on history, this chapter analyzes manifestations of cosmopolitanism, Eurocentrism and nationalism in a number of environments and time periods: political life during the early decades of the Cuban

Republic, from the 1900s to the 1920s; avant-garde movements in the Cuban arts between the 1920s to the 1940s; activities of the School of Dance of the Pro-Arte Musical

Society in Havana during the 1930s and 1940s; adoption and development of ballet in the

United States from the 1920s to the 1940s; and the ideology and cultural policies of the

Cuban Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

Nationalism in the Early Decades of the Cuban Republic

Alicia Alonso, born Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad Martínez y del Hoyo on

December 21, 1920, in Havana, came from a middle class family of merchants and military men descendent of Spanish immigrants.31 Her childhood and adolescence

31 Since the focus of this dissertation is not biographical—several accounts of Alonso’s life have been published already—for dates and other biographic details the author relies mostly on secondary sources, particularly the biography of Alonso by Simón in F. Rey and P. Simón’s Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda, 12-70. This constitutes the most recent and up-to-date among the biographies of the ballerina.

32 coincided with a time of intense nationalism in Cuban history. With the arrival of the twentieth century, Cuba had seen its inauguration as a sovereign Republic. However, upon becoming independent from Spain, the Island fell within the gravitational pull of the

United States and became a neocolony of the powerful northern neighbor for decades to come.32 Throughout the formative years of the Republic and the neocolonial period,

Cubans embraced nationalism as a way to assert their independence from the United

States.

Nationalism was not a new phenomenon in Cuba. In 1868, liberationist efforts crystallized in a war of independence initiated by a group of landowners seeking economic and political autonomy from Spain. The war lasted ten years and ended without obtaining the desired emancipation. A second military campaign in 1879-80 failed as well. Nonetheless, liberationist ideas continued to ferment and in 1895 hostilities erupted

Simón is a preeminent authority on the life and work of Alonso. He has been married to her since 1975 and has studied her work in detail. Also, he has been the director of the magazine Cuba en el Ballet for over three decades, as well as of the National Museum of Dance, in Havana. The author cross-checked the information in Simón’s text with Alonso’s writings and interviews as well as with other biographies of Alonso’s by W. Terry, J. Baquero, R. Ruiz, S. Martin Arnold and M. Cabrera. See W. Terry, Alicia and her Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1981); J. Baquero, Alicia Alonso (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1984); R. Ruiz, Alicia: la maravilla de la danza [Alicia: the wonder of dance] (Havana: Gente Nueva, 1988); S. Martin Arnold, Alicia Alonso, First Lady of the Ballet (New York: Walker, 1993); and M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria [National Ballet of Cuba: half a century of glory] (Havana: Ediciones Cuba en el Ballet, 1998), 42-59.

32 Within the discourse of postcolonial studies, neocolonialism refers to the condition of those nations from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, which, in spite of achieving independence, remained economically and politically dependent on former metropolis and imperialist powers. In the words of the Pan-Africanist leader and former president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah, “the essence of neo- colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy [are] directed from outside.” Cuban and Cuban-American historians such as Julio Le Riverend and Louis A. Pérez commonly use this terminology when they discuss the political and economic situation of Cuba from 1902 to 1959. See K. Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (New York: International Publishers, 1965), IX; J. Le Riverend, La República: dependencia y revolución [The Republic: dependence and revolution] (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1971); L. A. Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1902-1934 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1986); and S. Adeyinka, “Neocolonialism,” in The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, ed. C. Hawley (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 327- 30.

33 again when the Cuban Revolutionary Party, under the leadership of poet, journalist and political organizer José Martí, pushed the country into a new war. Martí’s platform called not only for sovereignty but also a democratic system, racial and social equality,

modernization, economic reform, access to education and reaffirmation of a distinctive

Cuban culture.33 The rebels took control of most of the Island and by 1898 came close to

overthrowing the Spanish authorities.

At that critical moment the United States intervened in what became the Spanish-

American War. The North American government declared war on Spain on April 21,

1898, after the explosion of battleship USS Maine in the Havana harbor a few weeks

earlier. To that effect, the US Congress, acting upon the advise of President William

McKinley, passed a Joint Resolution that cited the abhorrent conditions that the war had

created in Cuba, together with the destruction of the battleship and its 266-men crew, as

the reasons for its country to get involved in the conflict. In its first article, this Joint

Resolution recognized the sovereignty of Cuba: “The people of the Island of Cuba are, of

right ought to be, free and independent.” Similarly, the fourth article reinforced the goal

of making Cuba a free country while attempting to dispel any concerns about a possible

annexation of the Cuban territories: “The United States hereby disclaims any disposition

or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island except for the

33 The three Cuban wars of independence are documented comprehensively in A History of the Cuban Nation, ed. R. Guerra y Sánchez et al., vol. V and VI (Havana: Editorial Historia de la Nación Cubana, 1958). For a detailed account of Martí’s political program, see J. M. Kirk, José Martí, Mentor of the Cuban Nation (Tampa: University Presses of Florida, 1983), 63-152.

34 pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the Island to its people.”34

Yet, while the American involvement in the war accelerated the end of the

Spanish rule on the Island, it frustrated the Cuban struggle for independence. Complying

with the Joint Resolution, the United States did not attempt the annexation of Cuba;

nonetheless, for the next decades Washington exercised astringent military, political and economic control over the country. As historian Louis A. Pérez observes, “in appropriating credit for the military triumph over Spain, the United States established claim to negotiate peace terms unilaterally; in appropriating responsibilities for ending

Spanish colonial government, the United States claimed the right to supervise Cuban national government.”35 Cubans had no say in the peace agreements.

Signed by Spanish and American authorities on December 10, 1898, the Treaty of

Paris brought the war to an end and placed Cuba under the protection of the United

States, legitimating the American military occupation of the Island. In 1899, the

American government managed to dismantle the Cuban Liberation Army by taking

advantage of the dire economic situation in which Cuban soldiers found themselves after

the war. Impoverished after a devastating campaign, the soldiers accepted an offer of the

American government to buy their guns for seventy-five dollars.36 The deal, sanctioned

by the troops’ Commander in Chief Máximo Gómez, left Cuba without an army.

34 US Congress, “Joined Resolution”, in Congressional Record, 55th Congress, 2nd session, vol. XXXI, 3988-89.

35 L. A. Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 30-31.

36 Cuban Assembly of Representatives, “Reglas para el licenciamiento del Ejército Libertador” [Provisions for the release of the Liberation Army], Havana, 1899, reprinted in Documentos para la historia de Cuba [Documents in the history of Cuba], ed. H. Pichardo, vol. 2 (Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 2000), 20-21.

35 Gómez’s approval of the exchange prompted a scandal within the Cuban Assembly of

Representatives, which, unsatisfied with the terms of the disarmament, discharged the

military leader.37 Having lost its army and its Commander in Chief, Cuba remained

mercilessly subject to the dispositions of Washington. Military occupation of the Island

continued until 1902.

In an early expression of Washington’s tutelage of political life in the emerging

Republic, American authorities radically interfered with the formulation of the Cuban

Constitution in 1901, imposing a group of provisions known as the Platt Amendment that

entitled the United States to intervene in the Island’s internal affairs, retain control of

portions of its territory and open military bases in the country.38 Among other

prerogatives, the text of the Amendment established,

The Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence [and] the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty […]

The Isle of Pines [Cuba’s second largest] shall be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto being left to future adjustment by treaty […]

The government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.39

To force these points into the Constitution, the United States warned the Constitutional

Assembly in Havana that the military occupation of the country would continue until that

37 Cuban Assembly of Representatives, “Destitución del General en Jefe Mayor Máximo Gómez” [Dismissal of Major General in Chief Máximo Gómez], Havana, Mar. 12, 1899, reprinted in Documentos para la historia de Cuba, ed. H. Pichardo, vol. 2, 19.

38 The Amendment owed its name to its author, Sen. Orville Platt, of Connecticut.

39 US Congress, The Statutes at Large of the United States (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1901), vol. XXI, 897-98.

36 legislative body accepted the provisions in the Platt Amendment. Having to choose between indefinite occupation and limited sovereignty, the Assembly incorporated the

Amendment in the Cuban Constitution (Pérez 1986, 47-55).40

By virtue of the Platt Amendment, the US government continued to exercise

control over Cuban internal affairs after retiring its troops from the Island. In the next

three decades, the United States invoked the Amendment to take possession of sea and

land territories toward the establishment of the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base (1904) and

to carry a second military occupation of the Island (1906-09). The Amendment was a tool

for sanctioning pro-American governments in Cuba and undermining elected

administrations that opposed the United States’ policies. Legal interpretations of the

Amendment served to implement trade treaties that guaranteed American hegemony in

the Cuban market, as well as to sabotage the efforts of local labor organizations and progressive movements that threatened the profits of American companies. Additionally, the US government called upon the Amendment to link its financial loans to Cuba to the adoption of specific reforms that were beneficial to the American economic interests on the Island.41

40 For further details on how the United States coerced Cuba to accept the Platt Amendment see J. Le Riverend, La República, 13-27. Cubans opposed the Platt Amendment immediately after it was proposed. Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, a leader in the war against Spain, was among the prominent public figures who condemned the Amendment. Cisneros asked, “Are we part of the territory of the United States? What do the laws passed by the United States Congress have to do with Cubans? Should they be followed by individuals who are not under their jurisdiction, no matter that the American president has signed them? Are they obligatory for individuals who have not underwritten them by themselves or through their representatives? Obviously not.” S. Cisneros Betancourt, “Voto particular contra la Enmienda Platt” [Personal vote against the Platt Amendment], Havana, 1901, in Documentos para la historia de Cuba, ed. H. Pichardo, vol. 2, 116-29.

41 Offering a detailed picture of American interventionism in Cuba during this period is beyond the scope of this dissertation. For a comprehensive analysis of this topic and examples of the American control of the Cuban economy and politics, see J. L. Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 96-107, 118-

37 Tragically, the first decades of the Republic did not fulfill the political, social and economic aspirations for which Cubans went to war with Spain. Sovereignty, social justice, democracy, modernization and accessible education, as envisioned by Martí, did not find realization. During this period, broad sectors of the population lived in poverty as

Cuba had not recovered from the destruction caused by the war. Control of the economy remained in the hands of foreign capital. Far from revolting against this situation, the first elected governments accepted it and, in many cases, propitiated it with a servile attitude toward the United States.42 As a consequence of the foreign rule of the economy,

opportunities for Cubans to pursue a career in the private sector were limited and, thus, politics became the most likely arena where they could achieve financial success. This

transformation of politics into the lucrative profession of choice led to the entrenchment

of corruption and fraud in the government of the Island (Le Riverend 1971, 99-118; Pérez

1986, 139-43, 225-29).

In 1924, Fernando Ortiz outlined the chaotic situation of Cuba in his speech La

decadencia cubana (The Cuban decadence). Addressing the Economic Society of Friends

of the Country, he divulged a list of alarming statistics compiled from public records on

education, justice and the economy. Among over sixty points that he disclosed were the

following:

53% of Cuban inhabitants are illiterate […]

For every 100 children only one reaches fifth grade! […]

38, 155-66, 170-80, 189-213, and Historia de la Nación Cubana [History of the Cuban Nation], ed. R. Guerra y Sánchez et al., vol. VIII (Havana: Editorial Historia de la Nación Cubana, 1952), 200-25.

42 J. Le Riverend, La República, 63-74. See also J. L. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999), 103-64.

38 In the recent elections, 20% of the political parties’ candidates had criminal records […]

Illegal gambling is practiced with the authorities’ consent because of their servility to cardsharps […]

In 1919, 27.4% of sugar production came from Cuban mills, 13.9% from Spanish mills, 56.1% from other foreign [mostly American] mills, and 2.6% from Cuban-American mills […]

Americans already posses, through ownership or [economic] control, 18,045 of the 107,924 km2 of the Cuban territory, that is 16.72% of the Island […]

Mines are operated by foreign companies. And railroads too. And phone companies and ports and, above all, banks.43

Ortiz’s speech captured the growing concern over the ailments of the young

Republic. By the early 1920s, the anxiety resulting from the decaying situation fired

renewed nationalist feelings among Cubans. Organizations of workers, students,

intellectuals, professionals, women, blacks and war veterans sprouted to protest the social, political and economic circumstances. The years from 1921 to 1925 saw the

inception of the University Students Federation, the Minorista Group, the Cuban Junta for

National Renovation, the Group of Veterans and Patriots, the movement for University

Reform, the Cuban Women’s Federation and the Cuban Communist Party (Le Riverend

1971, 197-223). These associations, and others that emerged in the following years,

shared the intent to reset the course for building the nation, aiming to start from a new

beginning. They gave new life to Martí’s aspirations for a sovereign Cuba, a civil and

modern society and a national culture. After his death in 1895, Martí’s ideas became all

43 F. Ortiz, “La decadencia cubana,” in Revista Bimestre Cubana (Havana), vol. XIX, no. 1, Jan.- Feb. 1924, 17-44. For an analysis of how control of the Cuban economy transitioned from Spanish to American hands, see J. L. Pérez, Cuba under the Platt Amendment, 56-87.

39 the more relevant as in his writing, in addition to deprecating the Spanish yoke, he had clairvoyantly decried the interventionist menace that the United States posed for Cuba.44

Opposition to the United States’ interventionism exacerbated the nationalist

character of the revolutionary movement started in the 1920s. As Pérez indicates, the

Platt Amendment, “a source of enduring injury to Cuban nationalist sensibilities […]

became the focal point of growing nationalist feelings” (Pérez 1986, 252). The platform

approved during the First National Student Congress in 1923 embodied this attitude:

[This organization] openly declares itself against the Permanent Treaty between the United States and Cuba (commonly known as the Platt Amendment) and proclaims its abolishment as one of its major aspirations. Similarly, it absolutely protests against the interventionism of the Yankee Government, its impositions and its aggressions upon our national dignity.45

Anti-imperialist convictions permeated the agenda of Cuban labor organizations as well.

Participants in the Second and Third National Labor Congresses, which convened in

Havana in 1920 and 1925 respectively, not only advocated for workers’ rights but also

deplored American interventionism. Public dissatisfaction with the Platt Amendment was

so extensive that it became a galvanizing electoral issue. In 1926, presidential candidate

Gerardo Marchado ran on a platform that promised to remove the Amendment from the

Constitution and establish complete national independence. In that same year, the

44 In a letter to his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado, dated May 18, 1895, Martí wrote, “Every day I am in danger of losing my life for my country, complying with my duty […] to timely stop, with Cuba’s independence, United States’ spreading over the Antilles and preying, with their force, on the lands of our America. What I have done so far and what I will do is for that purpose.” Martí added, “[Mexico and Cuba are] vitally interested in avoiding the opening of an inroad in Cuba […] that would lead to the annexation of our Latin American countries to the brutal and turbulent North that scorns them.” Martí did not finish the letter. He died in combat the next day. J. Martí, Letter to Manuel Mercado, in Obras completas [Complete works] (Havana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963), vol. IV, 167-70.

45 Primer Congreso Nacional de Estudiantes, Acta de la sesión de la noche del día 23 de octubre de 1923 [First National Student Congress, Memorandum of the evening session, October 23, 1923], in Documentos para la historia de Cuba, vol. III, 176-83.

40 inception of the League Against the Platt Amendment took place in Havana with the purpose of mobilizing public opinion on the subject (Pérez 1986, 239, 252). In a demonstration of how artists and intellectuals were equally vocal in their attacks against the Amendment, in 1927 the Minorista Group submitted a declaration to Social, a progressive local magazine, stating its commitment to work toward “Cuban economic independence and against Yankee imperialism.” 46 Independently, Emilio Roig de

Leuchsenring, one of the central figures of the group, published a detailed and

condemnatory two-volume Historia de la enmienda Platt (History of the Platt

Amendment) in 1935.47

This patriotic atmosphere informed Alicia Alonso’s childhood and adolescence.

Judging from the artist’s recollections, the pervasive nationalist feelings of the era

reached her household and entered her life at an early age; at home her father, Antonio

Martínez, encouraged patriotic attitudes that she followed later in life. “I had great

admiration for my father. He planted the seeds of nationalism in my life […] He loved his

country,” she reminisced.48 In an example of the crux of Cuba’s relationship with the

United States—dependence accompanied by the desire of independence—Alonso’s

parents enrolled her in a North American school in Havana, but forbade her to speak

46 “Declaración del Grupo Minorista” [Minorista Group Declaration], in Social (Havana), Jun. 1927, 7; reprinted in A. Cairo, El Grupo Minorista y su tiempo [The Minorista Group and its era] (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978), 64-68.

47 E. Roig de Leuchsenring, Historia de la enmienda Platt: una interpretación de la realidad cubana [History of the Platt Amendment: an interpretation of Cuban reality] (Havana: Cultural, 1935).

48 A. Alonso, “Bailo, luego existo” [I dance, thus I exist], interview in two parts by L. Báez, first part published as “Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad: 50 años bailando” [Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad: dancing for 50 years], in Opina (Havana), Dec. 1981, 27-29, second part as “Si los hombres extraordinarios se sintieran lo grande que son los mataría el peso” [If extraordinary men knew how great they were, their own weight would kill them], in Opina, Jan. 1982, 27-29; both parts reissued as a single text in A. Alonso, Diálogos con la danza [Dialogues with dance], fourth edition, (Mexico City: Océano, 2004), 224-41. In this chapter, all references to Alonso’s Diálogos are to the fourth edition, unless otherwise specified.

41 English at home. According to her father, “it was fine to speak English in the United

States,” where the family had lived transiently, but he demanded that she spoke Spanish in Cuba: “That was our language. He prohibited speaking English at home” (A. Alonso

1981/1982, 225).49

Similar patriotism animated the artistic and intellectual environment that surrounded Alonso’s educational and professional experiences in Cuba. The example of the Minorista Group makes clear that artists and intellectuals were at the forefront of the revolutionary organizations of the 1920s and 30s. For them, the concerns about the

Republic’s sovereignty and wellbeing went together with a preoccupation for the advancement of Cuban culture. They regarded their advocacy of the national culture and education as instrumental to the campaign for independence. The idea that culture and education were key to freedom dated back to Martí’s nationalist platform. One of his most famous expressions, “ser culto es el único modo de ser libre” (being cultured is the only way of being free), synthesized this belief.50 In 1923, the president of the Economic

Society of Friends of the Country, Raimundo Cabrera, wrote, “Civilization and freedom belong together. It would be reckless to believe that a nation could achieve sovereignty

49 It could be inferred from this observation that the Alonso family was bilingual. According to the ballerina’s testimony in the interview with Luis Báez quoted above, her father studied in the United States, where he became a veterinarian. M. Cabrera indicates that Martínez took the family to the United States in 1925 for work reasons. They resided for a total of nine months in Washington, D.C., and Carlisle, Pennsylvania. One year later, they moved to St. Louis, Missouri. It is not clear how long they stayed in this last place. Simón indicates that Alonso’s elementary education began in Havana’s Colegio Teresiano, a school run by the Spanish religious order of St. Therese of Avila, and that later on she transferred to a North American school in the city. However, he does not specify the name of this second school. In her interview with Luis Báez, Alonso confirmed that she received a religious education at Colegio Teresiano, but she did not offer details about the North American school. No references to this school are found in the remaining biographies of the ballerina, or in her own writings. Nevertheless, as Alonso’s husband and biographer, Simón is a trusted source. M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 43-44; F. Rey and P. Simón’s Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda, 15.

50 J. Martí, “Maestros ambulantes” [Itinerant teachers], in La América (New York), May 1884; reprinted in Obras completas, vol. VIII, 288-92.

42 without its culture having developed first […] In Cuba, more than anywhere else, the defense of culture is the defense of sovereignty.”51 Along the same line, the Minorista

Group, the First National Congress of Students and the Cuban Junta for National

Renovation unanimously recommended educational reform at all levels. The most

concrete expression of the era’s efforts to foster education was the 1923 movement for

University Reform, which sought to modernize the University of Havana by raising

faculty standards, adopting new teaching methods, expanding facilities, increasing

government funding for education and broadening accessibility to this leading institution

of higher education in Cuba (Le Riverend 1971, 210-12). The development of the arts

was another important point in these political groups’ platforms for advancing the

national culture. The Minorista Group, for instance, pressed for the advancement of

“vernacular art and, in general, all manifestations of new art” (“Declaración del Grupo

Minorista” 1927).

Artists and intellectuals played a central role in the wave of political activism. At

the head of the Cuban Junta for National Renovation was anthropologist Fernando Ortiz,

who championed Afrocuban culture and documented its input into the national culture. In

the meanwhile, the members of the Minorista Group included the poets Rubén Martínez

Villena, José Zacarías Tallet, Enrique Serpa, Agustín Acosta and Felipe Pichardo Moya,

the painters Eduardo Abela, Antonio Gattorno and Jaime Valls, the sculptor Juan José

Sicre, the caricaturist Conrado Massaguer, the playwright Luis Alejandro Baralt, the

musician Diego Bonilla, the novelist Alejo Carpentier, the folklorist Juan Luis Martín

Corona, the architect José Bens Arrate and the photographer José Manuel Acosta. A

51 Quoted by Ortiz in “La decandencia cubana,” 18.

43 number of journalists, historians, essayists and critics who made significant contributions to the study of Cuban culture and literature were part of the Minorista

Group as well: Juan Marinello, Max Henríquez Ureña, Emilio Roig de Leuschsenring,

Jorge Mañach and José Antonio Fernández de Castro.52 Villena, Marinello and Roig de

Leuschsenring were also founding members of the Cuban Communist Party.

Many of these figures posed the problem of defining the Cuban cultural identity.

The urgency with which they probed the character of the Cuban identity became evident

in a series of events and publications. In 1928, Mañach published Indagación del choteo

(Inquiry into joking), a sociological essay that looked at joking and triviality as the defining features of national behavior. Medardo Vitier’s Ideas en Cuba (Ideas in Cuba), a study of the development of philosophy on the Island, appeared in 1938. Ortiz introduced his metaphor of Cubanness as an ajiaco or stew of different ethnicities in a lecture at the

University of Havana in 1939. The following year saw the publication of his

Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (A Cuban counterpoint of tobacco and

sugar), an analysis of the role of the sugar and tobacco industries in shaping the national

52 A list of the members of the Minorista Group and their biographies is provided in A. Cairo, El Grupo Minorista y su tiempo, 198-244. Alicia Alonso carried forward the Cuban artistic elite’s tradition of political activism when she opposed the dictatorship of Gen. Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s and later embraced the communist philosophy of Fidel Castro’s government. A case in point of her political activities was her confrontation with the National Institute of Culture, a body of Batista’s government. In 1956, the Institute linked any financial support of the Ballet of Cuba to the company’s changing its status from an independent organization to an official state entity that would function as a propaganda arm of Batista’s dictatorial regime. Alonso refused to work for the government and, furthermore, condemned its neglect of the arts in an open letter to Guillermo de Zéndegui, director of the Institute—published on Aug. 17 in the Diario de la Marina. Moreover, Alonso led a national tour of the company in protest of the Institute’s politicization of its financial support of the arts. This generated a national campaign of solidarity with Alonso endorsed by leading artists and intellectuals, as well as by civic organizations and associations of students and workers. The campaign culminated with a heavily attended performance of Alonso and the Ballet of Cuba in the University of Havana’s stadium, sponsored by the left-wing University Students Federation. From the stage, leaders of the political opposition, including Fructuoso Rodríguez, denounced Batista’s dictatorship. After this, in protest of the lack of freedoms on the Island and as result of the lack of funds, Alonso suspended all public performances of the Ballet of Cuba—which did not resume activities until 1959, when it reappeared as the National Ballet of Cuba, fully financed by Castro’s government. M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 21-23.

44 culture. In that same year, Martha de Castro published Contribución al estudio de la arquitectura cubana (Contribution to the study of the Cuban architecture). Also in 1940,

the University of Havana organized the first retrospective exhibition of Cuban art,

covering three centuries of painting. Another pioneering text in the study of Cuban

culture, Carpentier’s La música en Cuba (Music in Cuba) appeared in 1946.53 From a

political standpoint, their utterances voiced the young Republic’s aspiration to become a

distinctive and individuated nation.

However, the fact that these artists looked to foster a Cuban national culture did not preclude them from reaching beyond the geographical boundaries of the country in a cosmopolitan effort to identify foreign innovations, models and trends that could provide inspiration or templates to follow as part of the process of modernizing Cuba. Their effort to promote the national culture evolved in counterpoint with the goal of bringing the

country up to date in international standards. A priority in Martí’s nationalist platform,

the desire for modernization resurfaced in the programs of the progressive political

organizations of the 1920s and 1930s. The Minoristas asked “for the introduction and

dissemination in Cuba of the most recent doctrines, theories and practices in the sciences

and the arts” (“Declaración del Grupo Minorista” 1927). Meanwhile, the movement for

University Reform found a model in higher education changes that had taken place in

53 J. Mañach, Indagación del choteo (Havana: Revista de Avance, 1928; Miami: Mnemosyne, 1958). M. Vitier, Ideas en Cuba: proceso del pensamiento político, filosófico y crítico en Cuba (Havana: Editorial Trópico, 1938). F. Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Havana: J. Montero, 1940; Las Villas: Universidad Central de Las Villas, 1963). F. Ortiz, “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad” [The human factors of Cubanness], in Revista Bimestre Cubana (Havana), vol. XLV, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 1940, 161-186, reprinted in Órbita de Fernando Ortiz [Fernando Ortiz’s orbit], ed. J. Le Riverend (Havana: Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1973), 149-157. M. De Castro, Contribución al estudio de la arquitectura cubana (Havana: Imprenta La Verónica, 1940). A. Carpentier, La música in Cuba (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1946), reprinted as Music in Cuba, trans. A. West-Duran (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001).

45 Argentina in previous years, while the First National Congress of Students recommended that the Cuban government followed the example of the campaigns against illiteracy undertaken in Russia by Anatoly Lunacharski and in Mexico by José

Vasconcelos (Primer Congreso Nacional Universitario 1923, 175).54

As Cuban art historian Juan A. Martínez explains, the artists of this generation placed themselves in a position of antagonism toward Spain and the United States as the

former colonial and new neocolonial powers to which Cuba had been and was subject.

Reacting to this, they expressed affiliation, instead, to modern French and Mexican art—

Paris and Mexico stood as symbols of the latest artistic trends in Europe and Latin

America.55 Carpentier, who lived in Paris for many years, reflected on how the quest for modernization often translated in turning the eyes to the rest of the world and, in particular, that city:

The newly born country aspired to be part of all the great cultural currents of the day, to be au courant […] Independence comes linked to a desire to apply new methods, to be “up-to-date,” to sweep aside anything that smacks of colonialism and provincialism […] Cubans aspired to attain the same cultural level of those countries with a higher degree of civilization

54 Raúl Roa, who participated in the University Reform movement, argues that by 1922 the national higher education system was so dysfunctional and chaotic that it was this situation in itself, rather than influence from a similar movement in Argentina, which led a broad group of students and faculty members to struggle for the renovation of the University of Havana. Still, Roa acknowledges that the revolutionaries found inspiration and a model in the reformist movement that took place four years earlier in the University of Cordoba, Argentina. A. Roa, Retorno a la alborada [Return to dawn] (Santa Clara: Universidad de Las Villas, 1964), vol. I, 229-258.

55 J. A. Martínez, Cuban Art and National Identity: The Vanguardia Painters, 1927-1950 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1994), 48-49. This dissertation’s analysis of the historical context of Alonso’s life is indebted, in part, to the second chapter of Martínez’s book (pp. 32-49), an examination of the points of contact between the artistic avant-garde and the progressive social movements in Cuba during the time period indicated in his book’s title. Cuban historians such as Julio Le Riverend, Ana Cairo and Adelaida de Juan have, too, studied the relationships between the artistic and intellectual life in Cuba and the sociopolitical environment during those decades, bringing attention to the events discussed in this section of the dissertation. While using those analyses as references, this dissertation also draws from primary sources. See, J. Le Riverend, La República, 197-225; A. Cairo, El Grupo Minorista y su tiempo; and A. de Juan, Pintura cubana: temas y variaciones [Cuban painting: themes and variations] (Mexico City: Univ. Nacional Autónoma de México, 1980).

46 […] Like larks mesmerized by a mirror, the men of the Americas, poets, painters, thinkers and musicians, went to the City of Light (Carpentier 1946, 210-11).

The emulation of the European artistic trends of the day set the stage for the intersection of nationalist and cosmopolitan projects in the Cuban artistic community. As the following sections discuss, there were varied outcomes as a result of the parallel efforts to, on the one hand, foster a Cuban cultural identity and, on the other hand, absorb the latest developments in the European arts and letters. In some instances, such confluence

of nationalism and cosmopolitanism led to the fruitful amalgamation of Cuban and

European aesthetics in the work of local avant-garde artists. However, it also generated

clashes between holders of nationalist and Eurocentrist views, as was the case when a

group of artists sought to create ballets with Cuban subject matter and Cuban musical and

dance material for the conservative Pro-Arte Musical Society in the 1940s.

The Search for a Cuban Identity in the Arts

In 1927, the issuing of the first numbers of Revista de Avance, a bimonthly magazine edited by members of the Minorista Group, coincided with the opening of exhibits by painters Víctor Manuel (García) and Antonio Gattorno in signaling the origins of the Cuban vanguardia or avant-garde art.56 The vanguardia painters followed artistic

trends such as cubism and surrealism, initiated in Paris and other European cities at the

56 Víctor Manuel and Gattorno’s exhibits took place in February and March at the Association of Painters and Sculptors in Havana. Revista de Avance published its first issue on March 15. It featured a review of Gattorno’s exhibit. An article signed with the initials “M. C.” discussed the differences in style between Gattorno and Cezanne. M. C., “Exposición Gattorno” [Gattorno Exhibit], in Revista de Avance (Havana) vol. I, no. 1, Mar. 15, 1927, 15-16. Additionally, see J. A. Martínez, Cuban Art and National Identity, 5.

47 beginning of the twentieth century. In addition to Víctor Manuel and Gattorno, other

prominent members of the group were Eduardo Abela, Wilfredo Lam, Amelia Peláez,

Carlos Enríquez and Marcelo Pogolotti. They had been born around the turn of the

century and grown up during the early years of the Republic. In most cases, their artistic

education began at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, the only art school in Cuba

at the time. Unsatisfied with the conservative style of painting taught at the Academy,

they went to Paris, the epicenter of the art world in the 1920s and 1930s. In the French

capital, they absorbed the innovations of the leading painters of the time. Lam became a

protégé of Pablo Picasso. Peláez, too, achieved familiarity with the techniques of Picasso,

as well as with the work of Henry Matisse and Georges Braque; Enríquez was influenced

by Salvador Dalí and Francis Picabia; Gattorno and Víctor Manuel found inspiration in

the art of Paul Gauguin; and Abela became an adept of Marc Chagall. Meanwhile,

Pogolotti affiliated with the futurist group in Turin (Martínez 1994, 14).

In spite of following European references, this group of painters shared the intent

to articulate a Cuban cultural identity in their work. In doing this, they reconciled the

assertion of local culture and the pursuit of modernization that characterized intellectual

life in Cuba during the era. As counterintuitive as it might have seemed, the foreign

innovations that they embraced became tools for their representation of the local ethos.

As Martínez indicates,

In postimpressionism, fauvism, expressionism, cubism, surrealism, and Mexican mural painting the vanguardia found the inspiration and the means to reinterpret Cuban reality. The mixture of native and imported elements in their art enabled the vanguardia artists to express a Cuban ethos without forsaking their claim to be part of the modern world (Martínez 1994, 50-51).

48 Peláez’s Pesces (Fishes, 1943) and Lam’s La jungla (The jungle, 1943) stand as examples of how the vanguardia painters used the newly learnt techniques and styles to represent a Cuban identity. In Pesces, Peláez integrated elements of Cuban colonial architecture into a still life perceived through a cubist lens. In a colonial dining room, a plate with fishes rests on a table covered with a typically Cuban laced tablecloth. Peláez flattened the perspective, bringing all the planes together into a bidimensional composition in the characteristic manner of cubism; however, the result is reminiscent of the colorful stained glass of the Island’s colonial mansions. Capturing the vibrancy of the tropical light, the red, yellow, green and blue shapes in the painting imitate pieces of glass, demarcated by thick black lines resembling the lead keeping stained glass together.57 Similarly, Lam utilized a cubist language to depict his country’s flora and

African heritage. In La jungla, four naked figures stand surrounded by thick vegetation in a confined spot in the rainforest. Limbs, gluteus and breasts lend these characters an anthropomorphic quality. Nonetheless, their human identity is uncertain: their faces,

reminiscent of African masks, are those of animals. Lam’s cubist distortion of these

bodies renders the subjects ambiguous and unrecognizable. A menacing hand raising

open scissors confers a macabre air to the ensemble. La jungla could be interpreted as a

representation of a Cuban santería ritual, given its Africanist pictorial elements, the

57 Pélaez’s Peces is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. See a color plate of this work in the exhibition catalogue Amelia Peláez 1896-1968, A Retrospective, texts by C. M. Luis, E. Lezama Lima, G. V. Blanc and A. Gaztelu (Miami: The Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture, 1988), 84.

49 hidden identity of the figures, the sinister atmosphere and secrecy of their gathering, and the setting of the scene in the forest.58

The vanguardia painters’ affiliation with the European avant-garde also

manifested in their thematic choices. In delving into Afrocuban culture and Cuban rural

themes, their search for a national voice was indebted, paradoxically, to European artistic trends that favored primitivism and African art. As Martínez suggests, many of the idyllic

depictions of Cuban peasants and the Island’s countryside by Abela, Gattorno and Víctor

Manuel fell within the aesthetics of the modernist primitivism practiced by Gauguin and

Matisse (Martínez 1994, 54-55). Similarly, Lam’s images of Afrocuban bodies descended

from Picasso’s embracement of African art. In the vanguardia painters’ exploration of

these areas, European colonial perspectives on Cuban culture collided with the intent to

find an authentic national voice.

A critical discourse accompanied these developments in the local visual arts.

Painters and critics asked themselves what defined a Cuban identity and what was the

artist’s role in reaffirming a national art. Throughout 1928 and 1929 Revista de Avance

ran a section under the title “¿Qué deber ser el arte americano?” (What should American

art be?) As part of it, in eleven consecutive issues many Cuban and Latin American

artists and intellectuals answered a four-question survey: “1) Do you believe that the

work of the American artist should reveal a concern with America? 2) Is the American

identity an issue of perspective, content or vehicle? 3) Do you believe in the possibility of

common features in the arts of all the countries of our America? 4) What should be the

58 La jungla is part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection as well. See a reproduction in Pintura cubana de hoy [Cuban art today], ed. M. L. Gómez Mena, text by J. G. Sicre (Havana: Talleres de Ucar, García y Compañía, 1944), 111. For more detailed analyses of Peláez and Lam’s styles, see J. A. Martínez, Cuban Art and National Identity, 125-50.

50 attitude of the American artist toward Europe?”59 Capturing the point of view of most

respondents, Abela wrote that the authenticity of Latin American artists correlated to a

moral obligation to work from a nationalist standpoint: “The true [Latin] American artist

has to experience a concern, or rather a need, to express visions of his environment and

his spirit.”60 At the same time, most participants acknowledged an indissoluble link

between Latin American and European art. For instance, the Mexican writer Jaime Torres

Bodet compared the Latin American artist to a centaur, a hybrid creature, “European and

American at the same time.”61 For these intellectuals such a visceral connection to the

former metropolis was not free of contradictions. Many felt that in dealing with European

artistic influences they faced a struggle between freedom and colonial submission.

Eduardo Avilés Ramírez, a Cuban-Nicaraguan journalist, called artists to action: “It is

time for the American artist to face the dilemma: whether to continue imitating Europe,

as a thoughtless monkey in frock coat that gives a painful impression of unconditional

servitude, or to decide to live the life of a liberator, a man from the plains, a free man.”62

In spite of opinions like this, most responses to the questionnaire showed the prevalent attitude not to be one of rupture with Europe but one of critical assimilation. These artists

59 The invitation to answer the questionnaire appeared as “Una encuesta” [A survey], in Revista de Avance, vol. III, no. 26, Sep. 15, 1928, 235. Over the following year, the magazine published sixteen responses to the survey, after which it featured an article by Francisco Ichaso discussing the results. F. Ichaso, “Balance de una indagación” [Analysis of an inquiry], in Revista de Avance, vol. IV, no. 38, Sep. 1929, 258-65.

60 E. Abela, “¿Qué deber ser el arte americano?,” in Revista de Avance, no. 29, Dec. 1928, 361.

61 J. Torres Bodet, “¿Qué debe ser el arte americano?,” in Revista de Avance, no. 28, Nov. 15, 1928, 313-15.

62 E. Avilés Ramírez, “¿Qué debe ser el arte americano?.” in Revista de Avance, no. 31, Feb. 1929, 55.

51 thought that it was valid to make cubism, surrealism and expressionism their own as far as they used these artistic languages to articulate a unique national or continental voice.

Initially, the work of the vanguardia painters achieved visibility in the pages of

Revista de Avance. Later on, several landmark exhibits brought further exposure and

recognition to the group. Their work stood out in the First National Salon of Painting and

Sculpture, which took place in Havana in 1935. Two years later, the First Exhibition of

Modern Art, also in Havana, displayed 229 paintings and twenty-six sculptures by

members of the group and other emerging artists. In the exhibition’s catalogue, José

Sergio Velázquez praised the movement for their contribution to “the flowering of a

national art… that is now surging among us with yearning, zeal, assertiveness,

spirituality, distinction, and even creole colors and a Cuban ambience.”63 Other exhibits

that increased the vanguardia painters’ local exposure followed: Three Hundred Years of

Cuban Art, Art in Cuba—both at the University of Havana in 1940—and Contemporary

Cuban Art—at Havana’s Capitol in 1941. Recognition of the group’s achievements

extended beyond the Island, reaching a significant stage in 1944 when the Museum of

Modern Art in New York presented the exhibit Modern Cuban Painters.64

Despite their artistic success in the national and international arenas, these artists,

aesthetically revolutionary and concerned with the representation of a Cuban identity, did

not find support among affluent Cuban collectors. Martínez explains, “most of the

wealthy who cared to collect bought mainly European art and sometimes Cuban

63 Quoted and translated by J. A. Martínez, Cuban Art and National Identity, 19.

64 Ibid., 16-26. Also, see Modern Cuban Painters, Museum of Modern Art Bulletin XI, no. 5, text by A. H. Barr (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1944).

52 academic art” (Martínez 1994, 22). Such preferences indicated the existence of a conservative public that continued to regard Europe as the only source of valuable art and as the sanctioning authority in taste. These collectors’ interest in Cuban academic art also betrayed an adherence to traditional styles, to paintings that predated the avant-garde and, in Pogolotti’s words, “tended to be old and had achieved reputation as classics.”65

Many of the features that characterized the work of the vanguardia painters were present as well in Cuban classical music in the 1920s and 1930s. Formulating a Cuban identity in music was a prominent aspiration among composers from this period. This goal found realization in the scores of Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro García Caturla.

Their works were infused with Cuban folkloric sounds, but rested on aesthetic and compositional principles adopted from the European musical avant-garde. Roldán and

Caturla were pupils of the Spanish conductor Pedro Sanjuán, who promoted the music of

Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger and

Darius Milhaud, among other contemporary composers. Additionally, Caturla studied in

Paris with Nadia Boulanger, an advocate of Igor Stravinsky’s compositional principles.66

The music of these European modernists proved influential for the two Cuban composers.

The nationalist trend in Cuban concert music had begun decades earlier. In the

nineteenth century, composers such as Manuel Saumell and Ignacio Cervantes had

developed a distinctively creole repertory of danzas and contradanzas for piano,

65 M. Pogolotti, Del barro y las voces [Of mud and voices] (Havana: UNEAC, 1968), 131.

66 H. Orovio, Cuban Music from A to Z (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2004), 90-91, 185.

53 permeated with elements from Cuban popular genres such as the habanera.67 This mirrored the musical currents of the day in Europe, where nationalism was a driving force. The trend was evident in the assimilation of folk material in the compositions of the Czech Antonin Dvorak, the Norwegian Eduard Grieg and the Russian Nikolai

Rimsky-Korsakov, among others. With the arrival of the twentieth century, modernists such as Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok continued to tap into the richness of folkloric music, to which now they applied the revolutionary composition and orchestration techniques of the era. Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps (1913) and Bartok’s The

Miraculous Mandarin (1926) illustrate the integration of avant-garde music writing and

folk material—Russian in the first case and Hungarian in the second. This line of

innovation opened an avenue for Roldán and Caturla to carry on, within the aesthetic

framework of the new century, the nationalist efforts of Saumell and Cervantes. As

Carpentier described, Roldán and Carturla aimed to “find a sonority absolutely Cuban,

built on harmonic procedures that represented the boldest trends of the day” (Carpentier

1946, 248).

In Afrocuban music these composers found the wealth of materials to pursue their

search for a national voice. This coincided with a rise of interest in Afrocuban culture

across the Cuban arts and letters as a result of Fernando Ortiz’s anthropological research.

Of particular relevance for the Island’s musical scene was the publication of his studies

La fiesta afrocubana del día de reyes (The Afrocuban carnival on Epiphany day, 1925)

67 V. Eli Rodríguez and Z. Gómez, Haciendo música cubana [Making Cuban music] (Havana: Pueblo y Educación, 1989), 121-25. For examples of Cervantes’ music listen to F. Fernández, piano, Lecuona-Cervantes, CD (Havana: O.K. Records and Caribe Productions, 1995). Also, works by Cervantes and Saumell are included in G. Rabol, piano, Clásicos de las Américas [Classics of the Americas], vol. 1, CD (New York, Naïve Records, 1993).

54 and La clave xilofónica de la música cubana (The xylophonic key of Cuban music,

1935), which unveiled significant information about Afrocuban musical practices.68

The direct influence of Ortiz’s research on Roldán’s work is most evident in La

rebambaramba (The hurly-burly, 1928), his score for a ballet with libretto by Carpentier

that depicted the Afrocuban celebration of Epiphany day. Here, as in works such as

Obertura sobre temas cubanos (Overture on Cuban themes, 1925) and Tres pequeños

poemas (Three little poems, 1926), he enriched the sound of the European symphonic

orchestra with the timbres of such Afrocuban percussion instruments as claves, güiros

and gangarrias. Additionally, the score made use of two musical themes from the

Afrocuban carnival traditions.69 The fact that La rebambaramba was envisioned as a

ballet is indicative of how its creators attempted to follow the model of Serge Diaghilev’s

Ballets Russes, an ensemble with which Carpentier was familiar from his days in Paris

and whose repertory included a significant number of works that drew inspiration from

folklore. The ballet’s depiction of the bubbling street life of Havana during the carnival,

with its multifarious crowd of soldiers, slaves, mulatas, beggars and street vendors, was

particularly reminiscent of Les Ballets Russes’s Petrouchka (1911). Featuring a score by

Stravinsky, choreography by Mikhail Fokine and decors by Alexander Benois, this ballet

68 F. Ortiz, La fiesta afrocubana del día de Reyes (Havana: Imprenta El Siglo XX, 1925), and La clave xilofónica de la música cubana (Havana: Molina y Compañía, 1935). In La música en Cuba, Carpentier offers testimony of Ortiz’s tremendous influence by frequently relying on the anthropologist’s data and findings. Furthermore, Carpentier explicitly relates that Ortiz’s books, read by the musicians of the era, sparked an interest in Afrocuban music. Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 236.

69 Carpentier approached Diaghilev, Ruth St. Dennis and Ted Shawn with plans to produce the ballet in Paris or the United States. C. Díaz, “Amadeo Roldán en la danza teatral” [Amadeo Roldán’s work in theatrical dance], in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 101, Jan.-Apr. 2003, 44-47. A recording of La rebambaramba is available on CD. See M. Tilson Thomas, dir., Latin American Classics, New World Symphony (Decca/Universal, 2002). The same album includes another of Roldán’s works, Rítmica V, as well as Caturla’s Tres danzas cubanas [Three Cuban dances].

55 recreated a Shrovetide fair on St. Petersburg’s Admiralty Square, populated by a joyous multitude of coachmen, merchants, officers and gypsies. This was the background of Petrouchka and the Moor’s tragic dispute over the love of the Ballerina, in the same way that the Havana carnival framed three men’s competition for the favors of a seductive mulata in La rebambaramba.70

Both Roldán and Caturla treated Afrocuban material in a variety of ways, which

went from quoting pre-existent sources in an ethnographic fashion to resynthesizing

elements of Afrocuban music into brand new formats and sonorities. The latter method

was the case with Caturla’s La rumba (1933), which Carpentier described in the

following terms:

He thought of the spirit of the rumba, of all the rumbas heard in Cuba since the arrival of the first blacks […] He proceeded with sudden pulsations, with violent and rapid progressions, with a sea-like swelling and release, in which all the rhythms of the genre were inscribed, inverted, crushed. He was not interested in the rhythms themselves, but instead in a general trepidation, a series of sonic outbursts, which would translate the essence of the rumba into a total vision (Carpentier 1946, 247).71

Such a nonliteral depiction of the rumba, in which there was room for experimental

mutations of the traditional genre, exemplifies Caturla’s reformulation of the symbols,

images and sounds that signified Cubanness. Like other artists of this era, Caturla exerted

agency in representing a Cuban cultural identity. La rumba referred to the sensuality,

extroversion and rhythmic exuberance that have been usually perceived as characteristic

of this popular genre, a set of features often at the core of colonial and commercial

perspectives on the musical traditions of the Island. However, the composition

70 A. Carpentier, “La rebambaramba: un libreto de Alejo Carpentier” [La rebambaramba: a libretto by Alejo Carpentier], in Cuba en el Ballet, vol. 9, no. 2, May-Aug., 1978, 22-28.

71 Translation by A. West-Durán. A. Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 278.

56 undermined these perspectives by proposing modernism and intellectual sophistication,

too, as signifiers of the Cuban culture.72

The movement known as siboneyismo constituted another effort by Cuban

musicians to represent a national identity. Named after the Island’s extinct Siboney

aborigines, this movement looked at the native culture as a source of authentic national

music. However, the underlying notion was problematic: Cuban aborigines were rapidly extinguished under Spanish colonial ruling and, since their music remained undocumented, it was left to the imagination of composers such as Eduardo Sánchez de

Fuentes to recreate the native sounds. According to Jorge Ibarra, siboneyismo was a reactionary alternative to the era’s increasing acknowledgment of the Cuban culture’s

African roots. In Ibarra’s view, the embracing of an intangible native substratum was prompted by racist feelings of discomfort with the depiction of black music as essential to the local culture.73 From a musical standpoint, Sánchez de Fuentes’ compositions did not

succeed in proposing a model for what Cuban classical music should sound like.

According to Capentier, even if Sánchez de Fuentes’ opera Doreya (1918) presented a

narrative that involved native Cuban characters, its score was composed in a strictly

European style (Carpentier 1946, 216). Regardless of the problematic character of

72 Recordings of La rumba and other works of Caturla are scarce and difficult to obtain. For this assessment of La rumba, the author relies on Carpentier’s description of the composition and on his own memories of listening to Caturla’s orchestral works in concerts of the National Symphony Orchestra in Havana, as well as in broadcasts of CMBF-Radio Musical Nacional. The WorldCat online database shows only two recordings of La Rumba, both of them LPs produced in Havana by the National Symphony Orchestra: Alejandro García Caturla (1970) and Alejandro García Caturla, su música (1979). The same database shows only one printed edition of the score: A. García Caturla, La rumba (Havana, Editora Musical de Cuba, 1977).

73 J. Ibarra, Nación y cultura nacional [Nation and national culture] (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1981), 157-58.

57 siboneyismo, the mere existence of this trend attests to the concern with formulating a

Cuban identity in music at the time.

Cuban composers also took this exploration to the stage, where zarzuela, a

relative of operetta popular across Spain and Latin America, “reflected the country’s

social and historic problems at the time and displayed them within the frame of Cuban

musical expression” (Orovio 2004, 231). As a semiserious genre situated midway

between high and popular art, zarzuela attained an idiosyncratic national sound by

threading Cuban popular melodies into its musical tapestry. This, in conjunction with

libretti that presented local subjects, resulted in works as distinctively Cuban as Ernesto

Lecuona’s El cafetal (The coffee plantation, 1929) and María La O (1930), and Gonzalo

Roig’s Cecilia Valdés (1932).

While Cuban musicians were eager to cultivate European artistic trends, they

perceived North American music as a negative influence. During these decades, the

popular music of the United States increased its presence in Cuba through recordings and

radio broadcasts. Amidst the wave of nationalist and anti-imperialist feelings that

characterized the Island’s political life, musicians regarded this as an intrusion that

undermined the preservation and development of local music. Sánchez de Fuentes

prompted fellow composers to oppose the propagation of the North American sound:

“Let’s build a wall against the deplorable intromission of foreign rhythms, melodies and

dances; let’s build our work with our own materials.”74 The local musicians’ alignment

with Europe over North America expressed Cuban artists’ view that the practice of

contemporary European artistic trends was a sign of modernization, as well as the

74 This passage from Sánchez de Fuentes’ El folklore en la música cubana (1923, Folklore in Cuban music) is quoted in Ibarra, Nación y cultura nacional, 159.

58 prevalent opinion that the United States posed a threat to the national sovereignty and culture.

If Cuban painters and composers had assimilated the aesthetics and techniques of the European avant-garde as early as in the 1920s, local playwrights were slower in catching up with the innovations of French, Italian, German and Russian theater. Cuban theater historian Matías Montes Huidobro observes that it was not until the 1940s, with the emergence on the Cuban scene of expressionism, existentialism, metatheatricality, theater of the absurd and theater of cruelty, that local playwrights adopted the innovations of authors such as Luigi Pirandello, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Paul Sartre, Jean Genet and

Antonin Artaud.75

Since earlier in the twentieth century Cuban theatre had been a forum for

nationalist ideas. Patriotic feelings ignited works such as Gustavo Sánchez Galarraga’s

Sangre mambisa (Mambí blood, 1923) and José Cid’s Altares de sacrificio (Altars of

sacrifice, 1931). These plays, set in the period of the wars of independence against Spain,

featured characters committed to the struggle for sovereignty.76 Natividad González

Freire indicates that plays from this period often touched on the social problems that

afflicted the Republic: “the injustices in the countryside, urban poverty and the blacks’

75 M. Montes Huidobro, El teatro cubano durante la República: Cuba detrás del telón [Cuban theatre in the Republic: Cuba behind the curtain] (Boulder: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 2003), 709.

76 During the wars of independence, any soldier in the Cuban liberationist army was called a mambí. G. Sánchez Galarraga, Teatro [Theater], vol. V (Havana: Instituto de Artes Gráficas, 1918). Access to Cid’s Altares de sacrificio was not possible due the unavailability of the text. Montes Huidobro describes the content of the play in El teatro cubano durante la República, 198-200.

59 racial crucifixion.”77 José Antonio Ramos’s Tembladera (1917), a condemnation of

American interventionism in the local economy, is an early example of this brand of

socially conscious theater. Its story revolves around a Cuban family whose members fight

over the sale of their sugar mill and sugar cane plantation to an investor from the United

States.78 Playwrights also sought to offer a picture of the nation in works depicting Cuban aborigines, peasants and blacks, recreating each group’s culture and living conditions.

Such attempts went from the nostalgic idealization of a lost aboriginal tradition in the case of Sánchez Galarraga’s El último areíto (The last areíto, 1923), to the

ethnographically accurate depiction of a passion-related crime in a black neighborhood in

Santiago de Cuba in Flora Díaz Parrado’s Juana Revolico (1944).79

As Montes Huidobro explains, these early attempts to represent Cuban reality

were “narrowly dependent on the Spanish theater, which was not the most innovative

within the European currents of the time” (Montes Huidobro 2004, 313). The prevailing

realism adopted from Spanish melodrama allowed detailed depictions of Cuban

characters and situations; nonetheless, as a style concerned with documenting and

photographing reality, realism left no room for the process of reformulation necessary to

reflect a Cuban identity in terms of not only subject matter but also dramaturgy. It was

not until the 1940s that Cuban theater developed an idiosyncratic language, after

departing from this rigid realist style and incorporating elements of expressionism,

77 N. Gonzáles Freire, Teatro cubano, 1927-1961 [Cuban Theatre, 1927-1961] (Havana: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, 1961), 28.

78 J. A. Ramos, Tembladera, in Los clásicos del teatro hispanoamericano [Classics of Hispanic American theater], ed. G. Luzuriaga and R. Reeve (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1975), 476- 538.

79 Areítos were religious music and dance ceremonies of the extinct Cuban Taino aborigines. G. Sánchez Galarraga, Teatro, vol. V; F. Díaz Parrado, Teatro: dramas y farsas [Theater: dramas and farces], (Havana: Editorial Lex, 1944), 339-455.

60 theater of the absurd and metatheatricality. This modern language, even if built upon aesthetic innovations of foreign origin, opened up the possibilities of representing a

Cuban identity in a non-literal, multifaceted way. The malleable avant-garde styles facilitated the incorporation of elements of Cuban music, language and rituals into local productions.

It was along this line that Virgilio Piñera conceived Electra Garrigó (1948). In this satirical adaptation of Sophocles’s Electra, a juxtaposition of symbols, references and nonsensical situations allowed the national ethos to emerge in sharp focus.80

Approaching the tragedy as a satire proved to be, in itself, essential to the Cubanization of the classic. This procedure reflected what Mañach saw as the defining characteristic of the national psyche in his essay Indagación del choteo: a certain disposition to undermine seriousness by joking about it. In Piñera’s words, “What set us [Cubans] apart from other

Americans is the knowledge that nothing is truly painful or absolutely pleasant. It is said that Cubans make jokes about the most sacred things […] We are tragic and comic at the same time” (Piñera 1960, 10). Within the irreverent space of choteo, Piñera presented

Agamemnon and Aegisthus as the roosters in a Cuban cockfight, had the chorus recite in décimas (the characteristic stanza of Cuban rural music), trivialized tropical imagery when Electra disposed of Clytemnestra by having her eat a poisoned papaya, and intertwined metaphysical monologues with gibberish in Cuban jargon. In his bizarre, nonrealistic representation of Cuba, Piñera criticized political corruption on the Island and characterized the Cuban family—shattered by generational conflicts and torn between matriarchy and machismo. More importantly, his ludicrous portrait of Cuban

80 V. Piñera, Teatro completo [Complete dramas] (Havana: Ediciones R, 1960), 33-84.

61 culture presented a dialogue between the colorful locality of cockfights and papayas and the original elements of a Greek play often considered, with the rest of the tragedies by Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides, as a cornerstone of Western drama. Instead of equating the Cuban identity to the endemic, he located it in the conversation between the endemic and the European sources informing the culture of the Island.

The same attitude informed Cuban literature in the first half of the twentieth century. In The Cuban Condition, Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature

(1989), Gustavo Pérez Firmat analyzes how the group of local poets, essayists and novelists categorized as critical criollists synthesized the indigenous and the foreign in their pursuit of a creole (criollo) literary voice. Their works epitomized Ortiz’s belief that in Cuba the indigenous is an inflection of the foreign.81 For Ortiz, the Cuban culture was

the child in a marriage of foreign cultures: “The creature always resembles its parents

but, at the same time, it is always different from them” (Ortiz 1940a, 103). Aware of their

European literary heritage, critical criollists wrote works that tapped into this connection

between the local and the foreign.82 For instance, many of the poems in Nicolás Guillén’s

Motivos de son (Son motifs, 1930) loosely follow the template of a sonnet while

incorporating ritornellos in the style of son, a Cuban musical genre. The poems, rooted in

vernacular Cuban music, are expressive of Afrocuban sounds. Meanwhile, Eugenio

Florit’s Trópico (Tropic, 1930) referenced the poetry of Spanish Golden Age author Luis

de Góngora; yet, Florit wrote this praise of the Cuban countryside in décimas—the stanza

81 G. Pérez Firmat, The Cuban Condition, Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 20.

82 Other Cuban authors focused their work on Cuban literature’s connection to Africa, as Lydia Cabrera did in her Cuentos negros de Cuba (Blacks stories from Cuba, 1940). In the context of this dissertation, the focus is on authors who explored the link between Cuban and European literature, as a frame to contextualize Alonso’s work within a European dance form.

62 characteristic of Cuban rural music. Similarly, in his novel Juan Criollo (1927), Carlos

Loveira documented Cuban life during the early years of the Republic by recycling the

conventions of the Spanish picaresque novel and, in particular, of the sixteenth-century

anonymous work Lazarillo de Tormes, the archetype within this genre.83

These authors did not adopt European matrixes passively. In Pérez Firmat’s

opinion, what made them critical criollists was their determination to mold the foreign

models, structures and styles to their expressive needs as artists in search of an individual

and national voice.84 Their task went beyond presenting Cuban topics in European

vessels. They actually reshaped those vessels into something Cuban. Ortiz’s

Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940) exemplifies this reconfiguration of

European templates. Ortiz acknowledged that he followed the model of Juan Ruiz’ El libro de buen amor, a classic of medieval Spanish literature. But where Ruiz staged the religious dispute between Carnival and Lent, Ortiz unravels the counterpoint between

Don Tabaco (Mr. Tobacco) and Doña Azúcar (Mrs. Sugar), the two staple products in

Cuban agriculture:

Perhaps the famous controversy imagined by the great poet is the literary precedent that now allows us to bring the dark-skinned tobacco and the white sugar to life, make them take part in a fable and talk about their

83 N. Guillén, Motivos de son (Havana: Imprenta y Papelería de Rambla, 1930), reprinted in Sóngoro cosongo, Motivos de son, West Indies Ltd., España, poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1963), 37-47. E. Florit, Trópico (Havana: Revista de Avance, 1930). C. Loveira, Juan Criollo (Havana: Cultural, 1927).

84 Pérez Firmat discusses these works: “Their stance is ‘critical’ in that it entails a self-conscious, selective, and sometimes even willful manipulation of literary tradition […] A work of critical criollism knows it must follow its precursors, but from a distance. These works have a double edge. On the one hand, and as one has come to expect, they record regionalism of all kinds; but on the other hand, their regional bias is countered by or filtered through an awareness of the inherited or traditional form that local usage has displaced. The result is an interesting tug-of-words between [Cuban] insular and [Spanish] peninsular precedent. Recognizing that the search for a literary vernacular can be furthered only by recasting, refashioning, adapting—in short, by translating—exogenous models, critical criollists shade local color with foreign hues.” Pérez Firmat, The Cuban Condition, 9.

63 contradictions […] We will only narrate, not in verses but in poor prose, the surprising contrasts that we have found between the two fundamental agricultural products in the economic history of Cuba (Ortiz 1940a, 1-2).

The text is an analysis of how the development of the tobacco and sugar industries impacted national economy, society and culture over the centuries. But the counterpoint between tobacco and sugar also serves as a metaphor for the Cuban dialogue between the indigenous and the foreign—tobacco being an aboriginal plant and sugar cane, an import that European colonizers brought from India. While in El libro de buen amor Juan Ruiz led the confrontation between Lent and Carnival to a resolution in which one defeats the other, in Contrapunteo cubano the debate ends with the wedding of tobacco and sugar, a reconciliation of the native and the foreign. Their final mixing fits within Ortiz’s own image of Cuban national identity as an assimilative stew or ajiaco.

As Pérez Firmat notes, Ortiz saw the adoption of a contrapuntal structure as relevant to his study of Cuban culture. In Ortiz’s view, the incorporation of the European template (“saying and replies” in episodes of “satirical confrontation”) was not forced since the “dialogical genre” has many expressions in Cuban culture itself “in the antiphonal prayers of the liturgies of blacks and whites, in the erotic and choreographic controversy of the rumba, and in the versified counterpoints of the country-dwelling farmers and the Afro-Cuban rogues” (Ortiz 1940a, 1-2). In spite of this, the author claimed that his book was not worthy of comparison to the original text, describing

Contrapunteo cubano as a work in progress and a collection of preliminary notes.

Throughout the pages of the volume, his multiple references to its unfinished character assemble into a rhetoric of incompletion, in which Pérez Firmat sees a reflection of

Ortiz’s belief that the Cuban ajiaco or national identity is not a finished product but an

64 ongoing process (Pérez Firmat 1989, 48-52). After the publication of Contrapunteo cubano in 1940, Ortiz continued to add new sections to the book. By 1963, when the work was reprinted in what is considered its definitive edition, the text had undergone a process of massive agglutination: the principal essay, bearing the same title of the volume and one-hundred pages in length, was followed by twenty-five complementary chapters occupying another four-hundred pages. This expansion not only emphasized the notion of the Cuban culture being an ongoing accumulative process, but, ultimately, by conferring originality to the structure of the volume, it also resulted in a unique format that set the text apart from its European model.

It was within the context of the artistic production of these decades, characterized by the entangling of European matrixes and representations of a Cuban identity, that

Alicia Alonso grew as a dancer. As the next section shows in more detail, at the Pro-Arte

Musical Society she directly participated in the first attempts to create Cuban ballets. This brought her in contact with some of the artists whose works and ideas were discussed above, as well as with other artists who made significant contributions to the search for a national voice in the arts. Alonso danced under the baton of Amadeo Roldán, who often conducted the orchestra in Pro-Arte’s performances. Gonzalo Roig, one of the most prolific composers of Cuban zarzuelas, was another conductor with whom Alonso worked. She also collaborated with the siboneyista composer Sánchez de Fuentes, author of the score for Dioné (1940), a ballet that she premiered. Additionally, Alonso danced in

Forma (Form, 1943), a piece that integrated the work of two other prominent Cuban

artists from the period, the poet José Lezama Lima and the composer José Ardévol. Later

65 on, she performed in Antes del Alba (Before dawn, 1947), a work that featured scenery by the vanguardia painter Carlos Enríquez.85

Alonso’s interaction with local artists extended beyond the sphere of Pro-Arte.

She was a founding member of La Silva, a collective of dancers, actors, musicians and writers who associated in 1942 with the goal of producing Cuban ballets. Alonso performed in all four of La Silva’s productions: Pelleas y Melisanda, El juicio de

Salomón (The judgment of Solomon), La tinaja (The jar) and La condesita (The little countess). She was also the choreographer of the latter two. Among La Silva’s members was Carpentier, who, as mentioned earlier, had been a member of the Minorista Group and was a scholar in the fields of Cuban music and Afrocuban culture—additionally, his novel Ecue-Yamba-O (1933) is classified within the critical criollist movement.

According to Fernando Alonso, a member of La Silva and the husband of the ballerina at the time, this collective partook in the innovative character that set the tone of the Cuban arts during the period: “It was an experimental group in search of new roads. We wanted to try a series of fresh ideas. We were not satisfied with a classicist aesthetic [in ballet].

Instead, classicism was the springboard from which we wanted to evolve, change, improve and find new paths.”86 Correspondingly, La Silva aimed for unorthodox events

of total theatre that integrated dance, singing, declamation, poetry, orchestral music and

85 Further ahead this chapter discusses these three ballets as part of the analysis of Alonso’s activities in Pro-Arte.

86 Quoted in A. Piñeiro, “La Silva, una experiencia escénica” [La Silva, a stage experience], in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 99, 2002, 34.

66 stage design.87 In this sense, this initiative emulated the concerted efforts of musicians, choreographers, painters and writers in ensembles such as Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets

Russes and Jean Börlin’s Ballets Suedois. During his years living in Paris, Carpentier had

followed these troupes’ performances closely. In the same way that his libretto for La

rebambaramba drew inspiration from Les Ballets Russes, Carpentier’s choice of music for three of the ballets produced by La Silva betrayed his imitation of Diaghilev. El juicio

de Salomón, La tinaja and Pelleas y Melisanda respectively featured compositions by

Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel, all former collaborators of Diaghilev. In approaching dance production through the concept of total theatre and emulating the multidisciplinary spirit of the Ballets Russes, La Silva was another example of how Cuban artists adopted

European trends to bring the local arts to up-to-date international standards.

It is difficult to measure the extent to which contact with the artists in Pro-Arte and La Silva exerted a direct influence on Alonso’s ideas for cultivating ballet in Cuban.

However, it is safe to assume that the cultural milieu of the era impressed its mark on

Alonso’s aspiration to forge a marriage between ballet and Cuban culture— given the pervasive nationalist spirit that characterized the Island’s intellectual life and the extensive desire to modernize the national arts by assimilating European expressions. An analysis of the artistic environment of the Pro-Arte Musical Society allows the historian to better assess Alonso’s exposure to these two trends in the Cuban cultural life.

87 In his article on La Silva, Piñeiro describes in detail each of the works that comprised the group’s only concert on October 27, 1942, in the Auditorium Theatre in Havana. The article contains a facsimile of the souvenir program and excerpts from reviews in the local press.

67 The Pro-Arte Musical Society: Imported or Home-Made Ballet?

The Pro-Arte Musical Society, where Alonso received her early ballet training and made her first stage appearances, started as an initiative of a group of Havana’s upper-class women to promote classical music, ballet and theatre. Founded in 1918, the organization operated over four decades until 1961. Célida Parera, who held an administrative position in Pro-Arte for several years and documented the organization’s history, explains that its original purpose was to develop a classical music subscription program that featured Cuban artists.88 However, by 1920 the focus had shifted to

presenting the best classical musicians of the day, most of them from Europe and,

occasionally, North and Latin America. When Pro-Arte’s own theater, the Auditorium,

opened its doors in 1928, an advertisement in the Musicalia magazine read, “There are

only two ways of seeing concerts of this quality: being a millionaire who can frequently travel to the big cities of Europe and North America, or subscribing to Pro-Arte.”89 The ad, with its promise of world-class orchestras, choirs, opera singers and chamber music ensembles from Europe and North America, was indicative of Pro-Arte’s intent to present mostly foreign artists. Cuban musicians continued to perform in Pro-Arte’s seasons, but their appearances were outnumbered by those of foreigners. As described by Parera, Pro-

88 C. Parera. Historia de la Sociedad Pro Arte Musical [History of the Pro Arte Musical Society] (New York: Senda Nueva de Ediciones, 1990), 13. Parera’s book, which is one of the main sources consulted for this section, does not always offer a thorough historical analysis of the development of Pro- Arte. Still, this is the most detailed publication available on the history of the organization. Parera combines her analysis of sources with her own testimony of having worked for Pro-Arte between 1941-59. Because many of the periodicals and documents documenting Pro-Arte’s activities are unavailable or difficult to obtain in the United States, the book fills a void. It features chronologies that list the artists and ensembles that collaborated with the institution. It also reprints almost all of the programs for opera and dance performances from the 1920s to the 1950s, as well as an important numbers of programs for theater and classical music presentations during the same period.

89 See a facsimile of the announcement in C. Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 32.

68 Arte’s mission was to foster musical development and educate national audiences,

“which back in that time were not used to listening to the best music, namely classical music” (Parera 1990, 13). This formulation reveals an elitist, Eurocentric mindset that ranked classical music as the highest musical expression and, accordingly, misjudged

Cuban music and national audiences as immature.90

Effectively, Pro-Arte made Havana an international center for first-rate

performances of classical music. Among the distinguished artists whom the organization

invited to Cuba were pianists Serge Rachmaninov, Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur

Rubinstein; violinists Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern; cellists Pablo

Casals and Gregor Piatigorsky; and singers Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Renata Tebaldi and

Jussi Bjoerling. Pro-Arte also arranged tours to Havana of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the

Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony and the

Westminster Choir. In total, more than 350 foreign musicians and ensembles visited the

Cuban capital as a result of Pro-Arte’s work.91 During the same period, Cuban musicians

and ensembles that participated in the seasons of Pro-Arte amounted to a number slightly

above a hundred. Pianists Ernesto Lecuona and Jorge Bolet, guitarist Isaac Nicola,

soprano Iris Burguet, the Havana Quartet Society, the Havana Symphony and the Havana

Philharmonic were part of this group. The disproportion in the number of foreign and

Cuban performers illustrates a hierarchy that prioritized international stars over local

90 In spite of this, feelings of national pride and an ambition for national grandeur occasionally animated Pro-Arte. For instance, patriotic aspirations went hand in hand with the promotion of European music in the program for the Auditorium’s inauguration gala, on December 2, 1928. It opened with the Cuban national anthem, continued with symphonic works by Dvorak and Liszt and closed with the premiere of Anacaona, “an aborigine poem for choir and orchestra” by Cuban composer Sánchez de Fuentes. The program of the gala is reproduced in Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 15-16.

91 See the list of the artists and ensembles presented by Pro-Arte, and the dates of their performances, in C. Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 41-89.

69 musicians. Understandably, recognized European artists like Menuhin and Rubinstein boosted the prestige of Pro-Arte while securing a strong box-office. These figures, too, brought a level of artistry and accomplishment that most Cuban musicians found difficult to match, given that the study and practice of classical music on the Island was not as developed as in Europe.

In addition to taking credit for having transformed Havana into an international center for classical music, Pro-Arte prided itself upon creating successful educational programs in dance, drama and classical guitar. Such programs were decisive in promoting these artistic expressions on the Island and, over the years, they helped make these disciplines an intrinsic part of the Cuban cultural life. The School of Dance opened in

1931 with Nikolai Yavorsky as its only teacher.92 This Russian émigré remained in charge of the school until 1938, when the Bulgarian teacher Georges Milenoff succeeded him.93 The school’s yearly calendar customarily ended with students’ performances at the

92 Little is known about Yavorsky’s life before his arrival in Cuba. According to Raúl Ruiz, Yavorsky described himself as a former member of the Imperial Ballet in Russia who flew to Western Europe to escape the Soviet Revolution. He credited himself with having danced in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and having been an assistant ballet master in the Theater of the Champs Elysées in Paris and the Liceu Theater in Barcelona. He arrived in Havana in 1930 as a dancer in a company known as the Opera Privée de Paris. For this synopsis of Yavorsky’s career, Ruiz refers to an article in Pro-Arte Musical (May 1931), the magazine of the institution. Ruiz casts doubt on the validity of the Russian teacher’s credentials, given Alicia and Fernando Alonso’s observation that his knowledge of ballet was rather limited. Meanwhile, Simón suggests that Yavorsky had been a military officer. R. Ruiz, Fernando Alonso: danza con la vida [Fernando Alonso: dance with life] (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2000), 28; and F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: Órbita de una leyenda, 16.

93 An article in the magazine Pro-Arte Musical (Sep. 1939) announced the hiring of Milenoff. The article identified the ballet teacher as Bulgarian and related that he studied with the noted Russian dancer Nikolai Legat, danced for the Bulgarian National Opera and the ballet company of Ida Rubinstein, worked for the MGM and RKO studios in Hollywood, and taught in St. Louis before relocating to Cuba. Meanwhile, his obituary in Dance Magazine (Dec. 1975) states that he was born in Russia and attended de Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg. According to Dance Magazine, he studied with Legat, Fokine, Enrico Cecchetti, Olga Preobrajenska and Bronislava Nijinska. For sixteen years he danced as a soloist with “many of the major ballet companies of Europe” and also traveled with his own company, which performed in “most of the major dance centers of the world.” He even partnered Ana Pavlova once. This obituary may not be accurate. Ahmed Piñeiro, historian at the Cuban Museum of Dance, staff writer for

70 Auditorium. Under the tenures of Yavorsky and Milenoff, the recitals featured these teachers’ versions of nineteenth-century classics, as well as their productions of works from the repertory of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In this, the dance recitals mirrored the emphasis on the European heritage typical of Pro-Arte’s classical music programming.

Among the titles in the ballet programs from those years were Sleeping Beauty, in 1932;

Prince Igor, in 1934; Coppélia, in 1935; Swan Lake, in 1937; Carnaval, in 1940; and

Scheherazade, in 1941.94 Given the origins and backgrounds of these teachers, their

practice of staging European ballets for Pro-Arte was only natural, and so was the

distinctive European mark of their original choreographies.

Alonso enrolled in the School of Dance as soon as it opened—she also enrolled in

Pro-Arte’s acting classes but, ultimately, she chose to focus exclusively on dance. In the

next six years, she emerged as the most promising student in Yavorsky’s classes. Thus,

Alonso performed in many of the works presented in the yearly dance concerts. Her stage

debut took place in 1931, at the age of eleven, as a member of the corps in the grand waltz of Yavorsky’s staging of Sleeping Beauty. One year later, when this production returned to the Auditorium, she danced the Blue Bird, her first soloist part. In 1933, she

participated in Ejercicios (Exercises) and created the role of the Ballerina on the

Cuba en el Ballet and a colleague of Pedro Simón, relates a testimony from Simón that partially contradicts the information in Pro-Arte Musical and Dance Magazine. During a visit to Bulgaria, Simón apparently heard from Alexandroff, a local ballet figure, that Milenoff was actually a shoemaker at the Sofia Opera Theater. Due to a scarcity of men in the Theater’s ballet company, Milenoff began to appear as an extra in operas and ballets and, eventually, decided to undertake a career as a dancer. It seems that he inflated his resume to secure teaching jobs at Pro-Arte and other ballet academies in the New World. “George Milenoff,” in Pro-Arte Musical (Havana), vol. XVI, no. 1, Sep. 1934, 8, 24. “Obituaries,” in Dance Magazine (New York), Dec. 1975, 18. A. Piñeiro, Personal communication on George Milenoff, Apr. 5, 2007.

94 The programs of the school’s recitals are listed in C. Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 115-33.

71 Tightrope in El circo (The circus), both works by Yavorsky. In the following year, she performed the Polka Coquette, one of the solos in Divertissements, another original piece by the Russian teacher. She also danced in the corps in his staging of Prince Igor, a favorite from the repertory of Les Ballets Russes. The young dancer experienced a significant breakthrough in 1935, when she performed the role of Swanilda in Coppélia; this was the first time that she incarnated a major ballerina role from the nineteenth century. During the next season she danced in Claro de luna (Moonlight). Her last performance as a student of the school took place in 1937, when she debuted in the double role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake.95

Ballet was such a recent and sudden implant in Cuba that there were no ambitions

within Pro-Arte to develop a distinctive Cuban brand of ballet. The casting of Alonso in

the works mentioned above illustrates her exposure to artistic experiences centered on a repertory strictly European in its origin and aesthetics. For Pro-Arte, the original purpose of the dance school had been to explore a new source of revenue that supplemented the profits from classical music concerts. The school sought to enroll the daughters of wealthy and middle-class Havana families in the study of what was considered a dignified European art (Parera 1990, 19). Training professional dancers was not part of

Pro-Arte’s goals, as most of the students in the school came from a social milieu in which a career in dance was not considered desirable or even appropriate. As Alonso observed, becoming a professional ballerina was a violation of the conservative values of that milieu: “This was not even my family’s aspiration. For women, to pursue a theatrical

95 In addition to the list of the artist’s roles in the CD-ROM accompanying Alonso’s Diálogos, the programs from Pro-Arte, compiled in Parera’s book, confirm Alonso’s participation in these productions under her maiden name, Alicia Martínez. See C. Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 115-17.

72 careers meant to acquire a bad reputation.”96 Ballet classes, an ornament in these girls’ education, were geared towards presenting, in the best case, end-of-year amateur recitals.97 Fernando Alonso, who studied at the School of Dance and was the son of

Laura Rainery, Pro-Arte’s president for 1934-48, confirmed this view: “The institution was not interested at all in professionalizing its ballet activities. Instead, they offered ballet lessons to young high-society girls expected to have fit bodies, good posture and a

‘culture of movement’ that would allow them to dance at parties in aristocratic clubs.”98

In spite of Pro-Arte’s affiliation with European culture and the amateur character of the School of Dance, the nationalist forces that propelled the Cuban arts progressively made their way into this institution. The local concern for producing art that explored a

Cuban identity became evident when a group of artists within Pro-Arte took the first step towards creating a Cuban ballet in 1940. That work was Dioné, the brainchild of siboneyista composer Sánchez de Fuentes. Along the same line of his opera Doreya and

96 A. Alonso, “Primeros recuerdos, primeros pasos en la danza” [First memories, first steps in dance], in T. Gutiérrez, Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: imagen de una plenitud, testimonios y recuerdos de la artista [Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: image of plenitude; testimonies and memories of the artist] (Barcelona: Salvat, 1981), reprinted in Diálogos, 60. Even if the goals of Pro-Arte’s School of Dance were modest, several of the students turned into professional dancers, in addition to Alicia Alonso. Alberto and Fernando Alonso, sons of Laura Rayneri de Alonso, president of Pro-Arte in 1934-48, were among the first students to pursue professional careers in ballet. Alberto, who had been the first male student in Yavorksy’s classes, joined the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo in 1935. Meanwhile, Fernando moved to New York in 1937 seeking professional opportunities as a dancer, which he found in the Mordkin Ballet that same year and later in Ballet Theatre. Many other dance students at Pro-Arte became professional dancers after Alicia Alonso founded her own company, which gave them the opportunity to dance in Havana and tour several countries. Among those who enjoyed international careers were Luis Trápaga (Ballet Russe de Montecarlo), Dulce Wohner (Ballet Theatre, Stuttgart Ballet, Bavarian State Opera), Lydia Díaz Cruz (National Ballet in Washington) and Enrique Martínez (Ballet Theatre). C. Parera, Historia concisa del ballet en Cuba [A concise history of ballet in Cuba] (New York: no publisher information, 1974), p. 45-47.

97 A. Alonso, “Defender nuestra identidad: diálogo con Pedro Simón” [Defending our identity: a conversation with Pedro Simón], Jan. 19, 1973, in Diálogos, 73.

98 Interview of Fernando Alonso with Pedro Simón quoted in A. Piñeiro, “La Silva, una experiencia escénica,” 34.

73 his cantata Anacaona, the ballet aimed to recreate Cuba’s aboriginal past. The narrative would have presented the love story of two young Taino aborigines, set against the backdrop of a native forest inhabited by güijes, supernatural creatures in the Island’s mythology. Sánchez de Fuentes collaborated with Milenoff and Francisco Villalba, a local designer in charge of the decors. Alicia and Fernando Alonso, who by then were already members of Ballet Theatre in New York, were at hand to perform as guest

dancers, together with the American dancer Newcomb Rice.99

Unfortunately, what audiences witnessed at the premiere of Dioné on March 6 was a far echo of Sánchez de Fuente’s original vision. Pro-Arte’s board of directors, together with the parents of the students, adamantly opposed the plan to set the ballet in an aboriginal context. Composer Hilario González, a disciple of Sánchez de Fuentes, contends that Dioné’s original libretto was “too much” for a sector of Cuban society that refused to acknowledge any aboriginal contribution to their ethnic makeup and preferred to believe that “Indians had been exterminated in the sixteenth century.” Additionally,

González traces the opposition to the storyline to the conservative social conventions of the times: “The mothers of Pro-Arte’s students would not have allowed their daughters to dance in Taino costumes even if leotards would have covered their bodies.”100 They

objected to loincloths that would have exposed the girls’ legs and torsos publicly,

suggesting an image of nudity. Yielding to pressure, Milenoff and Sánchez de Fuentes

recast the libretto in a European context. Tainos mutated into Old World nobles, güijes

99 After her relocation to New York in 1937, Alicia Alonso continued to appear in Pro-Arte’s dance concerts over a period of ten years, except for 1941, when doctors ordered her not to dance to recover from detachment of her retina. See the catalogue of Pro-Arte’s ballet performances in Parera’s Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 115-126.

100 H. González, “Dioné,” in Cuba en el Ballet, vol. 5, no. 2, May 1974, 16.

74 into more familiar fairies, and the bright Cuban forest into shadowy Northern woods and European palaces (Ruiz 2000, 49). Photographs of the production reveal the ambience of a European court, a setting reminiscent of scenes of Swan Lake and Sleeping

Beauty. In a palatial hall with walls decorated with a prominent fleur de lis pattern,

Alonso and Rice curtsey as a princess and a prince out of a fairytale. Courtiers kneeling in a reverential pose flank the two royal figures. Pages holding banners guard imposing thrones.101

Although Dioné failed as an effort to produce a ballet with Cuban imagery and

themes, it served as a precedent for future projects pointing in the same direction. A

second attempt to create a Cuban ballet came three years later when Alberto Alonso and a

team of Cuban artists collaborated on the production of Forma (Form, 1943). Alberto

Alonso, who was Alicia’s brother-in law and had received his initial ballet training at

Pro-Arte, had been the first Cuban ballet dancer to perform with an international

ensemble. In 1935 he had joined the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo. He returned to Havana in 1940 accompanied by his wife, the Australian ballerina Alexandra Denisova (Patricia

Denise Meyers). The couple replaced Milenoff in the direction of Pro-Arte’s School of

Dance in 1941. Under their tenure, the dance recitals continued to emphasize the legacy of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. In 1942-43, they restaged works such as Les Sylphides,

Petrouchka, Prince Igor and Peter and the Wolf. The couple also contributed their own original choreography to Pro-Arte’s concerts. Denisova created La Danza de las horas

(The dance of the hours, 1942) to the noted musical passage from Ponchielli’s opera La

Gioconda. Besides, she choreographed Escuela de danza (School of dance, 1943), which

101 Photographs reproduced in González’s article.

75 showcased compositions by W. A. Mozart, and staged her own version of Icaro

(Icarus, 1943), based upon Serge Lifar’s work of the same title for the Paris Opera. On his part, Alberto Alonso choreographed several ballets inspired, too, by European scores.

Such was the case with Los Preludios (The preludes, 1942), Concerto (1943) and

Sinfonía (Symphony, 1943), the first one featuring music by Liszt, the second one by

Vivaldi and J. S. Bach, and the third one by W. A. Mozart. Alberto Alonso’s La hija del general (The general’s daughter, 1943) was a clear example of how these works adhered to European subjects and choreographic conventions: the ballet was a romantic farce set in Vienna, danced to waltzes and other scintillating pieces by Johann Strauss Jr. (Parera

1990, 119-24). Additionally, under Alonso and Denisova’s tenure Sleeping Beauty and

Swan Lake returned to the Auditorium. Forma, however, was a departure from this repertory.

At the heart of Forma was a text by the Cuban poet José Lezama Lima, which

José Ardévol transposed into a grandiose score for the Havana Choral Society and an accompanying orchestra. The ballet presented the idea of man taking control over his life, moving from chaos to order. A program note stated, “When man imposes order over his many life experiences, his personality achieves definition as well as the form and shape intrinsic to it.”102 Such a philosophical theme was not, by any means, allusive of a reality

specifically Cuban, in the same way that the choreography did not incorporate any local

ingredients. Nonetheless, Forma was a significant development in Pro-Arte’s ballet

programs. Its creative team was overwhelmingly integrated by Cuban artists: a poet, a

composer, a choreographer and a cast featuring Alicia and Fernando Alonso, dancers

102 Quoted in R. Ruiz, Fernando Alonso: danza con la vida, 61.

76 from Pro-Arte and a large number of singers and musicians.103 The premiere on May

15 brought to public attention the availability of artistic and human resources that could

successfully undertake the endeavor of creating Cuban ballets.

The longing for a ballet Cuban in topic and choreography was finally fulfilled in

Alberto Alonso’s Antes del alba (Before dawn), premiered on May 25, 1947. In

Francisco Martínez Allende’s libretto, Chela, a widow suffering from tuberculosis and living in a tenement house, faces the prospect of eviction. Assailed by the disease, the imminence of eviction and painful love memories, Chela decides to end her life. In the climax of the ballet, she sets herself on fire.104 The Cuban character of Antes del alba was

unmistakable. The tenement house depicted in Carlos Enríquez’s scenery faithfully recreated the ambience of one of those overpopulated colonial buildings in Havana. Also,

Hilario González’s score and Alberto Alonso’s choreography blended the European

elements of classical music and ballet with the sounds and movements of Afrocuban

dances such as the guaracha and the columbia. To learn the columbia, a genre practiced

by virtuoso male rumba dancers, Alicia Alonso studied with a black columbia dancer

103 Composer José Ardévol was born in Catalonia. However, he permanently moved to Cuba when he was nineteen years old. In spite of his origins, Ardévol was regarded as a Cuban musician. In 1946, in La música en Cuba, Carpentier discussed Ardévol’s works next to the compositions of other Cuban-born musicians in his analysis of classical music on the Island. Not only did Ardévol make an impressive contribution to Cuban music, but also he cultivated a strong interest in exploring a Cuban identity in his scores. Two Cuban Suites are among the compositions that illustrate his assimilation of the local music and culture. Denisova, who danced one of the principal roles, was a foreigner and there might have been other foreigners in the orchestra, as many European musicians migrated to the Americas during World War II. Yet, the ensemble of Forma was, by large, Cuban. The program listing Forma’s complete cast is reproduced in C. Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, 120. Also, see A. Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 254-58, and H. Orovio, Cuban Music from A to Z, 18.

104 D. Carrera, “A cuarenta años de Antes del alba” [Forty years after Antes del alba], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 6, no. 2, Apr.-Jun. 1987, 10-15.

77 from Havana.105 Having witnessed the premiere, Parera describes that the cast led by

Alicia, Fernando and Alberto Alonso took the theatre by storm when the dancers filled

the stage in their performance of the rumba, astonishing an audience that saw the piece as

a revolution (Parera 1974, 45).

However, before reaching the stage, Antes del alba unleashed a bitter controversy

between Pro-Arte’s board of directors and the artists responsible for the project.

According to Fernando Alonso, a majority of the members of the board attempted to veto

the work: “Pro-Arte opposed the premiere because it believed that their stage should be

graced, exclusively, by ballets about princes and princesses, while we were showing a

tenement house. In their view, we were celebrating the lowest way of life in Cuban

society.”106 Such aesthetic preferences of the Cuban elite were not exclusive to ballet. As

stated earlier, private support of Cuban painters who departed from tradition and pursued

a national voice was almost nonexistent among the ruling class, which, instead, preferred

to collect the most traditional European art. In challenging such Eurocentric and

conservative mindset, Antes del alba brought into light the aesthetic, racial and social

biases of the members of the board, while prompting a debate about whether ballet within

Pro-Arte should continue to reproduce European models or develop a distinctive Cuban

character. Furthermore, it raised the question on what sort of Cuban ballets, if any, Pro-

Arte should produce. While Forma had been accepted as a viable formulation, a universal

topic probed by a Cuban creative team, Antes del alba raised the sensitive issue of how to

105 A description of the choreography, music and decors emerge in the transcript of a conversation between Alicia Alonso, Alberto Alonso and Hilario González, in D. Carrera, “A cuarenta años de Antes del alba,” 12-13.

106 R. Ruiz, who interviewed Fernando Alonso, quotes him in Fernando Alonso: danza con la vida, 69. Italics by Ruiz.

78 reconcile the board and the artists’ views on what constituted the Cuban culture, going beyond Forma and taking into consideration the ethnic and social makeup of the Island.

Antes del alba staged a view of Cuban society that was unsettling for the well-off patrons of Pro-Arte. If seven years earlier the board had frowned upon the recreation of the

Island’s seemingly idyllic aboriginal past in Dioné, it now decried the prospect of

displaying life in a tenement house, the all-too-real environment in which scores of

destitute Cubans, and specifically black Cubans, lived in Havana at the time of the work’s

premiere. Although the Alonsos and the rest of the performers were white, the ballet’s setting and display of Afrocuban dances reinforced the fact that its characters were black.

According to Alberto Alonso, Pro-Arte’s hostility translated into lack of funding of the ballet and the tense situation caused a terrible atmosphere during rehearsals.107

Many of the most advanced students were not available since they did not have their

parents’ permission to participate in the ballet. The choreographer thought that the

attitude of some of the parents was prudish: “It could not be that Pro-Arte’s girls danced

the conga on stage!”108 Due to the deteriorating work environment, the creative team decided to finish the choreography behind closed doors.

In spite of its fierce opposition to Antes del alba, Pro-Arte finally allowed two

performances of the work. Consent came after negotiations that pulled Alicia Alonso into the controversy. Pro-Arte authorized the presentations on the condition that the ballerina,

who by then had achieved international fame, endorsed the work by performing the role

of Chela. However, members of the board attempted to undermine the project by

107 See the transcript of the conversation between Alicia Alonso, Alberto Alonso and Hilario González in D. Carrera, “A cuarenta años de Antes del alba,” 12-13.

108 Ibid.

79 persuading Alonso not to participate in it. The dancer reminisced, “Some of the ladies

from Pro-Arte’s board came to talk to me […] and told me not to dance the columbia

because my reputation as a classical ballerina would suffer. They said that Pro-Arte

would show the ballet only if I danced in it, but they wanted me to weigh my decision

carefully because it could damage my prestige.”109 She, however, starred in it.110

As a participant in Dioné, Forma and Antes del alba and a mediator in the controversy around this last work, Alonso was at the center of the earliest explorations of what constituted the Cuban ballet and took part in the debates generated around the subject. Even if, after moving to New York in 1937, the ballerina spent most of the time dancing with North American ensembles and her appearances in Pro-Arte became sporadic, her experiences in this institution provided her with significant exposure to the key questions that Cuban artists raised during the period: Why and how should they express a Cuban voice in their work? How should they negotiate between their adoption of European artistic models and their pursuit of a Cuban cultural identity? How should the varied ethnic and artistic elements comprising the local culture inform such a process? The projects in which Alonso participated in Pro-Arte offered diverse answers to these questions. In doing so, these experiments proposed nationalist aesthetics.

109 Ibid.

110 One month after the premiere of Antes del alba, Alonso danced for the last time in the festivals of Pro-Arte’s School of Dance when she participated in two performances crowded with figures from Ballet Theatre and the Ballets Russe de Montecarlo. She would continue to appear on the stage of the Auditorium but no longer as an artist associated with Pro-Arte. Instead, she danced with her own company, the Ballet Alicia Alonso, which she founded in 1948. Upon its inception, the new ensemble relied on the sceneries, costumes and musical scores of Pro-Arte’s ballet productions. However, frictions arose between the ballerina and Pro-Arte regarding the observance of contractual stipulations for the Ballet Alicia Alonso’s use of such materials. The conflict led to a serious deterioration of the liaison between Alonso and Pro-Arte in 1949, which brought to a definitive end the artist’s involvement with the organization. C. Parera, Historia concisa del ballet en Cuba, 61; and Historia de la Sociedad Pro Arte Musical, 105.

80 Through her association with Pro-Arte, the ballerina experienced historical continuity in the evolution of ballet in Cuba. These projects opened the door to further examination of what the Cuban ballet should be, an inquiry in which Alonso would be fully engaged for the rest of her career.

The United States: From “Ballets Americains” to American Ballet

It was in the United States that Alicia Alonso first participated in ballet enterprises of a nationalist character. Her performances in Ballet Caravan of American- themed works such as Eugene Loring’s Billy the Kid and City Portrait predated equivalent attempts to produce ballets with local subject matter in Cuba. Between 1939 and 1960, Alonso was successively a member of Ballet Caravan, Ballet Theater and the

Ballet Russe de Montecarlo. Her work with these companies allowed her to witness and play a role within competing visions of how to root ballet in America. As in Cuba, nationalist ballet projects in the United States generated controversy. While some traditionalists believed that the North American ballet should perpetuate the European aesthetics and repertory of the dance form, many promoters, dancers and choreographers approached this foreign legacy as a stepping stone in their quest to make ballet an

American art. Alonso’s participation in these explorations would later inform her own experiments in representing a Cuban identity in ballet.

By the time Alonso relocated to New York in 1937, the dance community in the

United States was already engaged in a debate on the assimilation of ballet. Russian choreographers Adolf Bolm and Leonid Massine were among the first to create ballets

81 with American subject matter. In 1922, Bolm took inspiration from Krazy Kat, a comic strip that ran in American papers of the era, for the production of a ballet of the same title to a jazzy score by John Alden Carpenter. It premiered on January 20 in New York.111

Meanwhile, in Union Pacific (1934), a work for Colonel de Basil’s Ballets Russes,

Massine presented a scenario celebrating the completion of the transcontinental railroad

in Utah in 1869. John Martin’s review of this ballet for The New York Times contributes

evidence of the epoch’s debate about the development of an American ballet. Martin

suggested that the depiction of local scenes and characters was not enough to make Union

Pacific an American work. In his view, this piece was “essentially a European ballet on

an American theme.” The critic questioned such approach:

According to a note in the program, Colonel de Basil, who sponsors the Monte Carlo company, believes that an American ballet can “only be developed upon the technical and artistic foundation of Russian ballet.” This is an extraordinary theory, but it explains fully the point of view out of which Union Pacific has grown.112

An advocate of a national brand of ballet, Martin brought the topic into public light through frequent columns and reviews in The New York Times dating back to 1927.

Not content with the notion of the American ballet as the performance of European

repertory by American dancers, Martin proposed that a truly national ballet should stem from homemade repertory that reflected the identity of the country. In “Creating an

American Ballet” (May 4, 1930), he contrasted these approaches:

The term “American ballet” is open to a diversity of definitions as intricate

111 R. Aldrich, “Music: Modern Music and Ballet,” in New York Times, Jan. 21, 1922, 16. For a historical account of the creation of Bolm’s Krazy Kat, see S. Carbonneau, “Adolf Bolm in America,” in The Ballets Russes and Its World, eds. L. Garafola and N. Van Norman Baer (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999), 219-44.

112 J. Martin, “Hearty Applause for Union Pacific,” in New York Times, Apr. 26, 1934, 26.

82 and hair-splitting as Polonius’s catalogue of dramas. For general discussion it falls easily into two main subdivisions, in one of which the “American” refers to the dancers and in the other to the dances. It is the latter classification, of course, that is more interesting and contains infinitely greater potentialities; but the dance that belongs particularly to American life and thinking must evolve as the self-motivated externalization of this life and thinking.113

The proposition that American dances externalized an American identity conveyed

Martin’s desire for ballets that were American in both content and style. Hence, he

concluded that the success of the American ballet was dependent upon “certain aesthetic

adventuring” (Martin 1930, X9).

The concern with developing a national ballet found expression, too, in the voice

of Lincoln Kirstein, the promoter who brought George Balanchine to America in 1933

and whose entrepreneurship led to the foundation of the American Ballet (1934), Ballet

Caravan (1936), American Ballet Caravan (1941), Ballet Society (1946) and the New

York City Ballet (1948). Even before meeting Balanchine, Kirstein had already sketched

the first projects for ballets with a national character. According to his memoir, Kirstein

had asked poet Estlin Cummings to write the scenario for a ballet on Harriet Beecher

Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He also intended to produce a work with music by George

Gershwin or Cole Porter, as well as a ballet about witchcraft set in the Salem locale of

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories.114

After negotiations with Balanchine started, Kirstein sought sponsorship from the

Wadsworth Atheneum, the museum at Hartford, Connecticut, for the creation of a ballet school and company to be led by the Russian artist. In a letter to A. Everett Austin,

113 J. Martin, “The Dance: Creating an American Ballet,” in New York Times, May 4, 1930, X9.

114 L. Kirstein, Mosaic: Memoirs (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 229-30, 241-42.

83 director of that institution, Kirstein offered clear examples of the American character that he envisioned for the project. The letter, from July 16, 1933, described his initial plan for the school:

[Balanchine] would take 4 white girls and 4 white boys, about sixteen yrs. old and 8 of the same, negros. They would be firmly taught in the classical idiom […] He thinks the negro part of it would be amazingly supple, the combination of suppleness and sense of time superb. Imagine them, masked, for example. They have so much abandon—and disciplined they would be nonpareil.115

In this vision, racial stereotypes informed the association of black dancers with

masks, rhythm and abandon.116 Even if tainted by such stereotypes, Kirstein’s intention of integrating white and black dancers was revolutionary in 1933. At the time, a multiracial ballet school and ensemble would have been a significant contribution to the dance form. Furthermore, it would have been a contribution with a definite American character and the potential to automatically set apart the planned ballet company from its

European counterparts.

In the letter, Kirstein also listed preliminary proposals for the group’s repertory.

All his suggestions involved American subject matter, locales or music. In addition to

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Doomsday, the ballet on Salem themes, he mentioned plans for the ballets Moby Dick (upon the novel by Herman Melville), Pocahontas (“with décor

from American primitives”), Defeure of Richmond (“all about Southern swords and

115 L. Kirstein, Letter to A. Everett Austin, Jul. 16, 1933, reprinted in I Remember Balanchine, ed. F. Mason (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 115-119. The letter is part of the collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Italics by either Kirstein or Mason.

116 Lynn Garafola indicates that Kirstein was a supporter of African American artists and a committed defender of black civil rights. Garafola suggests that in this letter Kirstein ascribed to Balanchine his own vision of a multiracial ballet company. L. Garafola, “Lincoln Kirstein, Modern Dance, and the Left: The Genesis of an American Ballet,” in Dance Research (London) vol. 23, no. 1 (Apr. 2005), 25-26.

84 roses,” with music by Virgil Thomson), Flying Cloud (“a ballet of the days of clipper ships: a dock in New Bedford,” Massachusetts) and Custer’s Last Stand (“Ponies: Ritual of scouts going out, Indian dances stylisé”).117 None of these particular ideas achieved

realization after Balanchine arrived in the United States, but their mere enunciation

constitutes clear evidence of the nationalist tone of Kirstein’s plans.118

The American Ballet, Balanchine first company in the United States, debuted in

Hartford on December 15, 1934, with a program consisting of two new works, Serenade

and Alma Mater.119 This last ballet, a satire of Ivy League sport rituals with athletes and

cheerleaders as its characters, embodied Kirstein’s vision: “the male principle as athlete

rather than as prince or god […] Miss Americas rather than fairy swan-princesses”

(Kirstein 1978, 46). Felix Warburg created the libretto and Kay Swift composed a score based on college songs, while John Held Jr. and Charles Dana Gibson shared credits for the designs—in what amounted, with the exception of Balanchine, to an American production team.120 The other work in the program, Serenade, was more representative of

Balanchine’s European background. This ballet, which has survived as one of his

masterpieces, uses the music of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C for string orchestra. The

music, the choreography and the interactions between the soloists and the corps the ballet

117 Italics by Kirstein or Mason.

118 Eventually, the Pocahontas project was realized, but not by Balanchine. Kirstein revived the idea for Ballet Caravan, where Lew Christensen choreographed Pocahontas, with music by Elliot Carter, in 1936. See the appendix with the list of all the ballets produced by Kirstein in L. Kirstein, Thirty Years, The New York City Ballet (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978).

119 The first performance of Serenade took place on June 10, 1934, in White Plains, New York. Balanchine revised the work for the Hartford debut of the American Ballet. See the New York City Ballet’s program notes for Serenade in the company’s website, http://www.nycballet.com/company/ rep.html?rep=163, consulted on March 12, 2007.

120 For more details on the creation of Alma Mater, see L. Kirstein, Thirty Years, The New York City Ballet, 45-47.

85 suggest a world of melancholy, yearning and loss. Such romantic atmosphere is reminiscent of Fokine’s Les Sylphides, as well as of the so-called white acts of Romantic and Classic staples such as Giselle and Swan Lake. Also, as in most ballets blancs,

Serenade opposes a single male soloist to a large female ensemble. In spite of Serenade’s

commonalities with these European ballets, Kirstein posited it as representative of certain

American features when he wrote about it retrospectively in 1978:

The prime quality of Serenade from the moment of its inception was cool frankness, a candor that seemed at once lyric and natively athletic; a straightforward yet passionate clarity and freshness suitable to the foundation of a non-European academy. Balanchine had not seen Isadora Duncan in her best days, but she had certainly affected Fokine, and one might detect a strain of her free-flowing motion here (Kirstein 1978, 39).

Kirstein’s views notwithstanding, when the company debuted in New York in

February 1935, Serenade’s freshness, clarity and mix of lyricism and athleticism were not perceived as indigenous features, and the improbable second-hand exposure to the

American art of Duncan went equally unnoticed, at least judging from Martin’s review.

The critic referred to Serenade and the other five works presented at the Adelphi Theatre as examples “of the decadence of the classic tradition as it is found in certain European environments.”121 He dismissed Alma Mater too—in spite of this work’s local subject—

for what he saw as poor artistic merits. Although Martin acknowledged that it was

premature to expect Balanchine and Kirstein to have produced a solid style of American

ballet in such a short time, he denounced the enterprise for catering to the taste of an audience of Russian expatriates and fanatics of “anything in the nature of ‘toe dancing.’”

Furthermore, he touted the ensemble “Les Ballets Americains,” referencing the French

121 The ballets in the program, in addition to Serenade and Alma Mater, were Reminiscence, Errante, Dreams and Transcendence. J. Martin, “The Dance: The Ballet,” in New York Times, May 10 1935, X9.

86 names of Russian ensembles such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and Colonel de Basil’s

Ballets Russes. The mocking sobriquet highlighted what Martin perceived as the project’s foreignness. He urged Balanchine to correct this situation: “The great need of the

company is American direction.”

In August, the appointment of Balanchine as ballet master of the Metropolitan

Opera and of the American Ballet as the institution’s regular dance troupe moved the

enterprise further away from its original goal of creating nationalist works. The

collaboration with the opera house resulted in ballet divertissements for operas such as

Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La Traviata and Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The most ambitious work, from a choreographic standpoint, was a staging of Gluck’s Orfeo in which the dancers reenacted the Greek myth while the voices of the singers came from the orchestra pit (Kirstein 1978, 51-57). Reacting to these developments, Martin criticized the

Metropolitan Opera for hiring Balanchine instead of a native choreographer. In the pages of The New York Times, the critic lamented the new direction of the ballet company and expressed skepticism about the interest of upper-class opera audiences in a national ballet: “With the throwing of the whole organization now into the very lap of this audience, which so largely dominates the opera house, any hope of recovering the original purpose of the enterprise appears to have been extinguished.”122 In the same

column, Martin advised Kirstein to disassociate from Balanchine and resume work on the

original project of creating an American ballet. Kirstein, instead, rebuffed Martin’s views

in a public letter to the newspaper published on August 25.

122 J. Martin, “The Dance: At the Opera,” in New York Times, Aug. 18, 1935, X5. Martin’s skepticism of the Metropolitan Opera audience endorsing an American brand of ballet anticipated the Alonsos’s frustration with the Cuban social elite’s opposition to Cuban ballets a decade later.

87 Mr. Martin makes himself very free not alone with the private policy of the American Ballet, but in interpreting my personal position. He has already made himself an authority on the word “American.” We differ with his chauvinist construction of it […] American ballet is not tap dancing, though it may use it. It is not Virginia reel, though country dances can be added to its context […] Ballet in America is a form of dance expression no more indigenous than American violin or piano playing.123

In this response to Martin, Kirstein did not specify which was the route to follow in

developing an American ballet, but he clarified which elements were not part of his

approach at the time. He warned against a narrow form of chauvinism that would link the

progress of American ballet to a formula based on the incorporation of local folkloric

forms. Instead, he hinted that it was possible for American ballet to remain connected to a

European legacy, in the same way that American concert players remained in close

association with European classical music.

In spite of disagreeing with Martin’s “chauvinist” attitude and repudiating the

critic’s negative judgment of the American Ballet, Kirstein’s next move consisted

precisely of what Martin had advised. Independently of Balanchine, in 1936 he founded

Ballet Caravan, a touring ensemble formed by a dozen of dancers who doubled as

choreographers and stagehands. It “attempted to produce a new repertory by native

choreographers, musicians and designers working with national themes,” explained

Kirstein. He confessed that he was “eager to drop the French pronunciation” in Martin’s

touting of his previous enterprise as Les Ballets Americains (Kirstein 1978, 69). Eugene

Loring’s Billy the Kid (1938) with music by Aaron Copland, and Lew Christensen’s

Filling Station (1937) to a score by Virgil Thomson, epitomized the group’s efforts to restore the course that Kirstein had initially set for ballet in America.

123 L. Kirstein, “The Dance: A Letter,” in New York Times, Aug. 25, 1935, X5.

88 As historian Lynn Garafola observes, Ballet Caravan was able to survive in part because modern dance troupes had already developed a national touring circuit through which audiences had become familiar with innovative works. Many of the venues in this circuit, such as Bennington College in Vermont and the 92nd Street Young Men's and

Young Women's Hebrew Association in Manhattan, were sympathetic to the notion of a

non-European ballet.124 However, outside these progressive venues Ballet Caravan found resistance to its American works. For the most part, audiences in America had first come into contact with ballet through Russian dancers who toured the country in the early twentieth century—in 1913 alone, Anna Pavlova danced in 146 cities across the United

States.125 These itinerant ensembles conditioned the Americans’ taste for ballet, creating

an expectation for Russian elements. Entries in Kirstein’s journal during the tours of

Ballet Caravan attest to the difficulties that the company experienced in presenting an

American repertory. In February 1939, he wrote in Milwaukee, “Eugene Loring’s

hometown. We wanted to do his two ballets, Yankee Clipper and Billy the Kid; the sponsors refused Billy; it was not a fit subject for ballet. What most provincial American

124 Garafola writes, “Frances Hawkins, who booked the company’s cross-country tours, made a point of tapping college audiences—the same audiences that Martha Graham and other modern dancers were courting at the same time. In fact, from the start, Ballet Caravan targeted the influential audience that had crystallised for modern dance since the early 1930s. The company performed not once but twice (in 1936 and 1937) at Bennington College Summer School of Dance, that ‘fortress of modern dance,’ as Kirstein called it, and gave its first New York performances at the 92nd Street Y, another venue closely identified with modern dance.” L. Garafola, “Lincoln Kirstein, Modern Dance, and the Left: The Genesis of an American Ballet,” 21.

125 R. Lazzarini, “Pavlova, Anna,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), consulted online through the Temple University Library on Apr. 5, 2007.

89 sponsoring committees want is pocket-size Russian ballet. If American, it can’t be ballet” (Kirstein 1978, 78).126

Sensing the need to remedy this situation and to educate national audiences,

Kirstein published the pamphlet Blast at Ballet, A Corrective for the American Audience

in 1938. It spelled out his revolutionary platform:

The American style will not imitate the Russian, but instead be its equivalent for our time and place […] American style springs or should spring from our own training and environment, which was not at an Imperial School or a Parisian imitation of it. Ours is a style bred also from basket-ball courts, track and swimming meets and junior-proms. Our style springs from the personal atmosphere of recognizable American types as exemplified by the behavior of movie-stars like Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard or the late Jean Harlow.127

Together with Martin’s frequent articles in the The New York Times, Kirstein’s pamphlet

reflected how growing public discussion accompanied the development of the American

ballet. It continued to be important that artists, promoters and dance critics envisioned

strategies for developing this national ballet and considered what its relationship with its

European antecedents would be. However, it had also become necessary to educate

audiences and presenters in the appreciation of this new brand of ballet. The debate had moved to a larger sphere.

It was within this dance environment, characterized by fervent discussions about the future of ballet in America, that Alicia Alonso saw herself when she arrived in New

126 Yankee Clipper, which Ballet Caravan apparently presented in Milwaukee without difficulty, at least offered a variety of exotic settings. Its plot “presumed to take a clipper ship’s cabin boy around the ports of the world on a dance voyage from Salem, Massachusetts, to Tahiti and back.” L. Kirstein, Thirty Years: The New York City Ballet, 73.

127 Reprinted in L. Kirstein, Ballet: Bias and Belief, Three Pamphlets Collected and Other Dance Writings of Lincoln Kirstein, introduction by N. Reynolds (New York: Dance Horizons, 1983), 157-284.

90 York. Nationalism was not just a vague context surrounding her artistic life in the

United States but a tangible force that determined her professional activities.

After six years of training in Cuba, Alonso had exhausted the country’s

educational possibilities for a ballet dancer. “In spite of the good auguries, in Cuba I had

no chance of becoming a professional dancer,” she reminisced. “Aside Pro-Arte, there

were no other schools to attend, or professional companies to join” (A. Alonso 1981c,

60). Leaving Cuba was imperative. In 1937, she followed Fernando Alonso to New York,

marrying him soon after. In that city, she attended the ballet classes of the Italian Enrico

Zanfretta and the Russian Alexandra Fedorova. She also took classes at the School of

American Ballet, directed by Balanchine. Her first jobs were on Broadway, where she

participated in the musicals Great Lady and Stars in Your Eyes in 1938 (A. Alonso

1981c, 60-61; M. Cabrera 1998, 47-48). Alonso’s first professional engagement with a

ballet ensemble was precisely with Ballet Caravan, which she joined in 1939. As a

member of the company, she directly participated in Kirstein’s projects. Throughout the

time that she danced with this troupe, she routinely performed in Eugene Loring’s City

Portrait and Billy the Kid, William Dollar’s Promenade and Lew Christensen’s Charade.

Of these, Billy the Kid provided her with the most relevant part, the double role of Billy’s

Mother and his Mexican girlfriend—two characters performed by the same dancer.128

Billy the Kid is a case in point that illustrates the nature of Alonso’s artistic

experiences with Ballet Caravan: a work created by Americans, displaying local subject matter and realized in a distinctive choreographic style. Kirstein, who wrote the libretto,

128 Alonso continued to dance this part after she joined Ballet Theatre a year later. This company incorporated Billy the Kid to its repertory in 1940. A. Alonso, “Lo inagotable en la danza” [The inexhaustible in dance], interview by A. Estévez, in Diálogos, 283; first published in Granma (Havana), Oct. 13, 1988.

91 took his theme from the life of the famous teenage murderer William H. Bonney a.k.a.

Billy the Kid, a feature character in American imagery. According to the legend, Billy

lived for twenty-one years and killed twenty-one men in the territory of New Mexico

during the 1860s and 70s. The goal of the ballet, however, went beyond retelling the story

of the title character. In “About Billy the Kid,” an article in The Dance Observer from

October 1938, Kirstein explained that his libretto aimed to capture the flavor of a particular locale and period in American history.

Billy the Kid is not the hero of this ballet, but rather are the times in which he lived. He was an heroic type, yet he was not unique. He was typical in so much as he reflected many others like him. He could not have existed except for his particular historical epoch. This was the peak of our expanding frontier.129

The work was successful in this regard. In the review of its New York premiere, Martin

highlighted that Loring’s rendition of the story captured “a flavor of reality not only in

his people but also in his locale.”130

Kirstein claimed that he and Loring treated the material in a distinctively

American way. He speculated that a Russian production team would have narrated the

story as a pastiche involving Spanish dances in the style of Massine and pantomime

imitative of films within the Western genre: “Our approach was different.”(Kirstein

1938a, 74). In a modernist twist, all of Billy’s victims were performed by the same

dancer, who appeared in different costumes but always wearing green makeup on his

face. This character executed a double tour en l’air and exited the stage every time that

129 L. Kirstein, “About Billy the Kid,” in Dance Observer (New York), vol. 5, no. 8, Oct. 1938, 116; reprinted in Ballet: Bias and Belief, Three Pamphlets Collected and Other Dance Writings of Lincoln Kirstein, 74.

130 Billy the Kid premiered at the Chicago Opera House, on Oct. 16, 1938. Martin reviewed the New York premiere, which took place six months later. J. Martin, “Ballet Caravan in Seasonal Debut,” in New York Times, May 25, 1939, 35.

92 Billy killed him. Kirstein doubted that Russians “would have thought of it [this solution] in just this way” (Ibid., 75). Additionally, the choreography drew from

American images and movements: the variation of the sheriff was “a pocket rodeo compacted in terms of classic technique” and the scenes of Billy’s death and burial recalled “Remington’s sober accurate studies […] with an essential, local, specific accuracy” (Ibid). Frederic Remington’s popular illustrations of scenes, landscapes and characters from the West, appeared in the hundreds in leading magazines and newspapers in the United States in the 1880s and 90s.131 Kirstein had prompted Jared French,

designer of the set and costumes, to find inspiration in Remington’s illustrations. Also, in

writing the music for the ballet, Aaron Copland followed Kirstein’s suggestion of

referring to cowboy songs. “Git Alone, Little Dogie,” “Old Chisholm Trail” and “Bury

Me Not on the Lone Prairie” were among the tunes that found their way into the score

(Kirstein 1978, 76-77).

Reminiscing about this ballet in 1977, Alonso stated that she “used to like it

tremendously” and “enjoyed it very, very much.” She went on to discuss its significance:

“Billy the Kid is a historic ballet […] I wish they could do a very good casting and take a

good movie and keep it because it’s really a historic ballet. It marks a time, an époque

[in] the development of the American choreographer.”132 Dancing in Billy the Kid was a

novel experiment for the Cuban artist, who until that moment had only performed in

European works such as Coppélia and Swan Lake in Pro-Arte’s concert. As the

131 See P. D. Thomas, “Remington, Frederic,” in American National Biography Online (2000), http://www.anb.org/articles/17/17-00724.html, consulted on Feb. 12, 2010, via Smith College Libraries.

132 A. Alonso, Interview with Alicia Alonso, conducted by M. Hunt, typescript, Oral History Archive, New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division, 1977.

93 embodiment of Kirstein’s artistic goals, Billy the Kid and the rest of the repertory of

Ballet Caravan gave Alonso hands-on experience with a serious effort to develop a national ballet. The organic integration of libretto, music, designs and choreography around a nationalist concept that characterized this piece had not been tried in Cuba yet by the time Alonso had left the Island. Pro-Arte’s Dioné, the first but failed Cuban attempt in this direction, premiered two years after Billy the Kid, while Antes del Alba,

the work in which the idea achieved successful realization for the first time, saw the light ten years later.

Alonso must have looked avidly at how a small touring company such as Ballet

Caravan operated, given that by then she had already set her mind to creating her own ensemble. Indeed, she and a group of dancers had started developing repertory and preliminary plans to tour South America:

Marusia [Maria Karnilova], Nora [Cage], Fernando, and I were always at the center of the planning. There were other dancers too. We tried out choreography, we put dances together, and we actually had a little company almost formed. We wanted to tour South America. Fernando called embassies and made big appointments. But then Ballet Caravan came along, and soon after that Ballet Theatre, so that little company never happened. We had gone so far as to think up names for it […] When I contributed movements I made up, somewhere inside they were the beginnings of the Ballet de Cuba.133

Judging from Karnilova’s memories of those days, Alonso was the instigator of this

project. Karnilova remembered her friend’s firm conviction about establishing a ballet

company: “Each of us had dreams, and some of us had doubts about our futures, but no

one of us doubted that Alicia’s dream would come true. She said she was going to have a

133 Quoted in W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 14.

94 ballet company of her own. We all believed her.”134 It is not clear whether Alonso was already thinking of forming a troupe that would evolve to be distinctively Cuban. Most likely, at this stage her ambitions focused on the more practical objective of creating

work opportunities for herself and her colleagues, opening a venue that would allow them

to dance professionally at a time when jobs in ballet were scarce in North America. “We

didn’t have any ballet company in the United States that wanted us […] Broadway shows

were our only outlet,” Alonso explained.135 Her engagement with Ballet Caravan put her

project on hold, but her thoughts of having her own company obviously remained alive.

Whether or not nationalist intentions were part of her vision for the future company,

Ballet Caravan actually provided her with a model to follow, not only of how to run a ballet group but also of how to build a repertory based on national themes. Her participation in Kirstein’s enterprise opened her eyes to the possibility of nurturing a

Cuban ballet and informed her contribution to future nationalist experiments.

It is true that, after founding the Ballet Alicia Alonso in 1948, the ballerina did not follow Ballet Caravan’s template. As a dancer, choreographer and artistic director,

Alonso kept a close connection to the European repertory, instead of regarding it as opposite to the principle of nurturing a Cuban ballet. Even in this regard, Ballet Caravan could have been a reference point that helped Alonso to weight the advantages and disadvantages of Kirstein’s model and influenced her decision to avoid a narrow interpretation of nationalism. However, it should be acknowledged that, within the limited range of Ballet Caravan’s repertory, Alonso also had opportunities to witness the

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid.

95 integration of European and American elements. In spite of the company’s pro-

American platform, Kirstein did not intend to produce a schism between American and

European ballet. In his view, American dancers could achieve success only if they acquired “a profound groundwork of traditional ballet-training” (Kirstein 1938b, 202,

246).136

After Ballet Caravan dispersed in 1941, Kirstein’s pursuit of a national ballet

moved into a new phase that integrated European and native elements in a more balanced

way. In that same year he formed the American Ballet Caravan, a new company whose

repertory juxtaposed works by both European and American choreographers—

Balanchine and Antony Tudor hailed from across the Atlantic, Dollar and Christensen

from the United States. However, Alonso did not participate in the American Ballet

Caravan. By then she had joined Ballet Theatre, whose founders were trying, in their own

way, to develop a combined repertory of European and American works. It was in this

company, today known as American Ballet Theatre, that she rose to stardom and

achieved international recognition.

When Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant founded Ballet Theatre in 1939, they

avoided giving its artistic directorship to a single choreographer, preferring instead to

assemble a combination of personalities that allowed variety in the repertory. At the time

of the company’s inception, the roster of its choreographers listed Mikhail Fokine,

Bronislava Nijinska, Adolph Bolm, Mikhail Mordkin and Yurek Shabelevski, from

136 Furthermore, Kirstein’s approach to American subject matter was occasionally mediated by European aesthetics. Discussing the inspiration for the everyday situations in the scenario of Christensen’s Filling Station, Kirstein pointed out his debt to the French poet Jean Cocteau: “I wanted an everyday, ordinary setting rendered magical. I made Cocteau’s philosophy mine: theatrical, indeed all, lyric magic does not derive from the exotic, fantastic, or strange, but from a ‘rehabilitation of the commonplace.’” L. Kirstein, Thirty Years, The New York City Ballet, 72.

96 Russia; Tudor, Andrée Howard and Anton Dolin, from England; Loring and Agnes de

Mille, from the United States; and José Fernández, from Mexico.137 Not all of these

artists stayed in Ballet Theater for future seasons, while some other choreographers

joined the group at a later stage. However, this initial pool of choreographers helped

shape the principal areas in the company’s repertory for the next two decades: nineteenth-

century classics, twentieth-century Russian works and English and American ballets.

The balance between the different areas of Ballet Theatre’s repertory shifted over

the years, exposing tensions between the traditional and the modern, the European and

the American. Towards the company’s third season, German Sevastianov assumed the

ensemble’s direction at the same time that Sol Hurok became the manager of its

engagements. Sevastianov and Hurok shared the belief that Russian ballet was superior in

terms of artistry and popularity. Their position led to what Charles Payne, a member of

the company’s management at the time, called “the Russian invasion” (Payne 1978, 112).

For a period of three years, most of Ballet Theatre’s programs consisted of presentations

of nineteenth-century classics and works by Russian choreographers. Irina Baronova,

Alicia Markova and Vera Zorina, the three leading ballerinas during this period, were

marketed as “Russian” stars—in reality, they were from Bulgaria, England and Norway,

respectively. According to Payne’s testimony, the russianization of Ballet Theatre went

beyond its principal dancers, spreading across the board:

137 Invitations to work for the new company were extended to two other American choreographers, Ruth Page and Carmelita Maracci, as well as to another Russian, George Balanchine, and an Englishman, Frederic Ashton. For different individual reasons, none of them joined Ballet Theatre. See C. Payne, American Ballet Theatre (New York: Knopf, 1978), 24-47. Payne, who worked for the company in different administrative positions for several decades since its inception in 1940, wrote a thoroughly documented history of American Ballet Theatre in this book. In many regards, his involvement with the company makes the publication a primary source and, in connection to certain topics, a trusted secondary source that reproduces personal letters, contracts, posters, historic photos and other documents from the company’s archive.

97 [Sevastianov] considered European-trained dancers to be superior to the native product […] More than a quarter of the [American] dancers from the [previous] Majestic season, most of them eager to remain with Ballet Theatre, were replaced with dancers from the Original Ballet Russe or the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The entire staff (company manager, stage manager, wardrobe supervisors, regisseur, et cetera) was completely Russianized; only Charles Payne was retained (Payne 1978, 119).

In 1943, an advertisement for performances of the company in Seattle, published on August 3 in the Seattle Star, reflected the extremity of this situation. “S. Hurok presents the greatest in Russian Ballet by the Ballet Theatre,” the ad read. In it, the words

“Russian Ballet” captured attention in upper case and in a font three times larger than the rest of the text.138 Under these circumstances, ballerinas born in the Americas, like

Alonso and Nora Kaye, saw their possibilities within the company curtailed. The main

roles were reserved for stars with Russian names (A. Alonso 1977a, 95).139

The process of restoring balance between the different areas of Ballet Theatre’s

repertory began after Sevastianov left the company’s management.140 Toward 1944,

Ballet Theatre revived the practice of staging works by local choreographers. The catalyst for this development was Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free, the

tale of three American sailors enjoying a night off in New York City. This work, which

Martin labeled as “ten degrees north of terrific” was met with instant success.141 Its triumph triggered further interest in choreography with American music and themes. In that same year, the company staged Barn Dance, in which the choreographer Catherine

138 A facsimile of this particular ad is reproduced in C. Payne, American Ballet Theatre, 129.

139 Chapter 4 discusses in more detail the obstacles that Alonso faced within Ballet Theatre during this period of Russian dominance.

140 J. Alden Talbot assumed the position of manager in 1944. The next year, Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith became the new managers. C. Payne, American Ballet Theatre, 122-66.

141 J. Martin, “Ballet By Robbins Called Smash Hit,” in New York Times, Apr. 19, 1944, 27.

98 Littlefield transposed American reels, rounds and square dances to ballet vocabulary.142 Robbins’ Interplay (1945) and Facsimile (1946) entered the repertory as well, with music by Morton Gould and Bernstein respectively. Agnes de Mille’s Fall

River Legend, based on the real-life case of Lizzie Borden, accused of murdering her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts, premiered in 1948 with Alonso in the title role. Rodeo, another work by de Mille and one of Ballet Theater’s quintessential

American pieces, was incorporated into the repertory in 1950.143

For Alonso, the two decades as a member of Ballet Theatre meant an opportunity to reconcile within her individual repertory the trends at work within the ensemble, which attempted, on the one hand, to preserve the dance form’s European heritage and, on the other hand, to nurture a new brand of American ballet. In 1943, she had her breakthrough in Giselle. In time, her success in this ballet gave her the chance to perform excerpts from other nineteenth-century European works such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The

Nutcracker and La fille mal gardée.144 She built a reputation as a classicist on these

142 J. Martin, “Ballet Theatre Does Barn Dance,” in New York Times, May 10, 1944, 17.

143 Littlefield choreographed Barn Dance in 1937 for the Littlefield Ballet, her Philadelphia-based company. De Mille conceived Rodeo for the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo in 1942. A list of the works in Ballet Theatre’s repertory, the dates of their premieres, production credits and original casts is available online in the American Ballet Theatre’s website, in a page labeled “Repertory Archive,” http://www.abt. org/education/archive/index.html, consulted on Oct. 26, 2006. Introducing a Cuban accent in Ballet Theatre’s choreographic explorations of cultural identity, in 1951 Enrique Martínez, a Cuban dancer and choreographer in the company, choreographed Tropical Pas de Deux using music by Amadeo Roldán. Alonso starred in it along Igor Youskevitch. The work did not remain long in the repertory. In a review, Martin deemed it a failure, perhaps from a position biased against ballet hybridization: “The elegance of the classic torso and the free pelvic swing of the tropical dance are so completely irreconcilable it is impossible to effect a compromise. The result is strain and ultimate ineffectuality.” J. Martin, “Martinez Ballet Given First Time,” in New York Times, Apr. 28, 1951, 22.

144 See Appendix for dates of Alonso’s debut in these works with Ballet Theatre. It must be noted that during the period of Alonso’s engagement with Ballet Theatre no full productions of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker were in its repertory. A suite of divertissements from Sleeping Beauty was presented as Princess Aurora. The pas de deux of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, from The Nutcracker, was a staple often danced in mixed-bill programs. Excerpts of Swan Lake were programmed

99 staples. Additionally, she excelled in Fokine’s Les Sylphides and Dolin’s Pas de

Quatre, works that paid tribute to the Romantic era of ballet. She also starred in Theme and Variations, Balanchine’s homage to the Classical period. As recreations of bygone styles, these works allowed Alonso to increase her expertise on Romantic and Classical ballet beyond the limited repertory surviving from these periods. In Ballet Theatre she also danced leading roles in Balanchine’s Apollo and Fokine’s Le Spectre de la Rose and

Petrouchka, all of them iconic works from the Diaghilev era. Other European choreographers in whose ballets she appeared were Tudor, Massine, Nijinska, Mordkin and Bolm, in addition to Frederic Ashton, David Lichine, Anatole Oboukhov and Boris

Romanov. Simultaneously, she performed the works of those choreographers who were engaged in representing an American cultural identity in ballet. She danced in Barn

Dance and Fall River Legend, as well as in Loring’s The Great American Goof (1940) and Michael Kidd’s On Stage! (1945). Embodying this broad repertory offered Alonso opportunities to negotiate between remaining true to the European roots of ballet and formulating a fresh national identity within it—a model that she would pursue throughout the rest of her career and that shaped not only her individual work but also the repertory of the National Ballet of Cuba. This understanding would have been accentuated by her first-hand experience of the conflicts and compromises that characterized the confrontation of Eurocentric and nationalist politics within Ballet Theatre as the company fluctuated from a period of “Russian invasion” to a period of boom in the creation of

American ballets, and ultimately established a balance between the different areas of its repertory.

frequently as well, mainly the complete second act and the Black Swan pas de deux. American Ballet Theater, “Repertory Archive,” http://abt.org/education/archive/index.html, consulted on Apr. 6, 2007.

100 The Cuban Revolution’s Policies on National Culture and the Arts

In spite of her international career, Alonso never lost touch with her country and its artistic life. Commuting between New York and Havana, she continued to dance in the yearly seasons of Pro-Arte’s School of Dance. “I went back to Cuba on every vacation, whenever I had free time. Eventually, I went back to found my own company and school,” explained the artist.145 She aspired to create a professional company where

Cuban dancers could pursue serious careers. In 1948, together with Fernando and Alberto

Alonso, she founded the Ballet Alicia Alonso in Havana. Initially, fellow dancers from

Ballet Theater were a majority in the company; however, its composition progressively shifted to Cuban dancers trained at Pro-Arte and at the Alicia Alonso National School of

Dance, opened in 1950.146 Since its first season, the ensemble’s repertory encompassed the nineteenth-century European classics, as well as ballets by Balanchine, Fokine and

other twentieth-century choreographers. It also included works by Alberto Alonso.147

145 A. Alonso “Bailar ha sido vivir” [To dance has been to live], interview by L. Tomé in El Mercurio (Santiago, Chile), Nov. 19, 2000, E24, expanded and reprinted in Diálogos, 332.

146 In 1948, Ballet Theatre suspended its activities temporarily due to a lack of funds. Alicia and Fernando Alonso seized the opportunity to found the Ballet Alicia Alonso with a number of dancers from the New York company who were in recess, plus a few Cuban dancers trained in Pro-Arte. The roster of international dancers who participated in the first season of Alonso’s company in Havana included Igor Youskevitch, Melissa Haydn, Barbara Fallis, Paula Lloyd, Michael Maule and Royes Fernandez, among many others. Lupe Serrano and Nicholas Magallanes joined the company during its second season. See the complete roster of foreign dancers in Alonso’s company between 1948 and 1998 in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de historia, 142-47. As the resident historian of the National Ballet of Cuba for over three decades and the author of numerous publications on the Cuban ballet, Cabrera is an authority on the history of Cuban ballet. The cited book contains accurate historical records of the company’s roster, repertory, tours, awards, etc. In the present study, the author relies on the records in Cabrera’s books in instances when access to primary sources was not possible.

147 In its first season, the repertory of the Ballet Alicia Alonso consisted of Giselle, Coppélia, Swan Lake (second act) and Sleeping Beauty (third act), as well as of Fokine’s Les Sylphides, Petrouchka and Prince Igor, Balanchine’s Apollo, Bolm’s Peter and the Wolf, and Keith Lester-Anton Dolin’s Pas de Quatre. It also featured Alberto Alonso’s Concerto and La valse. A number of souvenir programs from the Ballet Alicia Alonso’s first two seasons confirm this repertory. The two folders containing the programs in

101 Giving proof of her commitment to the Cuban ballet, Alicia Alonso assumed the funding of the troupe and the school, both of which lacked the support of private maecenas and only on occasion received money from the government. The ensemble was renamed Ballet de Cuba in 1955. After eight years of successful performances on the

Island and in other Latin American countries, dire finances forced a hiatus in its activities in 1956 (Rey and Simón 1996, 40-41; M. Cabrera 1998, 21-23).148

In 1959, the triumph of Fidel Castro’s armed revolution and his ascension to power marked a turning point in Alonso’s life. By endorsing her country’s new government, the ballerina chose Havana as her permanent base. This compromised her career in the United States. Due to her communist affiliation, she was not admitted to

American territory from 1960 to 1975. According to the dancer, North American consular authorities would grant her a visa only if she agreed to defect the communist regime. Her answer to these propositions was “an absolute ‘no’” (A. Alonso 1981/1982, 235).149

For the rest of her career, a new political and cultural context shaped Alonso’s work in Cuba, a country in the midst of intense social transformation in the 1960s and

the New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division are catalogued as Ballet Alicia Alonso, “Souvenir Program, 1949-50,” and “Programs.” See the complete repertory of Alonso’s company, from 1948 to 1998, in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 72-109.

148 An account of the events that led to the hiatus is offered in footnote 22.

149 It was not until 1975 that Alonso rejoined the American Ballet Theatre as a guest in the gala for the company’s thirtieth anniversary. He danced with this ensemble again in 1976 and 1977 as the heroine in Alberto Alonso’s Carmen. In the next two years, she toured New York, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Antonio and Washington, D.C., with the National Ballet of Cuba. Since then, Alonso and her ensemble have appeared in the United Stated on several occasions. However, their visits have always been subject to sensitive visa decisions, depending on how open US administrations have been to cultural exchanges with Cuba. Rey and Simón, Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda, 46. Also, see Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Souvenir Program, North American Tour, 1978; and Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Souvenir Program, U. S. Tour, 1979. Both sources are in the holdings of The New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division. Additionally, see the list of international tours of the National Ballet of Cuba in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 178-86.

102 70s. Where before support for the arts had been almost nonexistent, now there were generous governmental subsidies, and what had been her personal quest for the Cuban ballet became part of an institutionalized enterprise to foster national culture. As early as in January 1959, within one month of the establishment of the new government, Alonso

and her troupe expressed their adherence to the regime. “The Ballet of Cuba

enthusiastically greets the advent of the glorious Cuban revolution, which, with its heroes

and martyrs, announces the dawn of peace and democracy and paves the way for the

fulfillment of our nation’s political, social and cultural ideals,” proclaimed a public statement issued by the company.150 Soon after, Castro approached the Alonsos to offer support to their work in Cuba. According to the testimony of Fernando Alonso, the political leader himself knocked at his door at midnight one night in March 1959 to discuss the future of the ballet company:

He asked me: “How much money do you need to reorganize the Ballet [Company]?” I replied: “One hundred thousand pesos a year,” afraid that I was asking too much. Then he exceeded my calculation: “We will give you two hundred thousand pesos, but you have to guarantee that it’s going to be a great company.”151

In view of this development, the troupe resumed operations that same year (M. Cabrera

1998, 23). In 1960, the government passed Law 812, which approved a yearly subsidy for

the National Ballet of Cuba, as the company was renamed. Alonso’s troupe became a

public entity under the umbrella of the Directorate of Culture, part of the Ministry of

150 Ballet Nacional de Cuba, “Declaración pública del Ballet de Cuba en apoyo a la Revolución” [Public declaration of the National Ballet of Cuba in support of the Revolution], 1959, reprinted in M. Cabrera, Órbita del Ballet Nacional de Cuba [Orbit of the National Ballet of Cuba] (Havana: Editorial Orbe, 1978), 136.

151 The dialogue is documented in R. Ruiz, Fernando Alonso: danza con la vida, 110-11. Ruiz quotes his own interview of F. Alonso.

103 Education. This was reflective of not only the official support of the arts but also the

increasing institutionalization of all aspects of public life on the Island.

Law 812 set guidelines for making ballet an expression of the Cuban culture:

The Ballet of Cuba will work, essentially, toward a broad and exemplary promotion of this artistic genre all across the Republic, seeking the presentation, both in our country and abroad, of ballets inspired by our best historical, folkloric and musical traditions, with the purpose of nurturing Cuban choreographers and musicians.152

This was in line with cultural policies that highlighted the importance of preserving and expanding the Cuban cultural heritage. For decades to come, the government continued to foster such policies. In 1977, Armando Hart, the Minister of Culture, brought attention to the partnership between national culture and communism when he reminded the audience at the Second Congress of the National Association of Cuban Writers and Artists,

“Socialist ideology provides the right path towards a higher intellectual rigor in the evolution of our own cultural expressions. With our national heritage as a springboard, let’s consciously march toward our universal heritage; toward socialism.”153 Bearing in

mind the field of dance, Hart proposed, “For the Cuban dance movement the policy to

follow should not be unrelated to the rich musical and dancing traditions of our people,

152 Ley no. 812, in La Gaceta Oficial (Havana), 1959; reprinted in M. Cabrera, Órbita del Ballet Nacional de Cuba [Orbit of the National Ballet of Cuba] (Havana: Orbe, 1978), 138-141.

153 In his mentions of socialism and socialist ideology, Hart was actually referring to communism and communist ideology. Castro’s regime is seldom described as communist in the official language of the Cuban authorities and the national media, which, instead, define the Revolution as socialist. A. Hart, “Discurso pronunciado por el compañero Armando Hart Dávalos, miembro del Buró Político del Partido Comunista de Cuba y Ministro de Cultura, en la clausura del II Congreso de la UNEAC, celebrado en el hotel Habana Libre, el día 13 de octubre de 1977” [Speech by comrade Armando Hart Dávalos, member of the Cuban Communist Party’s politburo and Minister of Culture, in the closing session of the II Congress of the UNEAC, held in the Habana Libre Hotel, on October 13, 1977], in Revolución, Letras, Artes [Revolution, arts and letters] (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas,1980), 86-110.

104 nor the formidable contribution of the Cuban ballet’s dance forms in terms of technique and artistic beauty during the last decades.”154

The Revolution’s cultural policies facilitated the development of all aspects of the

Cuban ballet. State support guaranteed the creation of a nationwide network of ballet schools that fed the highly selective National School of Ballet in Havana, which in turn fed the National Ballet of Cuba. The first two decades of the Revolution saw the crystallization of a Cuban methodology for the teaching of ballet. As early as 1964, a new crop of local dancers, exponents of the Cuban teaching methodology, captured the attention of the international press when they won several medals in the International

Ballet Competition of Varna, one of the most important events of its type.155 The British critic Arnold Haskell, a member of the jury, described the sense of revelation that followed these dancers’ success:

Before the Competition began we saw some Cuban names listed among the participants but we did not think anything in particular about it. Three days later, everybody in the ballet world was talking about Cuba. The names of Mirta Pla, Josefina Méndez, Aurora Bosch and Loipa Araújo became familiar for everybody, not only as individual dancers but as exponents of a new school, a Cuban school.156

154 The author’s translation of Hart’s words does not attempt to correct the syntactic awkwardness of the original passage in Spanish. Ibid., 96.

155 M. Cabrera provides a detailed list of international awards won by dancers in the company until 1990. The Cuban dancers who won medals in Varna in 1964 were Mirta Pla (silver), Josefina Méndez (bronze) and Rodolfo Rodríguez (bronze). The next year the winners were Loipa Araújo (gold), Aurora Bosch (silver) and Méndez (silver). In 1966, medals were conferred to Bosch (gold), Pla (silver) and Mirta García (silver). In 1968, María Elena Llorente won a bronze medal. Other Cuban dancers won awards in Varna in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in the renowned competitions of Paris, Tokyo and Moscow. M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de historia, 214-19.

156 A. Haskell, “El crítico Arnold Haskell en la clausura del Seminario sobre Crítica y Apreciación del Ballet” (The critic Arnold Haskell in the closing session of the Worshop on Ballet Criticism and Appreciation), 8. According to Ahmed Piñero, historian at the Cuban Dance Museum, Haskell’s text appeared as a detached supplement of the magazine Caimán Barbudo in 1968. It consists of a transcription of the critic’s words in the closing session of the workshop. Piñero emailed this author a digitalized copy of the supplement. The month of its publication is not clear. A microfilm of the magazine’s numbers from

105 In addition to featuring home-grown dancers of international caliber, in the

1970s the National Ballet of Cuba saw the emergence of choreographers who, in

accordance with the cultural policies in place, contributed to the search for a Cuban

identity in ballet. Exemplifying this, Iván Tenorio’s Rítmicas (1973), set to an

Afrocubanist score by Amadeo Roldán, presented a duo of dancers exercising at the

barre in a manner that fused ballet steps with Cuban dance forms. Meanwhile, in Cecilia

Valdés (1975) Gustavo Herrera choreographed a story of incest and interracial love in colonial Havana, borrowed from Cirilo Villaverde’s novel of the same name, a classic of

Cuban literature. Among other ballets within this line were Alberto Alonso’s El güije

(1967) and La rumba (1968), Alberto Méndez’s El río y el bosque (1973) and Herrera’s

Dan-Son (1978), which drew their inspiration from the Island’s folklore and social dance forms (M. Cabrera 1998, 28-29).

While Law 812 stated that the National Ballet of Cuba should work toward the consolidation of the country’s cultural legacy, it did not include any indications on how the company would maintain, or not, a connection to the European sources of ballet.

There were no directives in the text that either encouraged or restricted the performance of European works. However, other sources from the era shed light on the government’s position on this issue.

Political authorities, artists and intellectuals discussed the boundaries of artistic freedom in communist Cuba in a series of meetings in the National Library in June 1961.

The debates finalized with a speech by Fidel Castro that entered Cuban history as his

1968, obtained from the University of Pittsburgh, does not include the supplement. M. Cabrera confirms that Caimán Barbudo published this text, but he does not indicate the month of publication in his citation of the article when he quotes it in Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de historia, 24.

106 Palabras a los intelectuales (Words to the intellectuals). Castro warned that, in terms of content and subject matter, there would be no tolerance of artistic products that opposed the official ideology. A slogan emerged from his speech: “Within the

Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.”157 This stance laid the ground not only for official censorship but also for artists’ self-censorship, undermining freedom

of expression for decades to come.158 However, the government did not restrict the artists’ possibilities to work within a variety of forms and styles. There was no imposition of a particular aesthetic. Castro emphasized, “We have discussed aesthetic freedom here.

Everybody agreed that aesthetic freedom should be respected. I believe there are no doubts about this” (Castro 1961, 11). This distinguished Cuba from other communist countries, such as China and the Soviet Union, where artists were forced to produce

157 F. Castro, Palabras a los intelectuales, speech at the National Library, Havana, June 30, 1961, in Revolución, artes y letras, 14.

158 To the date, the most publicized example of governmental coercion of artists was the so-called Padilla Case, which achieved an international dimension. In 1968, the National Association of Cuban Writers and Artists conferred that year’s Julián del Casal Poetry Award to Fuera del juego (Outside the game), by Heberto Padilla, a text critical of the government. For weeks, while members of the award committee deliberated, official authorities tried to deter them from giving the award to Padilla. Governmental maneuvers ranged from intimidation to attempts to replace the members of the committee with artists who militated in the Communist Party and were sympathetic to the censors. Nevertheless, the committee stood firm and granted the award to Padilla. In 1971, authorities arrested Padilla for 38 days after a public reading of poems from his book Provocaciones (Provocations). Authorities released him on the condition that he offered a mea culpa speech in which, in addition to blaming himself for conspiring against the Revolution, he should give the names of other ‘counter-revolutionary’ artists—which he did under pressure. Abroad, a group of personalities led by Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Sontag and US Senator Edward Kennedy led a successful campaign requesting the Cuban government to let Padilla leave the country. In 1980, the campaign resulted in Padilla’s exile to the United States. A number of sources documenting the Padilla Case are reproduced in the website titled “Literatura.us”, under the link “El caso Padilla,” http://www.literatura.us/padilla, consulted on June 27, 2010. Among them are the statement from the Award Committee conferring the prize to Padilla, a response from the Association of Cuban Writers and Artists expressing the institution’s disagreement with the verdict and an insider’s account of the authorities’ attempts to manipulate the Award Committee by one of its members, Manuel Díaz Martínez. Also, see Padilla’s autobiography. H. Padilla, La mala memoria [The bad memory] (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1989), 146-202.

107 works within the populist style of socialist realism and risked being banned if they experimented within innovative aesthetics originated in the Western capitalist world.

In practice, this aesthetic freedom allowed the Cuban arts to remain connected to genres, trends and styles that had flourished or continue to flourish outside the Island. In an example of this, composer José Ardévol, acting as President of the National

Committee of Music in the early years of the Revolution, specified that this institution had among its goals “to divulge and cultivate music from all historical periods and of all styles” and that the programs of the National Symphonic Orchestra and other official ensembles were put together following the principle of “not rejecting any works on the ground of issues of aesthetics, trends and schools.”159 For the Cuban ballet, this openness

meant that Alonso and her company could continue to perform works such as Giselle and

Swan Lake, even when they were susceptible of being perceived as alien to the local

culture or representative of the bourgeois values of Pro-Arte’s years. This issue came up

in 1967 during a debate between students of the National Schools of the Arts and Carlos

Rafael Rodríguez, one of the highest-ranking members of the Communist Party’s

politburo. Rodríguez explained,

We believe that ballet is a valid artistic expression […] In many cases, the subject matter of traditional ballets refers to situations that, historically, are not valid any longer. For instance, the motivation behind Swan Lake has nothing to do with our concerns in the present. Nonetheless, there is enough dance and enough art in Swan Lake to justify its permanent presence on the stages. We also believe that ballet in itself has not exhausted its possibilities for contemporary expression, and proof of it is

159 J. Ardévol, “Política cultural” [Cultural Policy], originally part of Plan de Trabajo de la Dirección Nacional de Música para 1963 [Work plan of the National Music Council for 1963], Sep. 1962; reprinted in J. Ardévol, Música y Revolución [Music and Revolution] (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1966), 212.

108 that revolutionary subject matter has been explored and is being explored in our country.160

For the National Ballet of Cuba, the “revolutionary subject matter” translated into

works such as Azari Plisetski’s La avanzada (The outpost), in which dancers in fatigues

“depicted the heroism of the Soviet soldiers during the Second World War.”161 In 1962,

the troupe led a month-long nationwide tour in the midst of the Missile Crisis that

brought Cuba, the Soviet Union and the United States to the edge of nuclear

confrontation—after photographs taken from a US spy plane on October 14 revealed the

installation of Russian missiles on the Island. The company continued its tour in spite of

the fact that the international confrontation escalated into an imminent war scenario.

Moreover, the ensemble took the tour a step further by performing for the Cuban troops

stationed close to the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay.162 La avanzada was a sudden

addition to the company’s repertory, staged at the last minute to meet the needs of the

performance in Guantánamo. Such an artistic decision was imbued with Cold War era

political symbolism and illustrated the Cuban ballet’s readiness to address contemporary

themes. Other noted examples of works that featured political subject matter were

Alberto Alonso’s Conjugación (Conjugation, 1970) and Viet Nam: la lección (Vietnam:

160 C. R. Rodríguez, “Problemas del arte en la Revolución” [The problems of the arts in the Revolution], 1967, in Revolución, artes y letras, 49-85.

161 R. Ruiz, Alicia: la maravilla de la danza, 51. Plisetski had been a member of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and was the brother of its noted leading ballerina, Maia Plisetskaia. He worked with the National Ballet of Cuba between 1963 and 1973. M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de historia, 157.

162 In his account of the tour, Ruiz does not offer the exact date for this performance. For a chronology of the Missile Crisis, see The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, ed. L. Chang and P. Kornbluh (New York: The New Press, 1992), 358-93.

109 the lesson, 1973), which drew their inspiration from the life of communist leader

Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the Vietnam War respectively (M. Cabrera 1998, 28).

The Missile Crisis, the CIA-sponsored attack of Bay of Pigs, the Revolution’s alignment with the communist bloc and the confiscation of foreign investments on the

Island led to the severance of Cuba’s diplomatic relationships with the United States and

Western Europe. This resulted in a foreign policy that cast these countries as enemies of the Revolution. Radical anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism became entrenched in the

government’s political discourse. Already in September 2, 1960, in a speech that came to be known as The First Declaration of Havana, Castro exhorted over a million Cubans gathered in Revolution Square to oppose foreign penetration:

The General Assembly of the People of Cuba resolutely condemns the open and criminal interventionism that, for over a century, North American imperialism has exerted on the countries of Latin America […] This interventionism, supported by [the United States’] military superiority, unequal treaties and the miserable submission of treacherous [Latin American] rulers, has turned the America of Bolivar, Hidalgo, Juárez, San Martín, Sucre and Martí into a zone of exploitation, into the backyard of the financial and political Yankee empire […] The Assembly of the People of Cuba embraces José Martí and Benito Juárez’s liberating Latin-Americanism instead of the [Monroe Doctrine’s] hypocritical Pan- Americanism, which results in nothing more than the subordination of the interests of our peoples to Yankee monopolies and Yankee manipulation of our governments.163

The First Declaration of Havana was Cuba’s response to the Declaration of San

José, adopted by the Organization of American States three months earlier in Costa Rica.

In the latter, a majority of OAS’s members supported the United States’ proposal for

imposing isolating sanctions on Cuba. To counter isolation from the rest of the continent, in the First Declaration of Havana Castro accepted the military, political and economic

163 F. Castro, Primera Declaración de La Habana, speech, Havana, Sep. 2, 1960, in F. Castro and E. Guevara, Cinco Documentos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1971), 115-17.

110 assistance extended to Cuba by China and the Soviet Union. This decision formally situated Cuba within the Communist bloc and, therefore, meant the country’s distancing not only from the United States but also Western Europe. In this context, the Cuban government also forged strategic alliances with other Third World nations that shared its anti-imperialist and anticolonial stance. Such politics had deep repercussions on the nation’s cultural policies, as exemplified in the final act passed by the First National

Congress on Education and Culture (1971). The act called for artistic endeavors that confronted imperialism and fostered nationalism and solidarity with other countries from

Latin America, Asia and Africa:

The art of the Revolution will be narrowly connected to the roots of our nationality at the same time that it will be internationalist. We will support the legitimate, combative cultural expressions of Latin America, Asia and Africa, which imperialism attempts to crush […] We fight any attempt of colonization in the ideological and aesthetic fields. We do not worship any false values that are a reflection of the structures of the societies that look down on our countries.164

However, the Cuban artistic community did not interpret these guidelines as a call to discontinue its links with artistic movements in countries deemed enemies of the

Revolution. Instead, many Cuban artists expressed their postcolonial posture by adopting a critical attitude toward the assimilation of foreign aesthetics.165 In his presentation “The

Intellectual in the Revolution,” in the Havana Cultural Congress in 1968, the literary

critic Ambrosio Fornet captured this view: “We should test the [foreign] formulae that

arrive to us labeled as avant-garde. This is not about suppressing but about incorporating

164 Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura, Memorias [Proceedings] (Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971), 207-08.

165 This approach was not new. As previously indicated, in the pre-Revolution years, artists such as Lam, Peláez, Piñera, Guillén, Roldán and Caturla had already explored it. Now it became part of the official discourse.

111 with a critical sense and discarding what cannot be assimilated naturally.”166 Castro

endorsed such a critical approach to the adoption of foreign elements as he recommended that Cuba “be able to assimilate other countries’ artistic expressions but without succumbing to cultural colonialism.”167 Novelist Lisandro Otero’s report Cultural Policy

in Cuba (1972), submitted to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization, captured the link between nationalism and the assimilation of fresh foreign elements in the arts:

Another basic aspect of our cultural policy […] is the attention paid to the national strain, the reflection in art of our traditions, history and cultural origins […] In conjunction with this emphasis on our beginnings, we focus on assimilating the cultural heritage of mankind. The adoption of new techniques and trends is the best guarantee that traditionalism will not become a reactionary brake on the updating of our culture. Adapted to our needs, this selective assimilation of the most technically advanced and up- to-date values in the arts, ensures the retention of our dynamism.168

Alonso echoed these values when she warned that indiscriminate incorporation of

foreign elements could imperil the national stamp of the Cuban ballet. She sought to

prevent the Island’s ballet dancers from copying the style of dancers from other

countries: “Dancers from other schools move in their own way […] that fits their

character and their culture. We should dance in our differentiated style.” Nonetheless,

Alonso welcomed the incorporation of foreign elements if done in a discerning manner:

166 A. Fornet, “El intelectual en la Revolución” [The intellectual in the Revolution], Havana Cultural Congress, 1968, in Revolución, Letras, Artes, 318.

167 F. Castro, Speech on occasion of the inauguration of the School “Comandante Pinares,” in Guane, Pinar del Río, Sep. 20, 1971, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1971/esp/f200971e.html, consulted on Apr. 17, 2009.

168 L. Otero, Cultural Policy in Cuba (Paris: UNESCO, 1972), 14. Published in English. Given the strict censorship controlling the flow of information into and out of the Island, it is only expected that Otero’s document describing the Revolution’s cultural policies was subject to the Cuban authorities’ approval, written as it was to be published by a major international organization during the Cold War period.

112 “Only the most qualified, knowledgeable and mature ballet teachers, those who truly know the Cuban school and are able to discuss and arrive at the right conclusions on these matters should decide which foreign elements can be assimilated.”169

In encouraging the cultivation of the Cuban arts from a critical postcolonial perspective that valued the significance of international exchanges in preventing stagnation, these cultural policies facilitated that Alonso and the Cuban ballet promoted the Cuban culture while maintaining a connection with Europe. Helped by her status as an international star, Alonso managed to cross the astringent Cold War boundaries to periodically appear on many of Western Europe’s main stages, either with her own company or as a guest with international ensembles. In the 1960s, she danced in Paris,

The Hague, Brussels, Copenhagen and Barcelona.170 In the next decade, the ballerina and the National Ballet of Cuba, true cultural ambassadors of the Revolution, sustained almost yearly appearances in Western Europe, visiting France, Italy, the United

Kingdom, Western Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Finland,

Luxembourg and Monaco.171 At home, Alonso made the International Ballet Festival of

169 A. Alonso and P. Simón, “Fuentes y antecedentes de la Escuela Cubana de Ballet” [Sources and antecedents of the Cuban school of ballet], transcript of a conversation between Alonso and Simón on Nov. 10, 1978, in A. Alonso, Diálogos con la danza, first edition (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1986), 55.

170 In spite of her appearances in these cities, Alonso was dissatisfied with the fewer number of international engagements available to her after taking sides with Castro’s Revolution. She complained that for a period of three years in the 1960s the Cuban authorities did not do enough to grant her access to international stages: “They did not realize that, since I could not perform in the United States, they had to find other international venues for me. They did not know how to manage an international star like me. I am conscious that the Revolution is not to blame for this, that it was the responsibility of individual authorities. It was as painful as losing my sight, if not more.” A. Alonso, “Bailo, luego existo,” 233-34.

171 See El Ballet Nacional de Cuba en Europa: 1969, Críticas [The National Ballet of Cuba in Europe: 1969, reviews] (Havana: 1969?). This publication keeps track of the different European cities where Alonso and the National Ballet of Cuba performed in 1969, reproducing reviews published in each of them. Also, see a detailed list of the company’s international tours between 1948 and 1998 in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de historia, 176-86.

113 Havana, which was first celebrated in 1960 and since then has reached twenty first editions, a welcoming event for dancers from all over the world, including many from

European countries. Among the guest artists who danced with the National Ballet of

Cuba in the first decades of the Revolution were Claire Sombert (France) and Belinda

Wright (United Kingdom) in 1967, Cyril Atanassoff (France) in 1971, Carla Fracci (Italy) and Paolo Bortoluzzi (Italy) in 1974, Eva Evdokimova (Western Germany), Atilio Labis

(France) and Ghislaine Thesmar (France) in 1976, and Maina Gielgud (United Kingdom)

and Adam Lüders (Deanmark) in 1980.172

In parallel with these contacts with Western Europe, the Cuban ballet cultivated a

strong relationship with its homologues in Eastern Europe as part of the programs of cultural exchange between communist countries.173 One of the most noticeable examples

in this regard was the collaboration between the Russian dancer Azari Plisetski and the

National Ballet of Cuba. A member of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, Plisetski relocated

to Havana in 1963 as a principal dancer with the Cuban ensemble, with which he spent a

decade. He was Alonso’s dance partner during this period, appearing with her in

numerous performances as well as in three of her most valuable films: Giselle (1963),

Carmen (1968) and Cisne negro (1968, The Black Swan pas de deux, from Swan

172 M. Cabrera provides the complete list of guest dancers with the National Ballet of Cuba from 1948 to 1998 in Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de historia, 143-147.

173 These contacts were not new. Alicia and Fernando Alonso had already visited the Soviet Union in 1957, before Castro took power. In 1958, Ballet Today reported that Alonso was the first American ballerina to dance with these Soviet companies. The magazine gave details about her two-month trip and her performances in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Riga and Kiev. See “News of Dancers,” in Ballet Today (London), Apr. 1958, 16.

114 Lake).174 Another contribution of Plisetski to the National Ballet of Cuba was his choreography for La avanzada, Primer concierto (1971, First concert) and Canto vital

(1973, Vital song). Also, as a pedagogue and model to emulate, Plisetski helped to raise the artistic and technical standards among the company’s male dancers, according to the testimony of principal dancer Jorge Esquivel, who took classes from the Russian artist.175

The Cuban ballet’s connection with Eastern Europe also manifested in numerous appearances of Alonso and her company in the Soviet Union, Eastern Germany, Poland,

Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia between 1960 and 1989.176

It materialized, too, in many guest performances of dancers from these countries with the

National Ballet of Cuba. Among them were Maya Plisetskaya, Ekaterina Maximova,

Ludmila Semeniaka, Maris Liepa and Vladimir Vasiliev, to name just a few examples from the Kirov and the Bolshoi troupes.177 Additionally, a number of Cuban dancers

went to the Soviet Union to complete their training at the Vaganova Academy in St.

Petersburg. Among them were Lázaro Carreño, Laura Alonso, Menia Martínez and

174 Giselle, film directed by E. Pineda Barnet, featuring Alicia Alonso, Azari Plisetski and the National Ballet of Cuba (Havana: ICAIC, 1963), released in VHS (West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur Video, 1995). Alicia, film featuring Alonso and Plisetski in the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake and the complete ballet Carmen among other materials (Havana: ICAIC, 1968); these two ballet selections were reissued in Alicia, documentary directed by V. Casaus (Havana: ICAIC, 1976), released in VHS (New York: VAI, 1988).

175 J. Esquivel, “Teacher’s Wisdom,” interview by M. E. Hunt, http://www.lazyteacher.com/ wisdom.asp, consulted on Sep. 18, 2006.

176 El Ballet Nacional de Cuba en Europa: 1969, críticas; and Ballet Nacional de Cuba: dos años de crítica mundial, 1966-1968 (The National Ballet of Cuba: two years of international reviews, 1966-68).

177 Plisetskaya danced in Cuba in 1965, Maximova and Vasiliev in 1967, and Semeniaka and Liepa in 1976. Other dancers from the Soviet Union who performed with the National Ballet of Cuba were Borish Khokhlov in 1960, Ina Subkovskaya, Nikokai Fadeyev and Sviatoslav Kuznetsov in 1965, Reina Tchakoeva in 1966, Alexander Lavreniuk and Sergei Radchenko in 1968, Olga Chenchikova in 1974, Nadiezda Pavlova, Vladimir Tijonov and Viacheslav Godeyev in 1976, Malika Sabirova and Mikhail Boyarnov in 1980, Sergei Berezhnoi in 1984, and Valery Anisimov in 1986. See a list of the ensemble’s foreign guest dancers in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 142-47.

115 Karemia Moreno, who later became soloists, principal dancers and teachers with either the National Ballet of Cuba or the Camagüey Ballet.178

Through these persisting links with Europe, Alonso and the Cuban ballet were able to sustain a European input during the Revolution’s era. This permitted a historical

continuity in the connection to European ballet that Alonso had experienced during her

years at Pro-Arte and Ballet Theatre. Additionally, by encouraging the development of

the Cuban culture, the Revolution meant an extension, too, of the nationalist attitudes that

characterized the previous political and cultural contexts in which Alonso had worked.

In conclusion, throughout her long career Alicia Alonso worked in environments in which the intersection of nationalism and cosmopolitanism affected artistic production and, in particular, the practice of ballet in Cuba and the United States.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the North American tutelage of

Cuban politics and economy, together with a situation of acute poverty and corruption, prompted an outburst of nationalism on the Island. Many political organizations opposed

North American interventionism, strived for sovereignty and sought to reset the course of the nation. These groups regarded education, culture and the arts as fields whose development was essential to Cuba’s revitalization. Such belief, in conjunction with the extensive involvement of artists and intellectuals in this political movement, led to the transference of the prevailing nationalist attitudes into the artistic arena. Visual artists, musicians, writers and playwrights engaged in the search for a Cuban identity and contributed multiple formulations of it within their disciplines.

178 A. Piñeiro, historian at the Dance Museum in Havana, confirmed that these dancers studied in the Soviet Union in a personal communication via email (Fall 2006). The Camagüey Ballet was founded in 1967. It owes its name to the city of Camagüey, where the ensemble evolved to become the second most important ballet company in Cuba.

116 In parallel to celebrating the local culture, these artists turned their eyes to

Europe as they aimed to bring the Island’s artistic production to up-to-date international standards. Their adoption of elements of the European artistic avant-garde gave them a broad range of agency in representing a Cuban ethos. In the 1920s-40s, the vanguardia

painters, the critical criollist writers, the Afrocubanist composers and a group of local dramatists were the best exponents of this movement. These intellectuals generated a public discourse on issues of postcolonialism in the arts. While inquiring into what constituted a Cuban cultural identity, they posed the question of how to negotiate the relationship between the Cuban and European arts. They proposed that it was acceptable for Cuban artists to assimilate foreign elements and models as long as they did so

critically and toward the articulation of artistic languages that were distinctively Cuban.

Hence, their works established a counterpoint between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

The same questions were not resolved harmoniously in the field of the Cuban

ballet during this period. At the time, ballet in Cuba was mostly limited to the activities of

the School of Dance at the Pro-Arte Musical Society, which catered to the local upper class. A majority of the directors and patrons of Pro-Arte were part of a sector of the

Cuban public interested in the most traditional European art. Their aesthetic conservatism

and Eurocentric attitudes made them oppose the efforts to create Cuban ballets by a group

of local artists. The polemics generated around Dioné and Antes del alba, works that

showcased the aboriginal and Afrocuban strands in the Cuban culture, were due not only

to the traditionalist taste of this social group but also to its prejudices on race and social

class.

117 The development of ballet in the United States in the 1930s-40s took place among contestation as well, spawning a debate on how to reconcile the practice of this

European dance form with the pursuit of an American identity. The New York Times

critic John Martin, who advocated a brand of ballet that featured an American aesthetics,

condemned choreographer George Balanchine’s earliest ballets in United States, which

he saw as a continuation of a Russian tradition. In the meanwhile, promoter Lincoln

Kirstein advanced plans for making ballets based on American literary works, locales and

music compositions, which ultimately led to the inception of Ballet Caravan. The new

ballets were unpopular with spectators accustomed to a European repertory and

aesthetics. This situation expanded the debate on the American ballet into efforts to

educate the audiences. Kirstein, however, opposed a narrow interpretation of the

American ballet; he endorsed Balanchine’s work and thought that ballet in the United

States should be rooted in a European tradition. Tensions between Eurocentric and

nationalist forces played out even at Ballet Theatre, in spite of the fact that the company

was founded as an initiative to find a balance between the European repertory and the

new American works. The search for such a balance was not straightforward: the

ensemble was at some point envisioned as a Russian troupe, later becoming a springboard

for the production of American ballets.

After 1959, the circumstances affecting the practice of ballet in Cuba changed

radically as a result of the cultural policies of Fidel Castro’s communist government.

These policies ensured financial and political support of the Cuban ballet, which

flourished over the next decades. The government encouraged Cuban artists to cultivate

the local culture in an expression of the nationalist and postcolonial character of the

118 Revolution. Accordingly, choreographers produced works that drew inspiration from the Island’s literary, folkloric and musical traditions. Yet, in spite of the recommended accent on the local, the Cuban artistic community remained in dialogue with the outside world—although observing an official stance that prescribed a critical attitude in the assimilation of foreign elements. The government recognized the importance of artists creating works with contemporary subject matter but, in the case of ballet, it also regarded the European repertory of classics as a valuable artistic legacy worth of preservation. In this way, the Cuban ballet remained connected to the dance form’s

European tradition. Tours and cultural exchanges that took the National Ballet of Cuba to

Europe, as well as frequent visits to Havana of dancers from that continent, furthered the interaction between the Cuban and the European ballet.

119

CHAPTER 3

IN DEFENSE OF THE CUBAN BALLET: ALONSO’S RATIONALE

FOR THE PRACTICE OF BALLET IN CUBA

Frequently, Alicia Alonso resorted to writing and speech to explain her position as a Cuban ballerina, defend her choice to develop ballet in her country and establish her

rationale for the practice of ballet by Cubans. At the beginning of her career, she faced

ethnic prejudices on her suitability to perform the European ballet classics adequately.

When asked whether she encountered racism in the North American ballet environment

of the 1930s and 1940s, she responded, “At that time there was. It was impossible for

many to imagine a Latin woman dancing classical ballet. They thought that Latinas, and

especially Cuban women, could only dance the rumba.”179 As a Latin American dancer

claiming as her own a repertory that until then had remained the province of European

ballerinas, Alonso shocked dance critics and spectators when she first toured Europe with

Ballet Theatre in 1946: “A lot of people were astonished. I danced the more classical works, like Giselle and Swan Lake […] The audience could not believe that a Latina represented classicism. In England, a critic even asked me how I had the courage to dance Giselle.”180

179 A. Alonso, “Alicia Alonso, Living on the Tips of Her Toes,” in Culture and the Cuban Revolution, Conversations in Havana, ed. J. M. Kirk and L. Padura Fuentes (Gainesville, FL: Univ. Press of Florida, 2001), 42. A footnote with a full citation indicates the first reference to a source in the chapter. For the sake of keeping footnotes to a minimum, the source is cited with the author-date system in subsequent references.

180 A. Alonso, “Bailar ha sido vivir” [To dance has been to live], interview by L. Tomé, in El Mercurio (Santiago, Chile), Nov. 19, 2000, E24; expanded and reprinted in A. Alonso, Diálogos con la

120 Even after Alonso achieved recognition as one of the greatest classical

dancers of the twentieth century, her nationality remained a source of wonderment and

even stupefaction.181 The fact that such a fine dancer hailed from a Caribbean country

continued to puzzle many dance writers. Reviews of the National Ballet of Cuba’s first

and second tours of Europe, in 1966 and 1969, exemplify this type of response. Writing

for Le Combat in Paris, Dinah Maggie asked, “Who could have believed that one of the

most captivating Giselles that one could see would come from Cuba?”182 Sebastián

Gasch echoed the same idea, with words surprisingly similar, in a review for Destino, in

Barcelona: “Who would have believed that one of the most captivating Giselles that one

could imagine would come from Cuba?”183 An article in Le Soir, in Brussels, voiced the

mix of admiration and surprise that Alonso caused among critics:

After seeing Giselle fifteen or twenty times, performed over and over by stars of great or medium caliber, in productions from France, Russia, the United States, England and other places, was it possible that yet another star and another production, this time from Cuba, could make us vibrate with excitement? […] It was indeed Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina and

danza, fourth edition (Mexico City: Océano, 2004), 332. All references to Diálogos are to the fourth edition, unless otherwise specified. All translations from Spanish to English in this chapter are by the author unless otherwise noted.

181 Yet, in Walter Terry’s opinion, there came a moment when dancers, audiences and critics in the United States started to regard Alonso as an “American”. He called her a Cuban-American or simply an American. According to him, “Alonso was regarded as an American, as in fact she was and is, although not a norteamericana” (italics in the original). Additionally, the critic Olga Maynard indicated, “when Alonso debuted in the USSR, in 1957, she was regarded as the ‘first North American ballerina to dance in Russia.’” W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1981), 28, 29, 118; O. Maynard, “Los primeros años de la Alonso” [Alonso’s early years], in Cuba en el Ballet (Havana), no. 2, Apr.-Jun. 1987, 30.

182 D. Maggie, “Ouverture du IVe. Festival international de danse de Paris” [Opening of the IV International dance festival of Paris], in Le Combat, le journal de Paris, Nov. 4, 1966, 10.

183 The review, titled “Una Giselle memorable” [A Giselle to Remember], is reprinted in El Ballet Nacional de Cuba en Europa, 1969: críticas [The National Ballet of Cuba in Europe, 1969: reviews] (Havana, 1969?), 5-7.

121 choreographer, who made us vibrate with excitement and transported a complete audience.184

Reactions to the National Ballet of Cuba as a whole were similar. When the

company appeared in London in 1967, John Percival commented in Dance and Dancers,

“It is, after all, remarkable that a not over-large Caribbean republic should have a

classical ballet company when most of its neighbours are content with folk-dance

troupes; let alone that it should be prepared to stake its reputation on sending the

company abroad.”185 After its debut in the United States a decade later, Samuel Cherson described the ensemble in Performing Arts Review as “one of the biggest surprises the

critics and publics in the U. S. have encountered.”186 Responses to the company went

beyond awe. Although most reviews of the troupe’s first performances in New York were

positive, Barton Wimble, a reviewer for the Daily News, expressed skepticism about the

Cubans’ ability to perform Giselle: “Perhaps, since the company is 100% Cuban and

young, they simply find it hard to relate works about mythical German peasants to their

everyday socialist realism.”187 The lack of affinity between the dancers’ ethnicity, their everyday experiences and the European repertory was not the only element instigating

bewilderment among some critics. Cuba’s poor economic situation and political status as

a proletarian regime also weighed in. In an article in The New York Times anticipating the

184 A. B., “Alicia Alonso, merveilleuse ‘Giselle’” [Alicia Alonso, wonderful ‘Giselle’], in Le Soir, (Brussels), Apr. 12, 1969, 7.

185 J. Percival, “Caribbean Classic,” in Dance and Dancers (London), Jan. 1967, 42-43.

186 A. Alonso, “Alicia Alonso’s Passion and Exuberance,” interview conducted by S. Cherson, in Performing Arts Review, vol. 8, no. 3 (1978), 282.

187 B. Wimble, “Cuba’s National Ballet: Well-trained but Dull,” in Daily News (New York), Jun. 19, 1978, 27.

122 arrival of the troupe to the city, dance scholar Roger Copeland, who had recently visited Havana to observe the Cuban ballet in situ, questioned the paradox of context:

With its gossamer tutus and golden tiaras, classical ballet is hardly the sort of art one would expect to thrive in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. What could possibly seem less “relevant” to a small, underdeveloped, Latin American country whose Marxist government is busily engaged in the nationalization of industry, the redistribution of farmland and the abolition of illiteracy?188

One might argue that these writers’ amazement was justified by the fact that they

were documenting the very first appearances of the National Ballet of Cuba in Western

Europe and the United States. Yet, remarks in the same tone continued to appear decades

after the phenomenon of the Cuban ballet had lost its novelty and in spite of the fact that

the troupe had gained respect in international circles. For instance, in 1997 the leading

dance publication in Italy, Balletto Oggi, published a centerpiece article by its editor

Alfio Agostini that once more expressed disbelief at “the flourishing of a refined and

‘European’ art such as classical ballet on an Island from the Caribbean.” Agostini saw in

the Cuban ballet “a singular phenomenon, certainly surprising.”189

Even within Latin America, the notion of the Cuban ballet was difficult to accept

at first. This became apparent during the initial tour of the Ballet Alicia Alonso in 1948-

49, which took the ensemble to Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, El

Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

According to Alonso, she had to name the ensemble after herself because Ballet de Cuba,

a designation that she preferred, was not found acceptable: “The manager in South

188 R. Copeland, “Why Cuba Champions Ballet,” in New York Times, June 11, 1978, D1.

189 Emphasis in the original. A. Agostini, “Cuba per sempre,” in Balletto Oggi (Turin), June 1997, 14-15.

123 America thought that if you said Ballet de Cuba it meant rumba or something like that—folkloric dance, popular dance, not ballet. So they asked me to name it Ballet

Alicia Alonso. And they added Ballet Russe to it: Ballet Alicia Alonso Ballet Russe!”190

In effect, souvenir programs from the tour highlighted this designation. The cover of the

program for a performance at the Teatro Municipal in Caracas, on November 14, 1948,

read, “Ballet Alicia Alonso, Ballet Russe Season.” Of the works presented, only Mikhail

Fokine’s Les Sylphides was Russian. The other pieces were Keith Lester’s Pas de Quatre

and Alberto Alonso’s Concerto. Similary, the program for a performance of Coppélia at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, on February 7, 1949, announced a “Great

Ballet Russe season by the Ballet Alicia Alonso.”191 From the presenters’ perspective,

this publicity strategy helped to market the unknown Cuban ensemble by taking

advantage of the clout generated by the different European and North American troupes

that had previously toured the continent under the Ballet Russe label—from the

Diaghilev’s original Ballets Russes to Colonel de Wassil’s Ballets Russes to the Ballet

Russe de Montecarlo. However, as Alonso indicated, the main reason behind marketing

the company as a purveyor of Russian ballet was to dispel any doubts about its repertory

and counteract disbelief that a ballet ensemble could come from Cuba.

Latin American intellectuals, too, struggled with the idea of Cubans practicing

ballet. They questioned its appropriateness. Alonso evoked these intellectuals’ attitude in

190 A. Alonso, Interview with Alicia Alonso, conducted by M. Hunt, Nov. 19-21, 1977, typescript, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 82.

191 Ballet Alicia Alonso, Programs, 1948-1949, clipping file, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

124 her acceptance speech for a honoris causa degree from the University of Guadalajara,

Mexico, in 2002:

For many years, auto-discriminatory theories and practices regarding the fitness of Latin Americans for the art of ballet became preponderant in our countries’ cultural environment. They tried to disqualify the dancers from our countries, characterizing them as inept to practice classical dance due to physical and cultural reasons. A destructive inferiority complex aimed to exclude Latin Americans as proficient performers of the great works of the traditional repertory and practitioners of the academic technique.192

An interview of Alonso by Luis Peirano and Juan Larco for the Peruvian magazine

QueHacer in 1982 illustrates some of the objections against the Cuban ballet within the

region. In the questionnaire, the journalists categorized ballet as an elitist European art,

antithetic to the political, social, economic and cultural reality of the continent. At the

same time, by setting the dances of the Andeans and the Afrocubans as examples of

forms more representative of the region, the journalists implicitly proposed that ballet

was incompatible with the racial make up of Latin America. The interviewers fell just

short of accusing Alonso of betraying her own culture in favor of promoting an alien

expression:

- Alicia Alonso’s unconditional adherence to the Cuban Revolution is well known [but,] supposedly, ballet is the profession most distant from the predicaments of society […] Then, how is Alicia Alonso’s adherence to the Cuban Revolution possible?

- Why Giselle? Why Swan Lake? Why Les Sylphides? What do they have to say to us, people of a different era and continent?

- Some people argue that the creation of a ballet company in our countries is unjustifiable because: a) it is very costly; b) there are no traditions in which it could take roots; c) it is totally distant from our reality and, thus, it cannot express it; d) there is a cultural abyss between a classical pas de

192 A. Alonso, “La danza: triunfo ilimitado de nuestras culturas” [Dance, unlimited triumph of our cultures], speech at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, Dec. 3, 2002, in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 100, Jul.-Dec. 2002, 69.

125 deux and the dance of the scissors in Ayacucho. We should be concerned about the latter instead of the former.

- What could be the link between Cuba’s own culture and what clearly represents the European culture, and, in particular, the European elite? In other words, what do the wilis [in Giselle] have to say to the [Afrocuban deities] Yemaya and Ochun, or to the wamanis in the Andes mountains? And what would these reply?193

The belief that ballet was outdated and inadequate for Latin American countries and their multiracial populations overlapped with concerns about whether its adoption

was an instance of cultural colonialism. The debate on cultural colonialism in Latin

America, dating back to the late nineteenth century, had radicalized after the publication

in 1971 of Roberto Fernández Retamar’s “Calibán: Apuntes sobre la cultura de Nuestra

América” (Caliban: notes toward a discussion of culture in our America).194 A key text in postcolonial studies, “Calibán” is regarded by Fredric Jameson as the Latin American equivalent of Edward Said’s Orientalism—which it preceded by six years.195 In this

essay, the Cuban poet led an attack against Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes,

prominent fiction writers whom he identified with the right-wing agenda of the political elites of Argentina and Mexico respectively. He denounced them for siding with

European and North American literary traditions instead of embracing “our authentic culture, the culture created by the mestizo populace, those descendants of Indians and

193 The dance of the scissors is a folkloric tradition from Peru. A. Alonso, “Las verdades artísticas no tienen fronteras” [Artistic truths know no boundaries], interview by L. Peirano and J. Larco, in QueHacer (Lima), no. 17, June 1982; reprinted in Diálogos, 266-76.

194 R. Fernández Retamar, “Calibán: Apuntes sobre la cultura de Nuestra América,” in Casa de las Américas (Havana), no. 68, Sep.-Oct., 1971; reprinted as “Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America,” in R. Fernández Retamar, Caliban and Other Essays, trans. L. Garafola, D. A. McMurray and R. Márquez (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1989). Quotes from the English edition.

195 See F. Jameson’s foreword to R. Fernández Retamar, Caliban and Other Essays, viii; and G. M. Gugelberger, “Postcolonial Cultural Studies: 1. Origins to the 1980s,” in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. M. Groden, M. Kreiswirth and I. Szeman (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 2005), accessed online through the Temple Univ. Library on May 29, 2009.

126 blacks and Europeans […] the culture of the exploited classes” (Fernández Retamar

1971, 36). Furthermore, this Cuban thinker criticized “those who tried (or are trying) to

impose on these lands metropolitan schemes, or simply, tamely to reproduce in a

provincial fashion what might have authenticity in other countries” from Europe or North

America (Ibid., 38). Published in Casa de las Américas, a prestigious Cuban journal with

international circulation, the essay unleashed a series of polemics in the region’s

intellectual circles. Over the following years, the cultural issues that it raised, cast within the dynamics of social class relationships, struck a sensitive chord among intellectuals who felt compelled to take a political stance in a continent where social class conflicts had led to as dissimilar outcomes as the communist Cuban Revolution and the right-wing military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and other countries. These concerns about cultural colonialism and social class affiliation informed Larco and Peirano’s accusatorial questions for Alonso.

Together with the reactions of some European and North American dance critics,

the questionnaire from QueHacer exemplifies how the case of Alonso and the Cuban

ballet sometimes was perceived as problematic or unsettling, prompting from surprise to disbelief to dismissal to accusation. In 2002, the ballerina summarized this situation, “All in all, at home we had to face disbelief on our abilities and, abroad, discrimination due to our culture and country of origin” (A. Alonso 2002, 69). She could not ignore these reactions because they put in doubt her raison d’être as an artist and the validity of one of the most important undertakings of her career: the development of ballet in Cuba. Alonso realized that the ability to communicate her thoughts and anchor her work on a theoretical foundation was pivotal to her efforts to advocate for ballet and, in particular, the Cuban

127 ballet. The foreword to her book Diálogos con la danza attests to her consciousness of the need to complement her artistic activities with a framing discourse:

Already in the beginning of my long career I understood that I could not defend and explain my art only from the stage […] In many instances it was necessary to use words as the weapons in my fight […] I became conscious of how essential it was to explain, defend and promote certain values and discuss important issues in dance. I started to write texts, first timidly and then with more ease, and, at the same time, I allowed the publication of transcripts of my interviews, talks, lectures and other public speeches (A. Alonso 2004a, 53).

As a result of this, Alonso’s literary output became an important extension of her

multifaceted work as a dancer, pedagogue, choreographer, restager of the classics,

advocate of the Cuban ballet and artistic director of the National Ballet of Cuba. Many of

Alonso’s texts reveal her systematic inquiry into issues of cultural identity, aesthetics,

pedagogy and performance practice. Not content with letting her work be a subject for

others’ discussions, she offered her own interpretation of her activities. In doing so, she

was a model of an artist engaged in a process of self-reflection and active in the theoretical debates of her field.196

196 In fact, Alonso insisted that theoretical reflection was an essential part of her work and recommended that ballet dancers systematically partook in the type of research and discussions that she pursued. When the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, invested her with the degree of doctor honoris causa in 1998, in her acceptance speech she criticized dancers for a lack of intellectual involvement that, in her view, had led to a disparity between dance and the rest of the arts: “The dance world is not always free of guilt for the aforementioned situation [the widespread perception that dance is less intellectual than the other arts]. Dance professionals, immersed in the enthralling and absorbing world of human movement, carried away by the magic of expression and representation through movement, spend little time on theoretical reflection, on systematically researching and explaining dance history and aesthetics.” Alonso directed this criticism against professional ballet dancers in specific. She did not acknowledge the fruitful and abundant scholarly work of dancers in other genres or in academia. At another landmark event, a talk during the inauguration of new facilities of the National School of Ballet in Havana in 2001, the ballerina highlighted once again how critical it is for dancers to articulate their ideas and possess a broad culture that allows them “to sustain a conversation and an argument.” She recalled a confrontation that she had with the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén over a poem in which he echoed the stereotype that depicts dancers as not particularly intelligent or cultured: “He published a little poem that said, ‘El bailarín que aquí vez, tiene una rara torpeza: destruye con la cabeza lo que hace con los pies’ [The dancer that here you see displays certain clumsiness: he destroys with his head what he achieves with his feet]. Destroying with his head what he achieves with his feet…? I had a terrible argument with Guillén

128 Dance is a means of communication that conveys a rich range of bodily, emotional, social and aesthetic meanings. Nonetheless, as Alonso rightfully observed, certain subjects cannot not be properly expressed through dance alone. Her rational for the practice of ballet in Cuba was one such subject: in performances of Giselle, for instance, the National Ballet of Cuba’s display of excellence might have countered prejudices that Latin Americans were not adequate ballet dancers, but it could have hardly silenced criticisms that ballet was irrelevant to Cuban reality and that its adoption was a form of cultural colonialism. Alonso had to articulate the defense of the Cuban ballet beyond the stage.

Approaching Ballet as an International Art Form

A manifesto issued in 1951, “Propósitos que dieron origen y dan vida al Ballet

Alicia Alonso” (Goals that gave origin and continue to give life to the Ballet Alicia

Alonso), shows that, already in the initial stages of developing a Cuban ballet, Alonso was conscious of the artistic and political challenges ensuing from the enterprise. The manifesto outlined the mission, justified the existence and explained the significance of the company founded three years earlier, which later became the National Ballet of Cuba.

On the issue of reconciling ballet and Cuban culture, it spelled out the purpose to sponsor

“as much as possible the staging of Cuban ballets with the goal of contributing to the

because, as a dancer, I felt attacked. He replied, ‘Don’t take it seriously. I’m not referring to you. I’m talking about other dancers.’ He killed my argument because, indeed, I have met dancers who cannot even pronounce correctly when they talk.” (Italics in the original.) Alonso prompted the ballet students in the audience to take action to avoid becoming the subject of this stereotype. A. Alonso, “Vindicación de la danza” [In defense of dance], speech at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, May 6, 1998, in Diálogos, 93, and “El que no construye no vive” [Who does not build does not survive], speech at the National School of Ballet, Havana, Mar. 15, 2001, in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 98, May-Dec. 2001, 13.

129 development of a national style or school that incorporates our own features into the universality of ballet.”197 The manifesto sought to bridge a gap between two geographic-

cultural spaces, Cuba and Europe, to integrate the notion of a distinctive Cuban ballet that

could stand, in its own right, next to the ballet traditions in European nations: “We firmly

believe that Cuba can become one of the most brilliant ballet centers in the whole world,

similarly to France, England and Russia—where ballet, after being inserted, soon took

roots in the local culture” (“Propósitos” 1951, 123).

In envisioning the growth of ballet in Cuba and bringing attention to the

distinctive national cultures that nourished ballet in France, England and Russia, the

manifesto questioned the assumption of a generic Europeanness of ballet and replaced it

with a view of the dance form as international yet encompassing various national

traditions. Alonso insisted on this notion decades later when an interviewer for

Performing Arts Review remarked that ballet was “essentially a European cultural

manifestation.” She firmly denied such an idea: “No, no, it is international” (A. Alonso

1978, 283). Her answer might have alluded to the fact that in 1978, when the

conversation took place, ballet was flourishing outside Europe, from Cuba to the United

States to Australia. However, it might have also been a reference to the international

character of ballet even within the context of Europe. In addition to France, Russia and

England, other nations that played a key role in the development of ballet in that

continent were Italy, Denmark, Austria and Germany. It is true that, for most of the

history of this dance form, the cross-pollinating flow of dancers, choreographers and

composers between Paris, St. Petersburg, Milan, Copenhagen, London and other cities

197 “Propósitos que dieron origen y dan vida al Ballet Alicia Alonso,” 1951, reproduced in M. Cabrera, Orbita del Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Havana: Orbe, 1978), 122.

130 conferred a certain pan-European quality to ballet. However, distinctive training methods and choreographic and performance styles evolved in each of these locations, resulting in clearly differentiated French, Russian, Danish, Italian and English schools of

ballet. Dismantling the idea of a homogeneously European ballet and characterizing the

genre as international not only opened the door to recognizing this national variety, but it

also asserted a geographical vision of ballet not confined to the boundaries of Europe,

with room for a Cuban school.

In Fernández Retamar’s opinion, acceptance of Europe “as a virtually homogeneous and timeless bloc […] already implies […] a colonized attitude” because it enshrines a faceless dominant culture (Fernández Retamar 1975, 79). In this sense,

Alonso’s view of ballet as not generically European embedded an emancipative postcolonial tactic. Along the same line, the acknowledgment of national diversity within

European ballet implicitly commanded respect for the identity of the Cuban ballet for, as

Fernández Retamar explained, “how are we to demand attention and respect for our specificities if we begin by denying attention and respect for the specificities of others?”

(Ibid., 80).198 However, if on the one hand Alonso denied the virtual Europeanness of

ballet, on the other hand she replaced this construct with an equally controversial notion:

what the manifesto called “the universality of ballet.” Alonso often claimed that ballet was a cultural achievement of humanity, a universal patrimony belonging to human civilization as a whole, in spite of its European history. This aspect of her rational for the practice of ballet in Cuba was at odds with Fernández Retamar’s postcolonial negation of

198 Attesting to this diversity, since the Renaissance and until today, the countries mentioned above as the major contributors to the development of ballet in Europe have frequently fallen on opposite sides of a number of schematic yet relevant distinctions exemplifying cultural heterogeneity—Latin/Nordic/Slav, catholic/protestant/Eastern orthodox, industrialized/agrarian, capitalist/communist, et cetera.

131 the “simulacrum of ‘Europe’ that passes off certain [European] local characteristics as universals.”199 There were points of both agreement and disagreement between Alonso’s defense of the Cuban ballet and postcolonial platforms in Latin America.

To defend the universality of ballet, Alonso moved the discussion away from

ballet’s geographic origins to what this genre could offer as artistic expression: “The issue is not where it starts, but all it offers.” (A. Alonso 1978, 283). Stressing this view,

when QueHacer asked her how Giselle, Swan Lake and Les Sylphides could possibly be

meaningful for contemporary Latin Americans, she responded,

You could also add: Why Bach? Why Phidias? Why Michelangelo? Why Shakespeare? What do they have to say to us, men of another continent and historical period? In my opinion, they have a lot to say to us, and from very different perspectives. Above all, their works express, often with geniality, the elements of the human condition, which is permanent and transcends historical periods, geographical places and economic circumstances. Moreover, their works represent certain aesthetic and historical values from the standpoint of technique and expression. Giselle, Swan Lake and La fille mal gardée […] are, forever, masterworks of theatrical dance that are part of the cultural legacy of humanity, a heritage from the past that all nations can legitimately claim (A. Alonso 1982b, 268).

The dancer went on to give the example of how Giselle (1841) contains elements that

resonate beyond its time and place of origin. In the ballet, set in feudal Germany, Giselle

is a peasant girl in love with Albrecht. He is a prince already engaged to a noble woman

but, disguised as a peasant, he has seduced Giselle. When the truth comes out, Giselle

sinks into dementia and dies. In afterlife, she joins the wilis, ghosts of young maids who

died before getting married. The wilis are vicious creatures: at night, they chase men and

force them to dance until they die of exhaustion. They trap Albrecht when, remorseful for

199 R. Fernández Retamar, “Algunos problemas teóricos de la literatura hispanoamericana,” in Casa de las Américas, no. 89, Mar-Apr. 1975, reprinted as “Some Theoretical Problems of Spanish American Literature” in Caliban and Other Essays, trans. E. Baker, 79.

132 Giselle’s death, he takes flowers to her tomb after dark. The specter of Giselle, however, forgives the nobleman and protects him from the other wilis. She helps him to stay alive until dawn, when daylight forces the ghosts back into their graves. Alonso contended that there are universal themes in this narrative: love made impossible by social class differences; betrayal, forgiveness and reconciliation; love’s transcendence of death; the confrontation between good and evil, and so forth. These themes, she said, are as relevant to Latin Americans as to Europeans (Ibid.)200

The humanist themes in ballets such as Giselle, independently of being expressed in European forms, constitute what Jean Franco described in The Modern Culture of

Latin America (1970) as root experiences with a universal character: “those common aspects of human life from love to death, all that arises from the human condition as such and all that remains unaffected or relatively little affected by the environment.”201 As

Franco explains, many Latin American authors concerned with these root experiences belong to a tradition of cosmopolitanism. In her view, this was the case of major figures such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil), Octavio Paz (Mexico), Mario Benedetti and Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay), and Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina).

These cosmopolitans saw Latin American culture as not outside but inside so-called

200 Alonso emphasized the idea that ballet is a universal legacy in an interview in 1988. Once again, she drew parallels between ballet’s traditional repertory and the artistic masterpieces from ancient Greece and the Renaissance, as well as the music of J. S. Bach and W. A. Mozart. If this cultural heritage has survived for centuries and enjoyed appreciation all over the world, “why should it be different with dance works?,” asked Alonso. She reasserted her opinion that “traditional ballets, either Romantic or Classical, have permanent values that transcend historical periods and contain elements that make them inexhaustible and keep them alive.” A. Alonso, “La escuela cubana de ballet es una creación colectiva” [The Cuban school of ballet is a collective work], interview by J. Rivero García, in Trabajadores (Havana), Oct. 27, 1988, 10-11, reprinted as “Una creación colectiva” [A collective work] in Diálogos, 291.

201 J. Franco, The Modern Culture of Latin America: Society and the Artist (Hardmonsworth: Penguin, 1970), 212.

133 Western civilization and regarded themselves as members of international artistic networks of which Europeans were a part too. Their work highlighted Latin Americans’ shared experience with the rest of humanity, linking the local reality to universal themes.

In Drummond de Andrade’s poems, Franco sees an exploration of the limits of human knowledge and language. She interprets Onetti’s novels as texts dealing with human beings’ impossibility of attaining knowledge and communicating with others.

Meanwhile, in Borges’s stories, she perceives an attempt to realize the contingency of the notions of time, space and reality (Franco 1970, 196-206, 211-19). These authors’ adoption of a cosmopolitan position did not imply blind acceptance of European values or forms. To support this point, Franco quotes a statement by Borges in which he compared the position of Latin Americans with that of the Jews living in Europe:

“Though the Jew lives, let us say, in Western culture, he does not feel bound to it by any

particular loyalty and thus he may invent, may change, may become a revolutionary”

(Ibid., 201). While Borges’s overgeneralization seems trivial, the analogy is valuable as

far as it establishes his view of the Latin American cosmopolitan as not an imitator of

European models but an agent of transformation who resynthesizes inherited traditions

into something new (Ibid., 197).202 Alonso’s attribution of a universal character to

nineteenth-century ballets fit within this paradigm because, at the same time that she

called attention to these works’ expression of permanent elements of the human

condition, she regarded herself as an artist positioned to transform the European legacy,

specifically by developing a national style or school, as the 1951 manifesto made explicit.

202 The connection of Latin American artists to European culture was previously discussed in Chapter 2. However, it is pertinent to return to this topic in the present analysis of how Alonso formulated a rationale for the practice of ballet in Cuba.

134 However, in her explanation of how the masterworks of European ballet are relevant to Latin Americans, Alonso went beyond affirming the commonality of the human experiences portrayed in these works. She also conferred validity to these ballets on the basis that they contain “certain aesthetic and historical values from the standpoint

of technique and expression.” In other words, she saw value precisely in what is

specifically European about these works: their aesthetics, technique and modes of

expressions. Along the same line, she contended that the performance and study of this

repertory allowed her to gain knowledge about specific European chapters in the history

of humanity. In an interview explaining the motivation for “La era romántica” (The

Romantic era), a gala of Romantic ballets staged in Guanajuato, Mexico, during the

International Cervantino Festival in 1981, she called attention not to shared experience

but to European uniqueness:

Dance is expressive of the experiences of different people in different periods. [This gala refers us] to the past, to the beginnings of the nineteenth century. We are recreating 1830. The performance will reflect that period and its people, and how this people felt. Their dances and gestures captured their way of expressing things, as well as their environment and way of life. The human being wanted to escape reality and saw himself as all spirit. This is Romanticism, precisely. Woman becomes an ideal. The beloved’s feet do not touch the ground.203

In a tone that revealed both knowledge and intellectual curiosity, Alonso went on to elaborate on what was specific about Romanticism as a chapter in the European arts. She explained that the escapism that marked this moment was reflective of the valuing of

203 Emphasis added. This gala of Romantic ballet featured, in addition to Alonso, the international stars Carla Fracci (Italy), Eva Evdokimova (Switzerland) and Ghislaine Thesmar (France). The program included recreations of Pas de Quatre, Esmeralda, Natalie ou La laitière suisse, La péri and Robert le diable, plus excerpts of Giselle. A. Alonso, “El latinoamericano se expresa con todo el cuerpo” [The Latin American expresses himself with his whole body], interview by A. Dallal, in Balletomanía (Mexico City), vol. 1, no. 2, Nov.-Dec. 1981, 20-24, reprinted in Diálogos, 244.

135 spirituality over materiality and, thus, women, who were exalted in an idealistic manner, danced en pointe to appear not to touch the ground. She approached this particular installment of European history from a humanist perspective that appreciated the uniqueness of a culture.

In this sense, Alonso defended the practice of ballet by Cubans by calling upon the same premises of European and North American ethnographers, historians and dancers who have traditionally studied the dances of the rest of the world as a way to gain insight into other cultures. For Alonso it was only natural that, conversely, Cuban dancers and spectators might profess an interest in ballet and the culture from which it came. A cosmopolitan spirit animated her stance that intellectual curiosity and artistic praxis must not be bound to the confines of one’s national culture or fall victim to the political divide between former colonizers and colonized. She regarded ballet, first and foremost, as part of the history of humanity and therefore not alien to the interest of spectators, wherever they may live.

Cuba’s Spanish Heritage: A Conduit to European Culture

Together with representing ballet as universal, Alonso defended the practice of this dance form in Cuba as a logical consequence of the cultural bonds between her country and Europe. As the granddaughter of Spanish immigrants, the ballerina claimed inheritance of a European biological makeup, a European culture and a European language. When the interviewers from QueHacer expressed doubts about reconciliation among the cultures of Cuba and Europe, she riposted, “Don’t forget that Latin Americans

136 have mixed ancestry and that Europe, and its culture, is one of the fundamental factors in our miscegenation. This is an undeniable fact that we cannot ignore. Keep in mind that, for instance, we are having this conversation in Spanish” (A. Alonso 1982b,

274). Even after Cuba achieved independence from Spain in 1898, immigrants from that country continued to arrive to the Island in numerous waves. This migration flow only stopped after Cuba became internationally isolated with the radicalization of Castro’s regime early in the 1960s. Because this influx subsisted until fairly recently, many contemporary Cubans still identify, like Alonso, with their Spanish ancestors. In fact, referring to Spain as “la madre patria” (the motherland) is a common practice among

Cubans.204

In links of this nature, historian Arif Dirlik sees a predicament that postcolonial

theory must confront: “Colonialism, however oppressive and unjust in its practices, also

created cultural bonds between the colonizer and the colonized, which have shaped

irrevocably the cultural identities of both and which survive decolonization.”205 Views of

Cuba and Europe as cultural opposites are rendered problematic by the fact that the

culture of a former colony is, as Dirlik indicates, “a culture that includes the culture of the colonizer as a constituent moment.”206 Cubans have historically understood this situation.

Already in 1940, Fernando Ortiz explained the national culture’s hybridity in “Los

factores humanos de la cubanidad” (The human factors in Cubanness). He compared the

204 By the same token, a popular Cuban saying is “El que no tiene de congo tiene de carabalí” (who does not have Congo blood has Calabar blood), an allusion to the extensive African presence in Cuba.

205 A. Dirlik, “Rethinking Colonialism: Globalization, Postcolonialism, and The Nation,” in Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 4, no. 3 (Nov. 2002), 445.

206 A. Dirlik, “How the Grinch Hijacked Radicalism: Further Thoughts on the Postcolonial,” in Postcolonial Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (July 1999), 151.

137 culture of the Island to the ajiaco, a Cuban stew made of various meats, roots and vegetables. This metaphor illustrates the variety of cultural ingredients brought to the country by Spanish and Africans, groups that were heterogeneous in themselves.

Aborigines contributed to the stew as well, although most of them were exterminated and, therefore, their input was limited. In different periods, Cuba also received French,

Haitian, North American, Chinese, Jamaican and Jewish immigrants. According to

Ortiz’s ajiaco metaphor, these diverse cultural ingredients, many of them European, contributed to the flavor of the stew while sometimes retaining their individual flavor.207

The incontrovertible cultural links between Latin America and Europe add complexity to the question of what position Latin American artists should take in regard to their European legacy, particularly when posed in the context of a postcolonial project such as the one promoted in Fernández Retamar’s “Calibán.” The essay takes its central image, Caliban, from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1612), a play set on an island that alludes to an American colony. Two characters, Ariel and Caliban, are natives of the island. The first one is portrayed as a boyish sprite; the second, as a deformed semi- human monster—his name is an anagram of caníbal, the Spanish word for cannibal. The rest of the characters have arrived on the island by ship. Their names indicate that they

are Spaniards: Miranda, Fernando, Sebastian, Alonso and Gonzalo, all led by the

magician Prospero, who imposes his rule over the island. While Ariel accepts Prospero’s

rule and becomes his diligent servant, the monstrous Caliban revolts against the new

master. In Ferández Retamar’s essay, Caliban stands as a symbol of those colonized

207 F. Ortiz, “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad,” in Revista Bimestre Cubana (Havana), vol. XLV, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 1940, 161-186, reprinted in Órbita de Fernando Ortiz, ed. J. Le Riverend (Havana: Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1973), 149-157.

138 Americans who, exploited and represented as savages, opposed foreign domination.

Within the circumstances of a postcolonial cultural debate, Caliban also embodies the

dilemma of the Latin American intellectual who aims for cultural independence and yet

must confront the fact that much of his own culture is inherited from Europe. In the play,

Caliban curses Prospero in the very same language that Prospero taught him and that now

is his means of expression: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/ Is, I know how

to curse. The red plague rid you/ For learning me your language!”208 If for Alonso her

use of Spanish language was the most evident proof of a cultural connection with Europe

that validated the practice of ballet in Cuba, for Fernández Retamar this linguistic and cultural bond was a problematic limitation that caused anxiety: “Right now as we are

discussing, as I am discussing with those colonizers, how else can I do it except in one of

their languages, which is now also our language, and with so many of their conceptual

tools, which are now also our conceptual tools?” (Fernández Retamar 1971, 5).209 Not only his use of a European language but also his reference to a Shakespearean symbol illustrates this point.210

In “Calibán,” Fernández Retamar called on Latin American artists to brandish

their inherited language and conceptual tools, as the Shakespearean character did, to

208 Calibán’s incorrect use of English is part of his depiction as a savage. Quoted in R. Fernández Retamar, “Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America,” 5-6. Since the publication of the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó’s Ariel in 1900, many Latin American and European writers have discussed The Tempest as an allegory of the colonization of America and assigned various symbolisms to its main characters. For a review of these readings of the play, see R. Fernández Retamar, “Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America,” 11-16.

209 Italics in the original.

210 The writer commented, “In proposing Caliban as our symbol, I am aware that this is not entirely ours, that it is also an alien elaboration […] But how can this alien quality be entirely avoided?” R. Ferández Retamar, “Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America,” 16.

139 curse Prospero and “wish that the ‘red plague’ would fall on him” (Ibid., 14).

However, this action in itself does not reduce the cultural bond between countries such as

Cuba and Spain because, as Dirlik explains, colonialism established indissoluble cultural connections. Unable to ignore this, Fernández Retamar acknowledged the need to distinguish between condemning colonialism and rejecting its cultural legacy in his later essay “Against the Black Legend” (1979):

What sense does it make to pronounce the whole of a country’s culture worthless because of the atrocities that certain sectors of that country once committed? Do we not admire Shakespeare, Shaw and Virginia Wolf in spite of the British Empire? Whitman, Twain, and Hemingway in spite of Yankee imperialism? Rebelais, Rimbaud, and Malraud in spite of French colonialism? […] The truth of the matter is that we are proud that what is Spanish is also ours; to do without it would not enrich us, it would leave us lamentably impoverished.211

These opposite representations of European culture as a regrettable imposition and a

source of pride exemplify the quandary of those who, like Fernández Retamar, oppose

cultural colonialism and yet live in a hybrid culture that is a testimony to the

entanglement between former colonizer and colonized.

Alonso, however, did not hesitate to accept her Spanish heritage, which

contributed a significant aspect to her multifaceted artistic persona. Having been

frequently involved in performances, choreography, pedagogical programs and cultural

initiatives related to Spain, she acted as a double ambassador, promoting the culture of

Spain in Cuba and vice versa. Today, her website highlights these activities in a special

section under the heading “Alicia Alonso y España” (Alicia Alonso and Spain), a

211 R. Fernández Retamar, “Contra la leyenda negra,” in Casa de las Américas, no. 99, Nov.-Dic. 1976, reprinted in English as “Against the Black Legend,” in Caliban and Other Essays, trans. E. Baker, 72. Quotes from the English edition.

140 measure of the significance of links with that country going back to her childhood.212

Training in Spanish dance preceded Alonso’s study of ballet. It was in Spain that she took her first dance lessons. In 1929, when she was eight years old, her family relocated to that country for a period of two years. Having promised her Spanish grandfather that she would learn the local dances as a gift to him, she studied them in the cities of Seville and

Jerez de la Frontera, renowned centers of the flamenco tradition. Alonso reminisced,

“[My sister and I] had great teachers from whom we learned the sevillana, the malagueña, the jota and other Spanish dances […] I was fascinated. I carried the castanets with me all day long, and I made so much progress that one of the teachers taught me steps that were advanced for an eight or nine-year-old girl.”213

The affiliation with Spain manifested in Alonso’s repertory. Pedro Simón notes that, in addition to achieving fame as an interpreter of the ballet classics, performer of the dance psychodramas of Antony Tudor and exponent of a Cuban style of ballet, Alonso often appeared in works that referenced the culture of Spain.214 These were ballets that,

even if conceived by French, Russian, North American and Cuban choreographers,

represented a “Spanish” subgroup in Alonso’s repertory due to their connections to that

country’s literature, visual arts, music and dances. With Ballet Theatre, she often

performed the pas de deux of Marius Petipa’s Don Quixote (1869), based on Cervantes’s

212 “Alicia Alonso y España,” in Alicia Alonso, official website, http://www.portalatino.com/ lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/alicia22.htm, consulted on June 6, 2009.

213 A. Alonso, “Primeros recuerdos, primeros pasos en la danza” [First memories, first steps in dance], in T. Gutiérrez, Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: imagen de una plenitud, testimonios y recuerdos de la artista [Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: image of plenitude; testimonies and memories of the artist] (Barcelona: Salvat, 1981), 4-15, reprinted in in Diálogos, 57-63.

214 P. Simón, “Personajes de la Alonso” [Roles of Alonso], in Vivarium (Havana), no. V, Oct. 1992, 23-26.

141 novel. She was also in the casts of Tudor’s Goya Pastoral (1940) and Herbert Ross’s

Caprichos (1950), in which the choreographers drew inspiration from the works of the

Spanish painter Goya. Moreover, she performed Leonide Massine’s Le Tricorne (1920)

and Capriccio Español (1939), the first one set to music by Manuel de Falla and the

second one to a score based on Spanish themes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In these

pieces, which depicted Spanish subject matter, Massine infused the vocabulary of ballet

with elements of Spanish folkloric dances. This was also the case of Carmelita Maracci’s

Circo de España (1951), another work in Alonso’s repertory, with music by Falla,

Enrique Granados, Isaac Albéniz and Joaquín Turina. In the National Ballet of Cuba,

Alberto Alonso’s Carmen (1967), a recreation of Prosper Mérimée’s novel and George

Bizet’s opera of Spanish subject matter, became one of the cornerstones in the ballerina’s

repertory.215 Meanwhile, in Alberto Méndez’s Ad libitum (1978), a juxtaposition of ballet and flamenco, Alonso danced a duet with the noted flamenco dancer Antonio Gades. Late in her career, she also appeared in Iván Monreal’s Lances (1992), a piece of Spanish flavor set to Luigi Boccherini’s string quintet “Night Music from the Streets of

Madrid.”216 Although some of these characters and ballets could be regarded as pastiches

of Spanish culture, Alonso dignified them by bringing to them her knowledge of Spanish

folkloric dances.

This affinity with Spanish themes manifested, too, in Alonso’s choreographic

output. Already in La condesita (The little countess, 1942), her first work as a choreographer, she cast herself as a Spanish girl. Decades later, she created Juana, razón

215 Alicia Alonso’s interpretation of Carmen is captured in the film Alicia (Havana: ICAIC, 1968).

216 See Appendix for the dates when Alonso incorporated these works in her repertory.

142 y amor (Juana, reason and love, 1993), a ballet inspired by the life of Queen Juana of

Castille in which she danced the title role. She also directed the restaging of Petipa’s Don

Quixote for the National Ballet of Cuba in 1988. More recently, she choreographed

Preciosa y el aire (Preciosa and the air, 2009), based on poems by Federico García

Lorca.217 Also, as the company’s director, she encouraged others to make ballets that

drew on the music, literature and dances of Spain. Such is the case of Jorge García’s

Majísimo (1965), Iván Tenorio’s La casa de Bernalda Alba (The house of Bernarda Alba,

1975) and Viva Lorca (Long life to Lorca, 1989), José Parés’s Apuntes ibéricos (Iberian

sketches, 1980), Hilda Riveros’s Fandango (1980), Alberto Méndez’s Doña Rosita

(1980), Aurora Bosch’s Capricho (1980), Eduardo Veitías’s La cachucha (1992) and

Marta García’s El sombrero de tres picos (The three-cornered hat, 1998), among other

works (M. Cabrera 1998, 78-109).

In 1987, Alonso founded the Havana Grand Theatre’s Spanish Dance Ensemble, a

group devoted to the performance of Spanish folkloric dances, flamenco and dances in

the tradition of the escuela bolera (bolero school). This ensemble’s mission, as

formulated by Alonso, has been to keep these dance forms alive in Cuba, in face of the

fact that Spanish immigration to the Island ceased five decades ago—the Cuban Ministry

of Culture decreed to rename the troupe as the Spanish Ballet of Cuba in 2000, in

217 See Alonso’s choreographic catalogue in the section “La coreógrafa” [The choreographer] in Alicia Alonso, official website, http://www.portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/alicia14.htm, consulted on June 11, 2009. Also, see “Alicia Alonso Will Premier Her Ballet Preciosa y el Aire,” in the online English edition of the Cuban daily Trabajadores, http://www.trabajadores.cu/news/alicia-alonso- will-premier-her-ballet-preciosa-y-el-aire/, consulted on June 11, 2009.

143 recognition of its sustained growth and success.218 Additionally, Alonso founded the

Hispanic Imprint Festival in 1988. This event, which since then has taken place yearly, celebrates the country’s Iberian heritage through a variety of theatrical, musical and dance performances by Spanish and local artists.219 For decades, the International Ballet

Festival of Havana provided yet another space for Alonso to promote Spanish dance on

the Island, leading to presentations in the Cuban capital of the Barcelona Contemporary

Ballet, the Víctor Ullate Ballet, the Murcia Ballet, the Zaragoza Ballet, the Vicente Sáez

Dance Company, the Azahar Dance Group, the Youth Chamber Ballet of Madrid, the

Choreographic Workshop of Valencia and the contemporary ensembles Metros and Da

Capo, among other troupes. The Festival, under Alonso’s artistic direction, was also the reason for performances in Cuba of noted ballet dancers from Spain, including María

Giménez, Miriam Cremades, Arantxa Argüelles, Eva López-Crevillén and José

Martínez.220 Furthermore, over the years the National Ballet of Cuba has added several works by the Iberian artists Antonio Gades, María Rovira, Pablo Molero, Goyo Montero and Juan Carlos Santamaría to its repertory.221

218 See an outline of the Spanish Ballet of Cuba’s history in this company’s official website. Ballet Español de La Habana, Fundación [Foundation], http://www.balletespanolcuba.cult.cu/historia/paginas /fundacionbec.htm, consulted on June 6, 2009.

219 “Alicia Alonso y España,” in Alicia Alonso, official website, http://www.portalatino.com/ lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/alicia22.htm, consulted on June 7, 2009. For reports on different editions of the Spanish Imprint Festival in Cuba en el Ballet see no. 2, 1992, 11; no. 1, 1994, 31; no. 1, 1995, 60; no. 1, 1996, 56; no. 3, 1997, 52; no. 94, 1999, 58-59, and no. 96, 2000, 62.

220 For reports in Cuba en el Ballet on the different editions of the International Ballet Festival of Havana in which these companies and dancers participated see no. 1, 1991, 4-17; no. 2, 1994, 3-14; no. 93, 1999, 7-13; no. 97, 2001, 2-15; and no. 100, 2002, 2-16.

221 See the repertory of the National Ballet of Cuba in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria [The National Ballet of Cuba: half a century of glory] (Havana: Ediciones Cuba en el Ballet, 1998), 72-109. Also, see the section “Repertorio” [Repertory], in Ballet Nacional de Cuba, official website, http://www.balletcuba.cult.cu/repertorio/repertorio.html, consulted on June 8, 2009.

144 In parallel to this, the National Ballet of Cuba found a second home in

Spain—canvassing most of that country’s territory in hundreds of performances in 1969,

1971, 1976, 1979, 1982, 1985 and almost yearly since 1988 to the date.222 Historically,

Spain has been the most frequent destination in Alonso and the National Ballet of Cuba’s

international tours. In view of Spain’s lack of its own national ballet ensemble, in the

1990s the Cuban troupe started to fill such a void by scheduling long yearly seasons in

the Albéniz Theatre, in Madrid.223 The Cuban ballet took deeper roots in Spain’s cultural

life after Alonso began to undertake multiple initiatives for advancing the training of

dancers in that country under the guidance of Cuban teachers. In 1993, the Alicia Alonso

Dance Program began to operate in the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain’s

leading higher education institution. The Alicia Alonso Foundation, an extension of this

program, was instituted in 1997 under the patronage of the Educational and Cultural

Council of Madrid, with the goal of fostering the growth of ballet in Spain.224 The

Foundation joined forces with King Juan Carlos University in 2001 to launch the Alicia

Alonso Institute for Higher Education in Dance, which currently offers a bachelor’s

222 See a detailed list of the National Ballet of Cuba’s international tours in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 178-86. For information on tours of Spain after the publication of Cabrera’s book, see J. R. Neyra, “España, Francia, Suiza” [Spain, France, Switzerland], in Cuba en el ballet no. 93, Jan.-Apr. 1999, 32-45; N. Márquez, “España, Portugal, Italia” [Spain, Portugal, Italy], in Cuba en el ballet no. 95, Jan.-Apr. 2000, 2-15; J. R. Neyra, “Primeras giras del 2000” [First tours in 2000], in Cuba en el ballet no. 96, 38-51; J. R. Neyra, “Giras del BNC, de Valencia a San José” [Tours of the National Ballet of Cuba, from Valencia to San José], in Cuba en el ballet no 97, Jan.-Apr. 2001, 41-50; and J. R. Neyra, “Giras europeas de verano” [Summer tours in Europe], in Cuba en el ballet no. 100, Jul.-Dec. 2002, 50-59.

223 A. Alonso, “Un amor correspondido” [A returned love], text for the souvenir program of the National Ballet of Cuba’s summer season at the Albéniz Theatre, Madrid, in 2001; reprinted in Diálogos, 178.

224 See “Fundación Alicia Alonso en España” [Alicia Alonso Foundation in Spain], in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 93, Jan.-Apr., 1999, 58.

145 degree, a master’s degree and a doctorate in performing arts.225 Since the 1970s and

until today, Alonso’s artistic and educational contributions to Spain have been recognized

with many awards and distinctions from that country’s theatres, universities, and cultural

and governmental institutions. Salient among these is the Order of Isabella the Catholic,

the highest civil distinction in recognition of services to Spain, which Alonso received in

1993.226

Cuban-Spanish cultural links are relevant to Alonso’s rationale for the cultivation of ballet on the Island because, for Cubans, the Spanish heritage has historically meant a conduit leading to European culture at large. The elements of a colonial culture in Cuban

life—pervasive in everyday experience through language, religion, behavior, food,

architecture and every imaginable sphere—often have a European character that goes

beyond what is specifically Spanish. The Havana Grand Theatre, where the National

Ballet of Cuba performs, stands as an example of the cultural relationship between the

Island, Spain and the rest of Europe. Erected in 1914 with support of the Spanish

Galician community, the building is an impressive structure that occupies a full block in

the center of the city, next to the Capitol and directly across Central Park. In its original

function as the Galician Center of Havana, this architectural monument symbolized the

power and contributions of the Galician immigrant community—likewise, the equally

prominent Asturian Center lies a block away as a mark of the Asturian presence in Cuba.

225 Instituto Superior de Danza Alicia Alonso, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, http://www.isdaa.es, consulted on June 7, 2009. Also, see “La Universidad Rey Juan Carlos tendrá un Instituto Superior de Danza” [King Juan Carlos University will host Institute for Higher Education in Dance], http://www. universia.es/portada/actualidad/noticia_actualidad.jsp?noticia=2364, posted on Sep. 9, 2001, consulted on June 7, 2009.

226 For a comprehensive list of the distinctions conferred to Alonso in Spain, see the section “Alicia Alonso y España” in the artist’s website, http://www.portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/ alicia22b.htm, consulted on June 7, 2009.

146 Still, in an instance of European confluence, the building was commissioned from the

Italian architect Giuseppe Moretti and conceived in a Viennese neo-baroque style. The lavish theater was, in its heyday, a very active opera house that customarily presented

European opera, ballet, music and drama to local audiences. Anna Pavlova, Enrico

Caruso and Sarah Bernhardt were among the many European luminaries that performed on its stage.

In view of Spain’s mediating role in the relationship between Cuba and the broader European culture, it is easier to understand why Alonso articulated a link between Cuba and ballet drawing on her Spanish heritage. Independently of this, even if

Spain never was as closely associated with ballet as other European nations, in the interview with QueHacer Alonso brought attention to the convergence of ballet and

Spanish dances. She identified areas of contact in the escuela bolera and the folkloric dances from the Basque region:

The almost extinct escuela bolera of Spanish dance and, above all, the Basque dances, had an enormous significance in the development of ballet, an influence not fully recognized in ballet histories. The famous comédie-ballets, fruit of the collaboration between Molière and Lully [in the seventeenth century], went on the stage of Versailles with the participation of Basque dancers, to whom difficult choreography was assigned with the purpose of displaying their spectacular steps. Two famous French masters in ballet history, Noverre and Dauverbal, incorporated Basque steps in their productions for the Paris Opera too. This happened in the eighteenth century and, ever since, many of these steps have remained in the academic vocabulary. This explains why today we still have a very common step, the “pas de basque,” in the language of classical ballet (A. Alonso 1982b, 275).227

As Alonso observed, documentation of the Spanish influence on ballet has not

been thorough in all instances. Little is known about the Basque contribution to the

227 The saut de basque is another step in this category.

147 spectacles in Louis XIV’s court to which she referred.228 Attesting to the popularity of Basque dances in that period, Guillaume-Louis Pecour, one of the most important dancers and choreographers of the era, figured as “a man from the Basque country” in Le

Temple de la Paix, a ballet created by Philippe Quinault and Jean-Baptiste Lully in

1685.229 By the next century, the ballet terminology reflected the Basque input to ballet.

Sandra Noll Hammond reveals that in 1783 a dance designated as a pas de basque was

presented at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, in London.230 She also notes that the pas de basque was described as one of the steps in the Gavotte de Vestris, a dance notated by Gennaro Magri in his Tratatto teorico-prattico di ballo (Treatise on the theory and practice of dance), published in Naples in 1779 (Hammond 1992, 101).

By contrast, research on the escuela bolera offers a clear picture of the links between this Spanish tradition and ballet. The escuela bolera originated in Seville as a form of stage dance that fused the local seguidillas, cachuchas and tiranas with many steps and positions from ballet.231 Ivor Guest documents how in the late eighteenth century ballet dancers and choreographers had begun to incorporate material from the escuela bolera into their repertories. Presumably, Charles LePicq drew on his knowledge

228 The author’s bibliographic search on this topic in major dance journals and encyclopedias did not yield substantial data.

229 J. de La Gorce, “Guillaume-Louis Pecour: A Biographical Essay,” in Dance Research, vol. 8, no. 2 (Sep. 1990), 20.

230 According to the bibliographic information provided by Hammond, the dance is part of Book III (p. 70) of the collection The Celebrated Opera Dances, as Perform'd at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket 1783 for the Harpsichord, Violin etc., composed by Sig. Borghi, and Others. S. N. Hammond, “Steps Through Time: Selected Dance Vocabulary of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Dance Research, vol. 10, no. 2 (Sep. 1992), 106.

231 J. Suárez-Pajares and E. Casero García, "Escuela Bolera," in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), accessed online through Temple Univesity’s Library, May 30, 2008.

148 of the Spanish form to choreograph the seguidillas and fandango in Le Tuteur trompé,

premiered in London in 1783. The Spanish dance numbers of this work were later

integrated into a pas de trois known as Les Folies d’Espagne, which received frequent

performances by stars of the day such as Charles Didelot, Madeline Guimard and

Auguste Vestris.232 Decades later, during the Romantic period, many French, Italian and

English artists learned elements of the escuela bolera from Spanish dancers who

embarked on European tours and popularized the genre in the main dance centers of the

continent. The touring bolero group of Dolores Serral, Mariano Camprubí, Francisco

Font and Manuela Dubinon, which triumphed in Paris in 1834, serves as a specific

example of how Spanish dancers left their imprint in ballet at that time. Guest explains

that Serral made “a significant contribution to the development of the Romantic ballet by

providing the model if not actually teaching Fanny Elssler the Cachucha” (Guest 2002,

212). Elssler, who first danced this number as part of Jean Coralli’s Le Diable boiteux in

1836, made the Cachucha an international hit, a staple in her solo recitals all over Europe and America. This number helped to establish the dual nature of Romantic ballet by bringing exotic and carnal characteristics to the forefront, promoting an earthy counterpoint to the ethereal images of sylphs and introducing a source for choreography in the regional dances of Europe (Guest 2002, 12-13).233 The mark of the escuela bolera

in the Romantic ballet became evident, too, in a wealth of Spanish dances, many of them

232 Guest references specific London performances of Les Folies d’Espagne by Didelot and Guimard in 1789, and Vestris in 1791. I. Guest, “The Escuela Bolera in London in the Nineteenth Century,” in M. Grut, The Bolero School: An Illustrated History of the Bolero, the Seguidillas and the Escuela Bolera, Syllabus and Dances (Alton, UK: Dance Books, 2002), 211.

233 In her analysis of the Cachucha, J. Meglin brings attention to the perceived exoticism and sexually charged movements of the choreography. J. Meglin, “Le Diable Boiteux: French Society Behind a Spanish Façade,” in Dance Chronicle, vol. 17, no. 3 (Oct. 1994), 279-83.

149 associated with the stars of the period, such as Elssler’s Zapateado de Cádiz; Fanny

Cerrito and Arthur Saint-Léon’s double Cachucha, Lucile Grahn and Jules Perrot’s

Castilliana Bolero, and Marie Guy-Stéphan’s Las Boleras de Cádiz (Guest 2002, 13).

Thanks to Marius Petipa and other choreographers from the second half of the nineteenth century, the taste for Spanish dances continued to shape ballet past the

Romantic period. Petipa had spent four years in Spain prior to emerging as the leading choreographer of his generation. He learned Spanish dances while touring Andalusia.

Apparently, he mastered them to the point of dancing them quite proficiently. “Without

boasting, I can say that I danced and played the castanets no worse than the first dancers

of Andalusia,” Petipa wrote. He later recreated these dances in many of the ballets that he

choreographed in Russia. According to his testimony, there were instances in which he even incorporated authentic folkloric material: “I became familiar with Spanish dances

first hand, at the source. But imagine! I inserted this genuine, original fandango [learned

at the festival in San-Lúcar] in the opera Carmen, on the Petersburg stage, where it had a

huge success.”234 Don Quixote (1869), with its many passages in the style of Spanish

dance, and Swan Lake (1895), which contains a vivid Spanish duet, survive as examples

of Petipa’s frequent use of this material. Other works in the repertory of today’s ballet

companies, such as Arthur Saint-Léon’s Coppélia (1870) and Lev Ivanov’s The

Nutcracker (1892), attest to how choreographers from this period utilized Spanish dances

as an exotic attraction.

The twentieth century saw a prolongation of the links between ballet and Spanish

culture. In the 1910s and 1920s, Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes attracted a group of Spanish

234 M. Petipa, Russian Ballet Master, The Memoirs of Marius Petipa, ed. L. Moore (New York: MacMillan, 1958), 14-15.

150 composers, painters and librettists including Manuel de Falla, Pablo Picasso, Juan

Gris, Joan Miró, Pedro Pruna and Martínez Sierra. These artists’ collaboration with Les

Ballets Russes resulted in works such as Parade (1917), Le Tricorne (1920), Les

Matelots (1925) and Roméo et Juliette (1926). Among these works, Let Tricorne,

choreographed by Leonid Massine to a score by Falla and based on a Spanish comic

novel by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, stands as an example of the pieces in the ensemble’s

repertory that drew on Spanish dance, music and themes. Lynn Garafola chronicles that

during World War I, when the Ballets Russes was immobilized in Spain, Massine studied

with Félix Fernández, a distinguished performer from Granada. As a result, Massine

“mastered flamenco technique to a degree rivaling the skill of native practitioners.”235

Accompanied by Diaghilev, Falla and Fernández, Massine traveled across Castile,

Aragon and Andalusia collecting musical and choreographic material. Later, he incorporated a jota, a fandango and a farruca in Le Tricorne (Garafola 1989, 89).236

Other works related to Spain in the repertory of the Ballets Russes were Las Meninas

(1916), inspired by Velásquez’s painting of the same title, and Cuadro Flamenco (1921), for which Diaghilev hired a complete troupe of Spanish dancers (Garafola 1989, 88-89).

In summary, in validating the performance of ballet in Cuba as an expression of cultural connections with Europe inherited from a colonial past, Alonso regarded the

Island’s Spanish legacy as a conduit leading to European culture at large and ballet in specific. Improbable as this may seem, the sustained dialogue between ballet and Spanish

235 L. Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989; New York: Da Capo, 1998), 88. Citations refer to the Da Capo edition. In particular, see Appendix C, “Ballets Produced by Serge Diaghilev,” in Garafola’s book.

236 See also L. A. Fusillo, “Le Tricorne,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen, accessed online through the Temple University Library on May 29, 2008.

151 culture, evident throughout the Baroque period, Romanticism, and the eras of Petipa and the Ballets Russes, confers certain plausibility to the image of a continuum between

Cuban culture, Spanish culture and the ballet tradition. As this section has shown, Alonso

reinforced such image through her work as a promoter of links between Cuba and Spain

and, in particular, by highlighting Spanish themes in many of the ballets that she

performed, choreographies that she created and works that she commissioned for the

National Ballet of Cuba. Facing the question of what position Latin Americans should

adopt toward their European heritage, Alonso embraced the notion that such a heritage is

fundamental in the makeup of a hybrid Cuban culture and, by virtue of it, she regarded

the practice of ballet in Cuba as only natural.

Taking Ballet Across Cultures, Races and Social Classes

The postcolonial debate epitomized by Fernández Retamar’s essays and reflected

in QueHacer’s interview of Alonso was not limited to the problem of how Latin

Americans grapple with their European heritage in the process of affirming their cultural

identity. Issues of political, racial and social class affiliation framed this debate.

QueHacer’s questions to Alonso connoted that the development of ballet in Cuba was

problematic not only because the art form was perceived as alien to the local culture, but

also because it was difficult to imagine ballet in the context of the Cuban Revolution, a

self-proclaimed egalitarian regime boasting of the overthrow of the social elites with

which ballet is commonly associated. Also implicit in the questions was the notion that

ballet stood opposite to folk expressions such as the dances of the orishas and the dance

152 of the scissors, practiced by working-class blacks in Cuba and Incan villagers in Peru respectively. Meanwhile, Fernández Retamar’s criticism in “Calibán” of writers such as

Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes and Severo Sarduy were not prompted solely by the fact that Borges constantly referenced European literature or that Fuentes and Sarduy applied the methods of Russian formalism and French structuralism to their analysis of

Latin American literature (Fernández Retamar 1971, 28-36). What the Cuban intellectual found most troublesome about these authors was their political views. He accused Borges of dedicating one of his books to Richard Nixon and of signing a petition in favor of the

Bay of Pigs invaders who attacked Cuba. He condemned Fuentes for abandoning

Marxism and giving up hope that this ideology could be a viable alternative for Latin

America. At the same time, he pointed his finger at Sarduy for contributing to Mundo

Nuevo, a literary magazine critical of the Cuban Revolution and financed by the US

Central Intelligence Agency (Ibid.) Fernández Retamar also attacked Mario Vargas

Llosa, Juan Goytisolo and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, authors who openly criticized the

Cuban Revolution. In the meantime, he celebrated writers such as Alejo Carpentier,

Mario Benedetti, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Cardenal, who were not any more distant from European canons than those ones mentioned above but who took side with the causes of the left.237 Benedetti and Cortázar were active speakers against the military

dictatorships that ruled their native Uruguay and Argentina, respectively. Cardenal acted

as Minister of Culture of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and Carpentier served

as vice president of the National Council of Culture in Cuba and ambassador of the

237 R. Fernández Retamar, “Calibán Revisitado,” in Casa de las Américas, no. 157, July-Aug. 1986, reprinted in English as “Caliban Revisited” in Caliban and Other Essays, trans. E. Baker, 46-55. Quotes from the English edition.

153 regime of Fidel Castro in Paris.238 The criteria considered in casting these writers as

friends or foes of Latin American culture and in deeming ballet inappropriate for the

region illustrate how issues of ideology were at the heart of these debates. Thus, it is not

surprising that, in the context of a postcolonial discussion, Alonso also had to explain

how the development of ballet in Latin America did not betray the continent’s

underprivileged ethnicities and social classes.239 For her, clarifying the controversial connections between ballet, race and social class was an imperative in responding, as

well, to the skepticism of some European and North American dance critics about

Latinos’ fitness for ballet or the relevance of the dance form in the context of the

proletarian Cuban Revolution.

At a press conference in Mexico in 2002, Alonso rejected the discriminatory

attitude that ballet belongs exclusively to Caucasians and that “Latin Americans cannot

dance ballet because they do not have the right physical characteristics.” To such view,

she responded, “We [Latin Americans] are human beings; we can do whatever we decide

to pursue, just as any other person in any other part of the world.”240 In Alonso’s opinion,

it was not only a matter of determination that rendered ballet technique feasible for Latin

238 R. Fernández Retamar, “Prólogo a Ernesto Cardenal,” in Casa de las Américas, no. 134, Sep.- Oct. 1982, reprinted in English as “Prologue to Ernesto Cardenal,” in Caliban and Other Essays, trans. E. Baker, 100-10. Quotes from the English edition. R. Ocasio, Literature of Latin America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 83, 108, 209.

239 Alonso’s endorsement of the Cuban Revolution was unquestionable. After Fidel Castro arrived in power she relinquished her successful career in the United States and committed herself to the cultivation of ballet in her country—a commonality that she held with Fernández Retamar, who in 1959 declined the offer of a teaching position at Columbia University to participate in the Cuban revolutionary process and direct Casa de las Américas in Havana. R. Fernández Retamar, Caliban and Other Essays, XIV. For an analysis of Alonso’s links with the Cuban Revolution, see Chapter 2.

240 The press conference took place before performances of the National Ballet of Cuba in Morelia, Mexico, on Nov. 11 and 12, 2002. H. Cabezas, “Cartas desde México” [Letter from Mexico], in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 100, July-Dec. 2002, 61.

154 Americans. As she expressed in her interview with QueHacer, the anatomical and intellectual principles upon which ballet rests are common to human beings of all races and to justify discrimination of Latin American ballet dancers “it would be necessary to prove that the laws of physics are not universal and that the anatomy, intelligence and sensibility of our women and men are essentially different from those of the Europeans”

(A. Alonso 1982b, 276).

Not only did Alonso argue that “there are no superior races” and that “no artistic genres are the exclusive patrimony of races which are supposedly the most beautiful,” but she also described racial integration as one of the hallmarks of the Cuban school of ballet

(Ibid., 272). For a long time, the heterogeneous composition of the National Ballet of

Cuba has been indicative of her stance. The Spanish, African and Asian ancestry of the company members has shown in the diversity of their skin shades and facial features. In a discussion of this subject during a public talk in 1978, Alonso contrasted the National

Ballet of Cuba with other companies in terms of racial criteria for the selection of dancers. She denounced the American Ballet Theatre for hiring policies that included strict standards on racial-bodily type: “Racial features are taken into account in a very precise way. I know of extreme cases in which it is asked that all the ballerinas are the same height, and preferably blond, with fair eyes and a button nose.”241 She denied that

241 Alonso gave this talk at the Association of Cuban Writers and Artists on Nov. 10, 1978. The transcript from the talk and other documents on the Cuban school of ballet are synthesized in A. Alonso’s “Sobre la escuela cubana de ballet” [About the Cuban school of ballet] in Diálogos con la danza, third edition (Madrid: Editorial Complutense: 1993), 19-26, reprinted in Diálogos, fourth edition, 64-72. It was in an earlier version of this text that Alonso identified the foreign company as the American Ballet Theatre. See A. Alonso and P. Simón’s “Fuentes y antecedentes de la escuela cubana de ballet” [Sources and antecedents of the Cuban school of ballet], in A. Alonso, Diálogos con la danza, first edition (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1986), 42. Since Alonso made this comment, the American Ballet Theatre has increasingly diversified. Today, this company features many dancers from Latin America, as well as some from Asia. However, dancers of African ancestry are underrepresented in this company.

155 the uniformity expected of the corps de ballet in works such as Giselle and Swan

Lake might justify such hiring criteria, and offered the National Ballet of Cuba as a fine example that racial homogeneity is not the means to produce a uniform corps de ballet:

In the second act of Giselle you can see girls with different features and skin colors. In spite of this, dance critics have noticed more than once that these dancers’ precision, style and uniformity, together with the atmosphere they create, make them the most perfect corps that they have seen […] Having not witnessed the National Ballet of Cuba on stage, a dance critic who watched the company in class told us that he felt alarmed by the diversity of features and colors among the dancers. He wondered, “How would they be able to dance Giselle?” However, after seeing the performance he conceded that no other corps de ballet was more homogeneous than ours. This is evidence that individuals with proportions and lines adequate to the classical norms exist across all races. When a ballet is performed well and the dancers are well trained, it is their interpretation [not their race] that comes to the foreground (Alonso and Simón 1986, 42).

Generations of dancers in the National Ballet of Cuba have complied with the traditional bodily type of ballet dancers: thin bodies, narrow waists and hips, and long necks and limbs. Far from saying that all bodies are fit for ballet, in this passage Alonso’s point is that the balletic bodily type is not exclusive to Europeans and that all races can produce dancers with the physical features and proportions appreciated in the aesthetics of the dance forms.

Beyond the corps de ballet, the roster of soloists and principal dancers of the

National Ballet of Cuba has reflected, over the decades, the multiracial makeup of the

Island. Among the dancers of African ancestry who have risen to leading positions in the troupe are Ileana Farrés, Caridad Martínez, Catherine Zuasnábar, Andrés Williams, Pablo

Moré, Julio Arozarena and Carlos Acosta. Other principal dancers, such as Lázaro

Carreño and José Manuel Carreño, have exhibited the dark mestizo features characteristic

156 of many Cubans. Meanwhile, Lienz Chang stands as an example of the Island’s

Chinese minority. Yet, a majority of the company’s soloists and principal dancers have been Spanish-descending white Latinos, which makes the National Ballet of Cuba

susceptible to the criticism that more work remains to be done in the area of racial

integration—even if the ensemble stands out for its diversity among peer institutions

across the world.

As stated earlier, Alonso believed that ballet was a universal expression and a

patrimony of humanity. Such belief underscored her argument for ballet technique being

within reach of all racial groups: “I insist that ballet technique is universal; it is the fruit

of the contributions of many generations of dancers and teachers who built an all-

important legacy that teaches us the most rational way of using the body as an expressive

instrument” (A. Alonso 1982b, 276). Her categorization of ballet technique as universal further supported the idea that the human body is capable of mastering ballet independently of its racial markers. Similarly, with this statement she implied that all cultures and races can legitimately claim ownership over what amounts to a patrimony of humanity: an all-valuable legacy that is fruit of the contributions of generations of dancers over several centuries.

Yet, Alonso’s defense of the universality of ballet technique on the grounds of it being the most rational method for developing expressive dancing bodies was problematic. An implied corollary could be that all races and cultures could benefit from studying this technique. It is true that ballet has much to offer as a method for training the body—actors, gymnasts, circus performers, ice skaters, modern dancers, jazz dancers and other artists and athletes commonly supplement their training with ballet lessons.

157 Nonetheless, in claiming universal value for this technique and equating it with the

most effective way of using the body, Alonso reinforced the Eurocentric notion of ballet

as the most developed of all dance forms. In the widely circulated article “An

Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance” Joann Kealiinohomoku warns

that such bias is widespread among certain dancers and writers who “treat Western dance,

ballet particularly, as if it were the one great divinely ordained apogee of the performing

arts.”242 Ballet technique, as Kealiinohomoku explains, embodies “dance ideas of pull- up, body lift and bodily extension” that are reflective of a specific European aesthetics.243

Dance manuals from the baroque era, such as Pierre Rameau’s Le maître a danser (The teacher of dance, 1725), make evident that the notions of effortlessness, elegance and proportion that informed the earliest antecedents of ballet technique—and that carried on in the subsequent development of the dance form—derived from what was accepted etiquette in the European courts of that period.244 Rameau detailed the proper manners

for standing, walking, entering a room, executing bows and so on, and extended the

prescribed carriage and use of the body in these social actions to the execution of dance

steps. Regardless of the value of contemporary ballet technique for the cultivation of

flexibility, strength and alignment, it is important to remember that, as an expression

whose aesthetics are historically and culturally conditioned, this training method is not

absolute or applicable in all situations. Indeed, many aspects of the ballet technique run

242 J. Kealiinohomoku, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance,” in Impulse (San Francisco: Impulse Publications, 1970), 24-32, reprinted in What is Dance?, ed. R. Copeland and M. Cohen (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 533-49.

243 Two other notable elements of ballet technique are leg turn-out and, in the case of women, dancing en pointe.

244 P. Rameau, Le maître a danser (Paris, 1725), reissued in Spanish as El maestro de danza (Havana: Arte y Literatura, 1986).

158 counter to the aesthetics of other dance forms, particularly in non-European cultures.245 Alonso’s failure to acknowledge the relative value of ballet technique

compromised, to some extent, the integrity of her argument against racial limitations in

ballet. Her view of ballet as the most advanced of all dance forms did not exactly

undermine her proposition that race does not determine who can practice this dance form,

but it introduced a dissonant Eurocentric note in a discourse intended, precisely, to

oppose the Eurocentrism underlying the racial stereotype that only Caucasians are fit for

the genre.

In regard to the common representation of ballet as an art emblematic of social

elites, Alonso often expressed that this discipline could and must grow in all sort of social

environments. Roger Copeland recorded the ballerina’s reaction when, interviewing her

for the New York Times, he asked her if ballet was of any use to the Cuban proletariat:

“Miss Alonso seemed genuinely shocked by such a suggestion, for she began by stressing

the way in which art by definition (if it is good art) transcends class, appealing with equal force to all people in all parts of the world” (Copeland 1978, D9).246 Also, she explained

to QueHacer that the working classes have the right to access all art forms regardless of

the forms’ social origins: “In principle, I don’t believe that we should reject something

beautiful and useful just because it ‘comes’ from an elite. In that case, the thing to do is to take it away from the elite and give it to the people” (A. Alonso 1982b, 274). In making

245 Kealiinohomoku, who studied the dances of the Hopis of Northern Arizona, chronicled her own experience of the shortcomings of ballet training. According to this anthropologist, her “‘good’ Western trained body alignment and resultant tension” proved to be “a handicap in performing dances from other cultures.” J. Kealiinohomoku, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet,” 542.

246 Italics in the original.

159 such a remark, the ballerina adhered once more to her understanding of ballet as a universal patrimony belonging to all peoples.

Early on, Alonso addressed the social class implications of adopting ballet in

Cuba. In 1951, the Ballet Alicia Alonso’s manifesto set guidelines for making ballet accessible to all social classes. The company aimed to maintain “a ballet school where all

Cubans, without exclusions of any order, could study this art” (“Propósitos” 1951, 122).

By the time the manifesto saw the light the school was already in operation. The Alicia

Alonso National Academy of Ballet had opened its doors the previous year. A system of fellowships supported talented students from families with limited resources. This set the academy as an alternative to the Pro Arte Musical Society’s School of Dance, the only other center for ballet training in Havana, which catered to students from middle and upper class families. Aurora Bosh and Mirta Pla, who later became principal dancers of the National Ballet of Cuba, were among the students who benefited from the inclusive approach of Alonso’s school. “I arrived at the academy as the result of one of the fellowships given to girls of modest economic resources,” Bosch reminisced on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the school. In the same article, Pla remembered how she was “part of a group of 25 students whose families had very limited financial resources. It was the school’s first class, in 1950.”247 For a school that was just beginning

its operations, such a number of students on fellowship probably represented a large

percentage of the total enrollment.

247 M. Cabrera, “Academia Nacional Alicia Alonso de Danza y Drama: Una lección de medio siglo” [Alicia Alonso National Academy of Dance and Drama: a half-century lesson], in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 95, Jan.-Apr. 2000, 47, 50.

160 The Ballet Alicia Alonso’s manifesto also pledged to diversify audiences for ballet performances. The company committed itself to “sponsoring the development of a ballet audience through regular yearly seasons, taking ballet out of the frame of exclusivity that has characterized it, bringing it to the people through any possible channels, such as free performances, publications, radio and televised broadcasts, etc.”

(“Propósitos” 1951, 122). In 1953, in his address to the Continental Congress of Culture in Santiago, Chile, Fernando Alonso reiterated this point of view in words that presumably captured his wife’s opinion as well. Realizing that ballet’s aristocratic history could be one of the main objections to the idea of adopting the genre in Latin America, he proclaimed,

Ballet, born in the courts of Italy and France, art of the elites, palatial art par excellence, is starting to grow roots among the people [and] to help the common man, the man of the working class, in his intellectual and artistic development. Ballet will not be the art of kings and the rich anymore but an art of the people and for the people, as modern times call for.248

These statements reflected a number of initiatives advanced by Alicia Alonso and her

ballet company to popularize ballet in Cuba. On January 8, 1949, the troupe offered a free

performance for thousands of spectators at the stadium of the University of Havana, an

unprecedented event in the country.249 Also, in addition to dancing in traditional ballet

venues such as the Auditorium Theater, Alonso started to appear in the Blanquita,

Nacional, Fausto and America movie-theatres, before audiences that otherwise would not

have seen her art. This was a period in which, according to Cuban ballet historian Miguel

248 The Congress took place in April 1953. Fernando Alonso did not attend but submitted a speech that Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén read to the audience in Santiago. F. Alonso, “Ponencia presentada en el Congreso Continental de Cultura” [Address to the Continental Congress of Culture], reproduced in R. Ruiz, Fernando Alonso: danza con la vida [Fernando Alonso: dance with life] (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2000), 144.

249 M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, medio siglo de gloria, 16-17.

161 Cabrera, the company helped to popularize the dance form by offering numerous presentations that were free or easily affordable in open-air venues and public spaces in

Havana and other cities on the Island.

After 1959, free training became the norm at the nationwide network of ballet schools that, sponsored by the Cuban Revolution, grew out of the Alicia Alonso National

Dance Academy. In its Article 39.2, the Cuban Constitution establishes that the State must provide free education. Furthermore, Article 51 specifies that education is a right of all citizens independently of whether or not they can afford it: “This right is guaranteed by a comprehensive and free system of schools […] that covers all specialties [including ballet] and levels of education, as well as by the availability of free school materials, which gives each child and youth, regardless of his family’s economic situation, the opportunity to study according to his aptitudes.”250 For over fifty years, in accordance

with the Constitution, ballet students across the Island have received free training and

materials, as well as food and lodging in the case of those attending boarding schools.

The Cuban Revolution’s cultural policies facilitated, too, Alonso’s intent to

broaden audiences for ballet. Under the Constitution, all citizens are guaranteed access to

the arts. Article 39.ch.1 spells out, “The State, aiming to increase the cultural level of the

people, takes steps toward fomenting and developing artistic education, the call for

artistic creation and the capacity of appreciating the arts.” Raúl Ruiz’s book Ballet y

Revolución (1973), published by the Cuban Communist Party’s Department of

Revolutionary Orientation, cites the appearances of Alonso and the National Ballet of

250 Constitución de la República de Cuba [Constitution of the Republic of Cuba], approved by the National Assembly in 1976 and updated in 1978, 1992 and 2002, accessible online at the website of the government of Cuba, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/cuba.htm, consulted on June 20, 2009.

162 Cuba in schools, public libraries, factories, farms and military bases as evidence that

“there has not been an ivory tower” in the case of the Cuban ballet.251 In 1981, the

documentary Classically Cuban captured one such moment. It shows Alonso and members of the company during a visit to Cubana de Acero, a steelworks factory in

Havana. Their presentation on an improvised stage began with a didactic talk directed to a group of workers and continued with a performance of Alberto Méndez’s El río y el bosque (The river and the forest, 1973), a duet depicting an Afrocuban legend.252

As a result of the official intent to educate the masses and make the arts accessible to all citizens, the Cuban government has funded magazines and other publications dedicated to the arts, as well as broadcasts and films on the subject. In this sense, the government’s control of the media aided Alonso’s goal of enlarging the ballet audience.

The station CMBF started its weekly broadcasts of Ballet, a didactic radio show, in 1969.

A year later, the first issue of the magazine Cuba en el Ballet saw the light. (Both the radio show and the magazine remain active today.) A television program entirely dedicated to the dance form, Ballet Visión, was broadcasted for the first time in 1972 and stayed on the air for several years as a biweekly feature. In the 1990s, ballet found a space along opera, classical music and other performing arts in ¡Bravo! and De la gran escena (From the great stage), shows that aired during prime time on Channel 6, the main national television network (Cabrera 1998, 30). Also, La danza eterna (The eternal dance), a television show featuring ballet and modern dance from Cuba and the rest of the

251 R. Ruiz, Ballet y Revolución [Ballet and revolution] (Havana: Departamento de Orientación Revolucionaria del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba, 1973), 32.

252 Classically Cuban, directed by M. Dibb (London: BBC, 1981). Videotape available in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

163 world, has aired weekly since 2003 on the educational channel of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television.253 Occasionally, the Island’s television networks broadcast life

ballet performances, in particular during the International Ballet Festivals of Havana.254

Newspapers, magazines, news agencies and radio and television stations customarily report on premieres, galas, tours and other events involving Alonso and the Cuban ballet.255 Similarly, the Cuban film industry has regularly produced ballet features, ranging from full-length works (Giselle, 1963; Carmen, 1972) to ballet excerpts (Swan

Lake, Don Quixote, Coppélia, La fille mal gardée, Grand pas de quatre, all from 1968) to documentaries on Alonso and the Cuban ballet (La clase, 1980; Encuentro, 1981; Mujer ante el espejo, 1983; Espiral, 1992; Alicia Alonso: la danza siempre, 1996; A tempo,

2006; El despertar de un sueño, 2009).256

For decades, ballet has been one of the most popular art forms in Cuba thanks to the combination of educational outreach, coverage in the media and affordable performances. The size and enthusiasm of the Cuban audience bolstered Alonso’s argument that ballet can thrive outside an elitist environment:

You will find eloquent figures in the number of performances, the number of spectators and the number of presentations in the most remote places of the Island. During the international ballet festivals, three theaters operate simultaneously in Havana, all virtually sold out—in addition to other

253 Currently, La danza eterna can be watched online at the website of the Cuban network Cubavisión Internacional, http://www.cubavision.cubaweb.cu. Accessed on July 6, 2009.

254 This was the case with several of the galas of the International Ballet Festival of Havana in 2000, attended by the author.

255 The author’s experience as a journalist for CMBF attests to this.

256 See a list of films of Alonso and documentaries on the ballerina in “Filmografía” [Filmography], in Alicia Alonso, official website, http://www.portalatino.com/ lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/ htm/alicia23.htmAccessed on Jul. 1, 2008. Also, see the historical catalogue of the Cuban Institute of the Cinematographic Art and Industry. “Cinematografía: Historia,” in Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográfica, official website, http://www.cubacine.cult.cu/filmo/index.htm, consulted on June 6, 2010.

164 theaters outside Havana. A lot of people cannot attend the performances because they cannot get tickets; the demand is higher than the offer (A. Alonso 1988a, 293).257

In her speech at the University of Guadalajara, Alonso identified in the development of

this audience one of the most important accomplishments of the Cuban ballet, equal in

significance to the training of hundreds of professional dancers and the creation of an

internationally respected ensemble:

We can say, not without pride, that ballet is a popular art in Cuba and an inseparable part of the national culture. Not only have we developed dance ensembles of high quality but also a large, enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience […] Our artistic achievements are not valuable in themselves. What counts is their social projection, their enjoyment by all sections of our society (A. Alonso 2002, 70-71).

In her argument against the claim that, as an art coming from an aristocratic

European background, ballet was alien to the working classes in Cuba and Latin

America, Alonso also highlighted the dance form’s potential to assimilate elements from

the local and regional folklore. This idea found expression in the Ballet Alicia Alonso’s

manifesto, whose definition of Cuban ballet included “those stemming from Afrocuban,

Indian or peasant elements” (“Propósitos” 1951, 122). It surfaced as well in Fernando

Alonso’s address to the Continental Congress of Culture, in which he stated his view that

ballet, far from being the enemy of folklore, could complement it:

Classical dance, with its traditional canon and intellectualization, no longer obstructs—as until recently— the popular expressions of the people

257 As witnessed by the author, ballet performances frequently sell out in Havana, in particular during the International Ballet Festival that takes place in the city every two years. Spectators without tickets are often allowed to watch the performances standing or sitting in the aisles of the theaters. Many in the audiences are knowledgeable balletomanes, as observed by Roger Copeland: “I attended several performances [in Havana] and was continually impressed by how knowledgeable the Cuban dance audience proved to be. Time and again, the audience responded to beautifully subtle adagio sequences (a well-executed developpé, for example) with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for something like the 32 fouettes in the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake.” R. Copeland, “Why Cuba Champions Ballet,” D13.

165 of each country, the deeply rooted, genuine and spontaneous expression of each nation. Today, academic dance supports the development of such folkloric expressions and finds in them its richest streak, its very essence. It studies, explains, develops and universalizes them (F. Alonso 1953, 144).

With these statements, which attempted to erase the fault line between ballet and folkloric dance, the Alonsos blurred, by extension, the dissocial class distinctions that the

separation between high and popular art epitomizes. Along the same line, Alicia Alonso

questioned ballet’s elitist reputation by tracing the origins of this art to folkloric and

social dances. She told QueHacer that folkloric traditions have nourished ballet from its

beginnings, through its subsequent development and into the present:

You repeat a very common mistake when you affirm, without any qualification, that ballet comes from a European elite […] This is not exactly the case. Many people are unaware of the popular origins of ballet, which are evident in its earliest manifestations. You can see the truly popular origins of ballet if you study the steps in the technique of classical ballet and compare them to the most ancient folkloric dances of the European nations. The Spanish, Italian, French and especially the Russian folklore are the fundamentals upon which the technique of classical dance evolved […] Although ballet later developed in the courts, it has always continued to absorb folklore, even to this day, and not only European folklore. For instance, in our company you can see an important choreographic line that incorporates the Cuban folklore as part of the search for a language that is both national and universal (A. Alonso 1982b, 274-75).258

The ballerina rightfully observed that, throughout its long history, ballet has assimilated

many elements from folkloric dances. In its beginnings, ballet consisted of gigues,

minuets, rigaudons, sarabandes, canaries, gavottes, bourrées and other popular dances

258 Alonso expressed the same idea in her interview with Alberto Dallal: “In all the stages of ballet history, teachers absorbed the popular dances of the time. Ballet technique comprises steps from Spanish dances, as well as from Italian and French dances and dances from other countries. This has been the history of ballet. Today, we enrich ballet in Cuba too.” A. Alonso, “El latinoamericano se expresa con todo el cuerpo,” 247. It is unclear why, in the interview with QueHacer, she conferred special weight to Russian folklore’s input to ballet.

166 stylized for the ballrooms and the stages of the courts. In fact, for a long time clear differentiation between social dances and dances for the stage did not exist—both fell under the umbrella of ballet through the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century.259 However, this does not refute the charges of elitism against ballet, particularly

in the context of the European courts. Independently of the influence of folkloric and

social dances, since its origins ballet was distinctively aristocratic. In their way of

dancing, courtiers consciously aimed to set themselves apart from the classes under their

rule. Thus, social and folkloric dances mutated upon entering the palaces, undergoing

choreographic changes that “polished” the movement material. The final product

exhibited refinement, grace, elegance, gallantry and other attributes with which the

aristocrats identified. Yet, ballet’s potential to assimilate folklore is a significant part of

Alonso’s argument because in Cuba, as she observed, it translated in choreographic

languages that hybridized European and Cuban forms, deliberately weakening the

separation between high art and popular art to symbolize the elimination of social class

distinctions in the country.

Alonso, in conclusion, represented the dichotomy between ballet and folklore as

false, promoted the practice and appreciation of ballet across social classes and opposed

exclusionary opinions that limited this artistic expression as the property of one race or

ethnicity. Her statements and actions in this regard were key to her defense of the Cuban

ballet because they countered objections typical of nativist ideology in Latin America.

259 The ubiquity of waltzes in the ballets of the nineteenth century is one highly visible instance of how social dances continued to fertilize ballet beyond the baroque era. More recently, in the twentieth century, George Balanchine inflected many of his works with elements of jazz—e.g., The Four Temperaments (1946) and Who Cares? (1970). I. Baxmann’s article on the attempts to democratize ballet in France after the Revolution provides more examples of how the common classification of ballet as elitist has been challenged. I. Baxmann, “The French Revolution and Its Spectacles,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. Marion Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 98-109.

167 Additionally, by advancing egalitarian views on race and social class, Alonso and the

National Ballet of Cuba embodied the leftist ideals of both the Cuban Revolution and a postcolonial discourse seeking the empowerment of the disenfranchised racial groups and working classes of the region. At the same time, Alonso’s conviction that ballet must transcend race and social class defied the prejudices of some European and North

American dance critics about ballet in the Cuban context.

Cubanizing Ballet, Provincializing Europe

The ability to assimilate elements of folkloric and social dances makes ballet an art form that lends itself to the articulation of national identities. Such assimilation, as

Alonso indicated, has accounted for “an important choreographic line” in the National

Ballet of Cuba. Alberto Alonso’s El güije (1967) and La rumba (1968), Pedro Díaz

Reyes’s Ochosí y el venado blanco (1967), Iván Tenorio’s Rítmicas (1973), Alberto

Méndez’s El río y el bosque (1973) and La bella cubana (1973), Gustavo Herrera’s Dan-

Son (1978) and Gladys González’s Zapateo (1978), among other works, rendered ballet a hybrid form by juxtaposing it with some of the Island’s country folk dances, Afrocuban dances and urban social dances—such as rumba, danzón and zapateo.260 To illustrate this line of work and showcase Cuban choreography, the National Ballet of Cuba performed

El güije in its initial tours of Europe and the United States. In 1979, the souvenir program for performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Metropolitan Opera in

260 As noted in the previous chapter, the first Cuban attempt at creating a ballet that utilized folkloric dances was Alberto Alonso’s Antes del alba, conceived for the Pro Arte Musical Society in 1947.

168 New York explained the identity of the title character to an audience unfamiliar with

Cuban folk legends:

El güije is a small black man, a type of goblin who lives in the rivers and the mountains. El güije is an ugly being, full of black humor and given to mischief, but he is also terribly vengeful and jealous of his domain. He possesses the gift of metamorphosis—he can change into a beautiful woman, an animal or a tree at will. El güije administers justice for the mountains.261

In the ballet, a man kills his lover and throws her corpse into the river where the güije

lives. The goblin, aiming to punish the man, leaves the water and metamorphoses into an

attractive woman. In this guise, the güije seduces the man during a guateque, the

traditional celebration in which Cuban peasants play their music and dance. The

seductress lures the man back to the river and there, turning back into the güije, takes the

man’s life (Ballet Nacional de Cuba 1979, 16). Interestingly, in spite of the folkloric

elements of the narrative, the aesthetics of the ballet was avant-garde. In 1969, European

reviewers had described the choreography as experimental: a combination of dance and

pantomime that was abstract, expressive and hieroglyphic, and that included stylized

movements from Cuban dances.262 Juan Blanco’s soundtrack mixed music, noises, sound

effects and a poem by Nicolás Guillén. The use of the stage was innovative as well, with

the orchestra pit taking the place of the riverbed.

Works like El güije realized the Alonsos’ aspiration that Latin Americans injected

their own culture into ballet. In the interview with Performing Arts Review, Alicia Alonso

261 Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Souvenir program, U.S. Tour, 1979, 16, in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

262 M. Alevxandre, “El güije, obra maestra del Ballet Nacional de Cuba” [El güije, a masterwork by the National Ballet of Cuba], in La Prensa (Barcelona), May 9, 1969, and J. Guijoan, “Estreno en España de El güije, Majísimo y Carmen por el Ballet Nacional de Cuba” [Premiere in Spain of El güije, Majísimo and Carmen by the National Ballet of Cuba], in Diario de Barcelona, May 9, 1969; both reviews are reproduced in El Ballet Nacional de Cuba en Europa: 1969, Críticas, 13-15.

169 cast this course of action as imperative because, in addition to legitimating ballet as a vehicle for expressing Latin American cultures, it could broaden the aesthetic spectrum of the dance form. She represented Latin America as ballet’s new frontier when she described the role of Latin American ballet choreographers as

[…] enriching current ballet technique choreographically with our own artistic development, rhythms, folklore, dances or popular forms, and, above all, with our culture. Every Latin American country has its cultural history and it is our turn to make this contribution to the old world of ballet. Latin America has not yet contributed its culture completely, only partly, but we have many more riches that we should and must give to the world of art and dance […] This is our duty (A. Alonso 1978, 282-83).

This stance counterbalanced Alonso’s representation of ballet as a universal art. Based on the precepts that ballet technique is suitable for all bodies, that ballet is a language understood by worldwide audiences and that its themes are relevant to all humans,

Alonso’s argument for the universality of ballet came close to homogenizing different cultural and human experiences. However, it is evident that she also advocated for cultural differentiation and the use of ballet to convey national identities—to the point that in the interview she regarded this task as a matter not of choice but duty.

Alonso understood that cultures are not static but in constant assimilation of new elements. This is another way in which her enterprise embodied Fernando Ortiz’s metaphor of the Cuban culture as an ajiaco or stew. For Ortiz, the way in which Taíno aborigines prepared the ajiaco was as significant as the variety of the ingredients. Each day, only the amount to be eaten was taken from the pan. Whatever remained in it underwent further cooking the next day: more water was added, as well as fresh vegetables and meats. Day after day, the pan was restocked. Each new meal combined the substance from previous ones and new ingredients that changed with the seasons

170 (Ortiz 1940b, 155). In other words, Ortiz viewed Cuban culture not as an already fulfilled stage but as a process of accumulative reformulation, constantly incorporating new elements. He gave this process a name: transculturation, the prefix trans- denoting change as in transit and transformation. Within this paradigm, it is irrelevant that Cuba had no tradition of ballet before the 1940s. As a new ingredient in the Cuban ajiaco, what mattered was that, once imported, ballet fused with the national culture. This meant that in the two-way process of the ajiaco’s cultural cooking, ballet not only had to contribute to the flavor of the Cuban stew, but also acquire a Cuban flavor itself. The act of hybridizing ballet and local folklore speaks to this two-way process: if ballet could enrich

Cuban culture, Cuban folklore could enrich ballet.

As discussed earlier, a cosmopolitan writer like Borges proposed that Latin

American intellectuals should relate to the European heritage critically, readapting it to their regional context. Also, the previous chapter documented that, although for most of the twentieth century Cuban artists looked to Europe to stay au courant with international movements, blind imitation of European models was not politically viable in the nationalist climate that characterized political and intellectual life in Cuba. The assimilation of foreign genres and trends was done with a critical spirit and resulted in artistic products that represented a Cuban identity—as in the works of the critical criollist writers, vanguardia painters and Afrocubanist composers. Similarly, for a radical postcolonial theorist like Fernández Retamar, reformulation, not mimicry, was the only possibility in accepting and coming to terms with the European legacy. Setting the

Spanish language as an example, he explained that its distinctive linguistic modalities in

Latin America evolved after a process of “visible (or, better still, audible) differentiation,

171 which might also be called an enrichment” (Fernández Retamar 1979, 57). For him, such development conferred authenticity to the assimilation of a foreign culture, in contrast to what he saw as reactionary “proposals to ‘Westernize’” Latin America in the image of Europe (Ibid.)

Ballet was no exception to this philosophy. Since the beginning of her efforts to cultivate this dance form on the Island, Alonso realized that, to make a contribution to the

national culture, her enterprise had to be more than a cursory reproduction of a European

art. Ballet had to be Cubanized. Therefore, the Ballet Alicia Alonso’s manifesto promised

to sponsor “as much as possible the staging of Cuban ballets with the goal of contributing

to the development of a national style or school that incorporates our own features”

(“Propósitos" 1951, 122). When the Institute for Higher Education in the Arts in Havana

granted the degree of doctor honoris causa to the ballerina in 1987, in her acceptance

speech she looked back at the insertion of ballet in Cuba as a difficult balancing act of

promoting a European tradition while rooting it in the local culture: “We had to show the

ballet tradition to our country—a cultural legacy not to be ignored or dismissed.

Additionally, it was essential to find our own path, in close connection to our roots and

cultural identity. We could not be content with the simple role of imitators, no matter

how perfect was the model to follow.”263

Still, in proposing ways for the Cuban ballet to develop its own identity, Alonso

did not interpret the relationship between ballet and national culture in a narrow sense.

The incorporation of folkloric elements into ballet was not, in her opinion, the only

263 The ceremony took place on July 24. A. Alonso, “Disciplinar el talento” [Disciplining talent], speech of acceptance of a degree of doctor honoris causa from the Institute for Higher Education in the Arts, in Havana, Jul. 24, 1987, in Cuba en el Ballet, vol. 6, no. 4, Oct.-Dec. 1987, in Diálogos, 183-184.

172 avenue to Cubanize the genre. In fact, Alonso regarded this approach, used alone, as possibly limiting. The Ballet Alicia Alonso’s manifesto, underscoring that the company would not practice “extreme nationalisms,” stated a more flexible position: “We define as

Cuban ballets not only those stemming from Afrocuban, Indian or peasant elements, but, more precisely, any work created by composers, choreographers and set designers from our country, who will unavoidably leave their own personal mark” (“Propósitos” 1951,

122). Reflecting the proposition that Cuban ballets need not be necessarily rooted in folklore, over the years the National Ballet of Cuba’s repertory has signified a Cuban identity in other ways: referring to Cuban reality, history, literature and arts, and incorporating scores and decors by local composers and visual artists. Gustavo Herrera’s

Flora (1978) drew inspiration from a series of paintings by René Portocarrero depicting

Cuban women. José Parés’s El caballo de coral (1960, The coral horse), Herrera’s

Cecilia Valdés (1975), Gladys González’s Las pericas (1982), Iván Tenorio’s Cimarrón

(1986) and Hilda Rivero’s Jardín (1988, Garden) were stage adaptations of landmark works of Cuban literature by writers Onelio Jorge Cardoso, Cirilo Villarverde, Nicolás

Dorr, Miguel Barnet and Dulce María Loynaz, respectively.264 Meanwhile, Alberto

Alonso’s A Santiago (To Santiago,1972), danced to texts by José Martí and Fidel Castro,

alluded to Cuban history. Some of Alicia Alonso’s choreographic works belong to this

group, such as Tributo a José White (Tribute to José White, 1983), set to a violin

264 It should be clarified that Parés and Riveros are not Cuban choreographers. The first one was born in Puerto Rico and the second one in Chile. Independently of this, they are regarded among the National Ballet of Cuba’s most emblematic choreographers, given the significance of their works in the company’s repertory and their sustained ties with the ensemble. In the author’s view, their nationalities do not hinder their attempts to create Cuban ballets. The National Ballet of Cuba’s strong association with these artists embodies the ensemble’s alliance and solidarity with Latin American cultures.

173 concerto by this Cuban composer, and Tula (1998), a ballet inspired by the life of the

Cuban writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda.

Alonso stated her disagreement with attitudes that reduced Latin American culture to folkloric expressions. In conversation with QueHacer, she warned, “We should not play the game of those who save folklore for our countries and deny us any other form of artistic expression” (A. Alonso 1982b, 270). For her the mark of cultural colonialism was not evident as much in the practice of ballet in Cuba as in the “inferiority complex” that perpetuated folklorist and nativist conceptions of Latin American culture: “We should avoid all tendencies that unnecessarily impoverish ourselves. We should avoid self- discriminatory criteria, which sometimes reveal the inferiority complexes ensuing from cultural colonization” (Ibid.)265 In accordance with her cosmopolitan mind-set, the

ballerina proposed that the cultivation of folkloric expressions should not happen at the

expense of cultural exchange with the rest of the world. She laid out this view in her

speech at the University of Guadalajara: “Our countries have the right to develop their

own culture, to express themselves through art forms with local roots, but also to

assimilate, enjoy and make their own the cultural legacy accumulated throughout the

history of humanity. Classical ballet is part of that heritage” (A. Alonso 2002, 69).

Not only was this thesis relevant to Alonso’s defense of the practice of ballet in

Cuba but it also had implications for the construal of a Cuban identity in ballet.

Ultimately, Alonso’s belief that Cuban artists unavoidably left their own mark on

whatever they did opened up the concept of what was Cuban in ballet to include these

265 In her speech at the Institute for Higher Education in the Arts in 1987, Alonso restated that these restrictive opinions were a residual of colonialism, the result of “an inferiority complex as a former colony.” A. Alonso, “Disciplinar el talento,” 184.

174 artists’ interpretations of European classics such as Giselle and Swan Lake.

Convinced that Cuban dancers and choreographers voiced their cultural identity even within a European repertory, Alonso described her own production of Giselle as a triumph of the Latin American culture and identified her efforts to make the Cuban ballet more than a folkloric expression as one of her most significant achievements:

If anything at all, I have contributed an example for our [Latin American] countries of how to gain confidence in the unlimited number of possibilities to express themselves through dance. [At the time I began my career] it was thought that we could only perform folkloric or ethnic dances, or certain forms of modern dance. Throughout its history, the National Ballet of Cuba […] has showed that such beliefs were wrong. Its repertory comprises the great classics of the European tradition, as well as modern and contemporary works, all performed with equal mastery. We dance all of them in a way that captures our national spirit, without this meaning that our interpretation of the classics lacks in purity or technical and stylistic rigor. In fact, the famous Paris Opera Ballet, an institution so proud of its history and identity, which premiered Giselle in 1841, acquired the Cuban production of this French Romantic masterpiece some years ago [in 1972]. I did not see in this a personal accomplishment but, first and foremost, a triumph of the Latin American culture. This triumph reveals an exemplary lesson, taught mainly to ourselves, on how to approach the European cultural heritage, enriching it and making it part of our national being (Ibid., 70).

The merit of Alonso’s position is that it provided an emancipative agenda rooted in a realistic understanding of international cultural exchange and postcolonial history.

She understood that the expectation that a nation produced a culture solely consisting of autochthonous forms, insulated from foreign expressions, was not only impoverishing but also impracticable in a postcolonial world defined by international trade, migrations and communication. Additionally, she insinuated that cultural flows in ballet did not have to follow a one-way, center-to-margin direction. The passage above allows seeing the development of the Cuban ballet as an act of political emancipation that challenged the

175 relationship between Europe as a center of artistic authority, embodied in this case by the Paris Opera, and Latin America as lying in the margins, represented by the National

Ballet of Cuba. This is another reason to situate Alonso’s discourse within a postcolonial paradigm.

The work of Indian cultural theorist Dipesh Chakrabarty, who calls to dislodge any fixed roles of a center and a margin, is relevant in this context. Like Alonso, Dirlik and Fernández Retamar, Chakrabarty has brought attention to the cultural entanglement between former colonies and metropolises. While he acknowledges that European heritages shape the cultures of former colonies, he emphasizes the agency of these nations in reformulating such legacy and challenging Western cultural hegemony:

“European thought is at once both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think the experiences of political modernity in non-Western nations, and provincializing Europe becomes the task of exploring how this thought—which is now everybody’s heritage and which affects us all—may be renewed from and for the margins.”266 The call to renew

this legacy from the periphery exemplifies the attempt in postcolonial studies to empower

non-Western nations to rewrite a view of history that overwhelmingly represents the

cultural flow between Europe and these countries as a unidirectional current from metropolis to colony.267 With this in mind, the goal of Cubanizing ballet is also a project

266 In particular, Chakrabarty argues that the legacy of the European Enlightenment, which promulgated a vision of the individual, his rights and modernity, remains indispensable to any social critique (such as anticolonial and postcolonial projects) that seeks to address issues of social justice and equality. D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000), 16. Emphasis added.

267 As noted postcolonial theorist George M. Gugelberger observes, “postcolonial writing […] is the slow, painful, and highly complex means of fighting one’s way into European-made history, in other words, a process of dialogue and necessary correction.” G. M. Gugelberger, “Postcolonial Cultural Studies: 1. Origins to the 1980s.”

176 of provincializing Europe, of unsettling center-margin relationships. As Edward Said insists, the cultural entanglement between Western and non-Western nations is actually bidirectional: “Who in India or Algeria today can confidently separate out the British or

French component of the past from the present actualities, and who in Britain or France can draw a circle around British London or French Paris that would exclude the impact of

India and Algeria upon those two imperial cities?”268

Traditionally, one of the expressions of the mark of Latin American culture in

Madrid, Paris or London has been the European consumption of dance forms such as rumba, tango, salsa and capoeira, which belong to the realms of folklore and popular culture and are perceived as exotic. In turn, Europe has often exported classical music, opera, drama, literature, works of visual art and other so-called products of high art to

Latin America. This general pattern of cultural exchange positions Latin America as an exporter of exotic traditions and Europe as an exporter of high art. The Paris Opera’s acquisition of the Cuban production of Giselle is not the only example of how the Cuban ballet reversed this pattern while countering the notion that Latin America is an exotic other. Alonso’s productions of Giselle, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker for the

Vienna State Opera, the Rome Opera, the La Scala Theatre in Milan, the San Carlo

Theatre in Naples, the La Fenice Theatre in Venice, the Warsaw Opera and other

European venues contributed, too, a bidirectional character to the flow of high art between Latin America and Europe.269 The same could be said of frequent tours of the

268 E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993; New York: Vintage, 1994), 15.

269 See “Catálogo coreográfico de Alicia Alonso” [Alicia Alonso’s choreographic catalogue], in F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda [Alicia Alonso: orbit of a legend] (Madrid: SGAE,

177 National Ballet of Cuba that have made the company a purveyor of high art for

European audiences. The troupe has performed hundreds of times across twenty-two

European countries—including ballet strongholds such as France, Russia, Italy and

England, as well as other nations where the practice of this dance form is well established, as in the case of Germany, Austria, Monaco, Finland, Hungary, Belgium and

Switzerland.270 Additionally, Cuba has become an exporter of highly trained ballet

dancers, who usually find employment as leading soloists in European ensembles. That

has been the case of José Manuel Carreño and Carlos Acosta in the Royal Ballet in

London; Yan Set Chang, Yosvani Ramos and Arionel Vargas in the English National

Ballet; Julio Arozarena and Catherine Zuásnabar in the Béjart Ballet Laussane; Loipa

Araújo and Lienz Chang in the Ballet de Marseille; Xiomara Reyes, Howard Quintero

and Ernesto Boada in the Royal Ballet of Flanders; Liuva Horta and Joel Toledo in

Spain’s Compañía Nacional de Danza; and Amílcar Moret in the Hamburg Ballet, among

others.271 All these instances of the Cuban ballet standing alongside its European

counterparts attest to how Cuba, the exporter of rumba, mambo, cha-cha-chá and salsa,

has also achieved the status of an important actor in the world of classical dance.

While the growing Cuban participation in the international ballet scene is a

contribution to this genre from the margins, the existence of a distinctive Cuban school of

ballet exemplifies the postcolonial aspiration to renew European legacies for the margins.

1996), 57-70. Additionally, see “Montajes” [Stagings] in Alicia Alonso, official website, http://www. portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm /alicia143.htm, consulted on July 1, 2009.

270 See “Giras internacionales” [International tours] in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 178-86.

271 The author compiled this list of examples by surveying the websites of these particular ballet ensembles on June 29, 2009, and drawing on his previous knowledge of some of these dancers’ engagements.

178 As documented above, Alonso valued the creation of uniquely Cuban forms, relevant to the country’s reality and the expressive needs of its artists. In her opinion, the Island’s dancers, choreographers and ballet teachers effectively developed a national style of ballet representative of their Cuban identity. When Performing Arts Review asked her, in

1978, if a Cuban style of ballet would eventually crystallize, the ballerina corrected the interviewer with determination: “Not eventually; the Cuban school of ballet already exists” (A. Alonso 1978, 291). This response confirmed that, for the ballerina, proving that ballet flourished locally into a Cuban product was essential to legitimizing its practice on the Island. Alonso gave the following definition of the Cuban school of ballet to her audience at the University of Guadalajara:

The Cuban school of ballet, which today is internationally acclaimed, is nothing else than Cubans’ specific way of dancing ballet, a way of using and enriching a universal technique, infusing it with our peculiar expressive sense. At its base is the contribution of a new teaching methodology anchored in the most strict classical tradition but suited to our dancers’ bodies, to their culture and temperament, as well as to the demands of the contemporary world (A. Alonso 2002, 70).

What makes the Cuban school an example of the transformation of ballet for the margins is that its unique style, according to the previous definition, evolved from the need to take into consideration the local reality and the dancers’ specific cultural and physical features. The acknowledgment that the Cubans’ physique may be a defining factor of the school reveals a contradiction in Alonso’s discourse. As discussed earlier, she insisted that individuals with the bodily type favored in ballet could be found in all countries. In the text quoted above, she did not specify what physical features might characterize

Cuban dancers and how much they diverge from the bodily features of European dancers.

Regardless of this, Alonso’s remarks emphasize Cuban dancers’ agency in making a

179 European tradition their own, updating it and inflecting it with a distinctive national character.

However, affirmations of the existence of a Cuban school and general definitions of it were not sufficient to establish the factuality of such a school. Consequently, over the years Alonso found it necessary to offer more precise proof of the school’s existence by listing and describing the aesthetic and technical features that set it apart from

European counterparts such as the Russian, French, British and Danish schools. In terms of the choreographic output of the Cuban school, it is clear that many works signified a local identity by incorporating folkloric elements, referring to Cuban literature and events, or utilizing music and decors by artists from the Island. However, it is a more complex task to describe how local dancers brought their own national voice to their productions and performances of the European repertory. Because of its problematic character, it is to this particular phenomenon that the rest of this dissertation pays consideration. Chapter 4 analyzes the centrality of the Franco-Russian repertory of nineteenth-century classics in the artistic identities of Alonso and the National Ballet of

Cuba. Meanwhile, Chapter 5 inquires into how Alonso classified a Cuban aesthetics in the performance of these classics.

Prior to this analysis, it has been necessary to understand why Alonso placed so much importance on articulating a rationale for the Cuban ballet. This chapter identified her motivation with a need to defend the practice of ballet by Cubans. Alonso reacted against the attitudes, characteristic of some European and North American critics, that the

Cuban ballet was a surprising, unnatural or inadequate phenomenon. She also rejected any stance that limited ballet to European bodies or particular social classes. Moreover,

180 she opposed the view that ballet was not relevant to Latin American cultural realities.

Additionally, Alonso sought to refute the charges that the cultivation of ballet in Cuba was an instance of cultural colonialism. The ballerina used an arsenal of arguments to

justify the existence of the Cuban ballet. She articulated a cosmopolitan view of ballet as

a cultural achievement of humanity over which all the peoples, not only Europeans, could

claim ownership. In parallel with this thesis, she alleged that it was legitimate for Cubans to express themselves in artistic forms of European origin, given that European culture is an essential component of the creole culture of the Island. Furthermore, both Alonso’s discourse and the praxis of the Cuban ballet debunked discriminatory portrayals of ballet as symbolic of a specific race or social class. The multiracial character of the National

Ballet of Cuba, the accessibility of free ballet training and the cultivation of a large audience on the Island helped to overcome such prejudices. Alonso also fought stereotypes and nativist projects that reduced Latin American cultures to folklorist expressions. Lastly, Alonso envisioned the Cuban ballet as not an imitation but a renovation of its European models, not an act of colonial subjugation but one of postcolonial emancipation. She asserted that Cuba was an actor in the international development of the dance form and that, on the Island, ballet had become a vehicle to formulate a national identity through a variety of means.

181

CHAPTER 4

ALONSO’S PERFORMANCE AND NARRATIVE OF

HER CLASSICIST’S IDENTITY

While Alonso the nationalist stood as the best example of a Cuban school of ballet seeking to express the Cuban national culture, Alonso the cosmopolitan professed to be the authentic carrier of centuries-old European traditions. Being a distinguished performer of works such as Giselle and Swan Lake, Alicia Alonso embodied a European balletic heritage from the nineteenth century. Because, as the main promoter and model for the development of ballet in her country, she shaped the identity of the National Ballet of Cuba, these and other nineteenth-century ballet classics enjoyed prominence, too, in this company’s performances. As seen in the previous chapter, the connection of the

Cuban ballet with the classics raised questions about the relevance of these works in twentieth-century Cuba and the suitability of the dancers from the Island to perform them adequately. In her rationale for the practice of ballet in Cuba, Alonso contested that the classics constituted a legacy that was significant beyond their place and time of origin.

She deemed these works an artistic trove belonging to all humanity and, consequently, she believed that Cuban ballet dancers and audiences, independently of their national culture, race or social class, could derive meaningful aesthetic experiences from this repertory. Independently of this, the fact remained that Cuba, where ballet was a sudden importation, had no tradition of performing the classics. Therefore, it was not apparent that Cubans participated in the history of intergenerational exchanges through which

182 knowledge of these works was transmitted in other countries, such as Russia and

Denmark. Yet, Alonso, who learned the classics from European teachers, served as the articulating point between that tradition and the Cuban ballet. In view of this, her knowledge of the classics was a warrant of the ability of subsequent generations of Cuban dancers to offer faithful performances of these works.

This chapter discusses the aspect of Alonso’s artistic identity that relates to her embodiment of a European legacy and, in specific, the nineteenth-century classics. The first half of the chapter explains how Alonso achieved the status of a classicist through a series of strategic decisions in her work as a dancer, choreographer and artistic director.

Out of the options available to the ballerina at the beginning of her career, she deliberately chose to become a performer of the classics. In particular, she pursued the opportunity to excel in Giselle. Through a combination of talent, hard work, careful planning and serendipity, Alonso was able to materialize that goal, turning into an internationally acclaimed performer of this repertory. Meanwhile, the second half of the chapter is an inquiry into how, in her writings, speeches and interviews, Alonso articulated a narrative of identity that stressed her classicist persona. She portrayed herself as the direct descendant of a balletic lineage going back to the creators of the classics, a custodian of this repertory and an authority on its performance. This study examines, too, how the National Ballet of Cuba ratified Alonso’s first-person narrative in institutional depictions of her persona. Mirroring Alonso’s narrative, the larger narrative of identity of the Cuban ballet cast classicism as an important force driving the practice of the dance form on the Island.

183 The narrative analysis of identity, based on the premise that identity is articulated through stories, engenders the risk of regarding identity as fictive. However, this premise does not mean that identity is a fantasy unrelated to the acts and events of an individual’s reality. Critical theorist Couze Venn highlights this distinction, clarifying

that neither should identity be reduced to facticity, nor narratives be understood as mere ficticity: “Self is not a fact or an event, it is not reducible to the facticity of things-in- themselves […] The identity of a person, or a group or a people, takes the forms of stories told.” Conversely, he insists that, “although history takes the form of a narration, it is important to avoid reducing history—the history of a community or that of a particular self—to a species of fiction.”272 While there is no doubt that personal stories and

historical inscriptions are subjective and contain inaccuracies, the analysis of these

narratives would be meaningless if one were to regard them as fiction and the identities

revealed through them as illusory. In Alonso’s case, the agency that characterized her

self-representation as a classicist was evident, too, in the many actions through which she

strategically sought to become a successful performer and restager of the nineteenth

century classics.273 It is because of this that the present chapter looks at the development

of Alonso’s classicist persona both as a career enterprise consummated through the

dancer’s actions and as a discourse of identity that she formulated by narrative means.

272 C. Venn, “Narrative Identity, Subject Formation, and the Transfiguration of Subjects,” in Strategic Narrative, New Perspectives on the Power of Personal and Cultural Stories, ed. W. Patterson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 35, 39. A footnote with a full citation indicates the first reference to a source in the chapter. For the sake of keeping footnotes to a minimum, the source is cited with the author-date system in subsequent references.

273 As historian Hayden White points out in his defense of the value of narrative as a form of historical representation, there frequently is a parallel between lives and life stories: “The intentionality informing human actions, as against mere motions, conduces to the creation of lives that have the coherency of emplotted stories.” H. White, The Content of the Form (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987), 173.

184 Career-shaping Decisions in Pursuit of the Classics

Opportunities to pursue a professional career as a ballet dancer in the United

States were scarce when Alicia Alonso arrived in New York in 1938 to further her training and realize her goal of becoming a ballerina. As did many other aspiring ballet dancers at the time, Alonso found her first jobs on Broadway. In Great Lady (1938) and

Stars in Your Eyes (1939), she performed next to Nora Kaye, Maria Karnilova, Jerome

Robbins and Donald Saddler, unknown young artists who eventually would become important figures of ballet and musical theater in North America.274 The directions that these artists followed in the next decades exemplify the versatility that dancers needed if they wanted to remain employed during the pioneer years of the American ballet. In part because of employment uncertainty and in part because at this point ballet in America resembled an empty slate where different developments were emerging simultaneously,

274 Great Lady opened at the Majestic Theater, New York City, on Dec. 1, 1938, with a book by E. Crooker, L. Brentano and H. Lindsay, music by F. Loewe and choreography by W. Dollar. Stars in Your Eyes, featuring Ethel Merman, premiered at the Majestic on Feb. 9, 1939. The book and lyrics were by J. P. McEvoy and D. Fields, the music by A. Schwartz and the choreography by C. Randall. Walter Terry witnessed these early performances of Alonso in the United States, when the referred Broadway shows toured to Boston, where Terry was based at the time. The dancers Tamara Toumanova and André Eglevsky were also part of these Broadway productions. However, unlike Alonso and her young colleagues, who participated in tap routines and sang in the choruses, Toumanova and Eglevsky were specially featured in ballet scenes, in accordance with their reputation as ballet stars. See B. Atkinson, “The Play: ‘Great Lady,’ Which Is a Biography of Madame Jumel with Music and Dancing,” and “The Play: Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante in ‘Stars in Your Eyes’ with Tunes and a Hollywood Accent,” in New York Times, Dec. 2, 1938, 26, and Feb. 10, 1939, 24; W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1981), 13-14, and A. Alonso, “Primeros recuerdos, primeros pasos en la danza” [First memories, first steps in dance], in T. Gutiérrez, Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: imagen de una plenitud, testimonios y recuerdos de la artista [Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: image of plenitude; testimonies and memories of the artist] (Barcelona: Salvat, 1981), 4-15, reprinted in A. Alonso, Diálogos con la danza, fourth edition (Mexico City: Océano, 2004), 57-63. All references to Diálogos are to the fourth edition, unless otherwise specified. All translations from Spanish to English in this chapter are by the author unless otherwise noted.

185 these dancers worked within a variety of dance styles and theatrical genres.275

Charting the careers of Alonso’s peers in those Broadway shows contributes a picture of the possibilities available to dancers at the time. After their appearances in musical comedies, they became members of the newly formed Ballet Theatre in 1940. In later years, some of them went back to Broadway or moved in other directions.

Nora Kaye became a principal dancer with Ballet Theatre. She achieved prominence for her interpretation of overtly psychological works by Antony Tudor such as Jardin aux Lilas, Pillar of Fire and Romeo and Juliet. Although she also danced in works like Giselle and Swan Lake, it was her status as a “dramatic ballerina” that defined her profile. This is clear in the view of critic Walter Terry, for whom Kaye and Alonso fulfilled different roles as the two stars of Ballet Theatre in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s: “Alicia was regarded as the ‘classical’ ballerina and Nora as the ‘dramatic’”

(Terry 1981, 28).276 Kaye also danced with the New York City Ballet between 1951 and

1954. In this company, she performed works by Balanchine and premiered Jerome

Robbin’s The Cage.277 On her part, Maria Karnilova achieved recognition for her

interpretation of comic roles in ballets by Tudor, Mikhail Fokine and Agnes de Mille that

she performed with Ballet Theatre. However, after 1946 she focused on her work in

275 For a more detailed account of the various directions that ballet took in the United States in the 1930s and 40s, see the section “The United States: From ‘Ballets Americains’ to American Ballet,” in Chapter 2.

276 In an interview with the author, Alonso explained, “Generally, Nora danced the modern ballets and I danced the classics. Still, she wanted to dance the classics, which she eventually did, in the same way that I danced the modern ballets.” A. Alonso, “Bailar ha sido vivir” [To dance has been to live], interview with L. Tomé, in El Mercurio (Santiago, Chile), Nov. 19, 2000, E24; expanded and reprinted in Diálogos, 327-33.

277 J. Dunning, “Nora Kaye is Dead, Leading Ballerina,” in New York Times, Mar. 1, 1987, A40; and A. Barzel, "Kaye, Nora," in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), accessed online through Temple University’s Library, Aug. 21, 2008.

186 Broadway and television shows, playing major roles in several musicals and plays. In

1965, she won the Tony Award for the Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in

Fiddler on the Roof. She also received a nomination for the 1969 Tony Award to the Best

Actress for her work in the musical Zorba.278 Donald Saddler, in addition to practicing

ballet, pursued tap dancing and studied modern dance with Doris Humphrey, Hanya

Holm and Katherine Dunham. After leaving Ballet Theatre in 1947, he became well

known for his prolific work as a choreographer for Broadway, Hollywood and television

shows. He choreographed the musicals Wonderful Town and No, No, Nanette, for which

he received Tony Awards in 1953 and 1971 respectively. Other Broadway credits

included the choreography for revivals of On Your Toes (1982) and My Fair Lady (1993).

Saddler’s work for the film industry led him to choreograph for Doris Day (April in

Paris, 1953), Frank Sinatra (Young at Heart, 1954) and Woody Allen (Radio Days,

1987). He also created dances for productions of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York

City Opera and other opera companies. Still, Saddler maintained his connection to the

ballet world, making works for the Joffrey Ballet and serving as the assistant director of

the Harkness Ballet.279 Meanwhile, Jerome Robbins grew to be the most emblematic

American-born ballet choreographer of the twentieth century. Most notably, he

choreographed for the New York City Ballet, where he shared the title of ballet master

278 A. Kisselgoff, “Maria Karnilova, 80, Star of Ballets and Broadway,” in New York Times, Apr. 25, 2001, C17. Also, see the historical list of awards recipients and nominees at the Tony Awards’ official website, http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/archive/pastwinners/index.html, consulted on Aug. 25, 2008.

279 M. Hunt, “Saddler, Donald,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen, accessed online through Temple University’s Library, Aug. 25, 2008. See the citation for Saddler’s Capezio Dance Award (2006) in the official website of the Capezio Ballet Makers Foundation, http://www.capeziodance. com/about/foundation/award/recipients/2006.html, consulted on Aug. 25, 2008. Also, see the list of awards recipients and nominees at the Tony Awards’ official website, http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/archive/ pastwinners/index.html, consulted on Aug. 25, 2008.

187 with George Balanchine. Simultaneously, Robbins became one of the most successful choreographers for Broadway. He captured the spirit of contemporary America in ballets and musicals such as Fancy Free (1944), On the Town (1944) and West Side Story

(1957), which were set in Manhattan and featured characters such as American sailors

and members of New York’s street gangs. These works blended the classical vocabulary

of ballet with the movements of jazz and the social dances of the time. Yet, his ballets

ranged in tone and style from athletic display (Interplay, 1945) to psychological drama

(Facsimile, 1946) to satire (The Concert, 1956) to romanticism (In the Night, 1970).

Additionally, in the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1964) Robbins paid tribute to his

Jewish heritage.280

Among these dancers, only Alonso evolved into a classical ballerina in the

European tradition, achieving fame for her performances of nineteenth-century works

such as Giselle and Swan Lake. Although by no means a representative sample of a whole

generation of dancers, these five artists and their careers stand as symbolic of the various

roads followed by the first generation of professional ballet dancers in America. Their

artistic lives suggest that, for them, pursuing a conventional career in ballet, in the sense

of becoming respected performers of the classics, was not always possible and perhaps

not even desirable. Committing to the European masterpieces from the previous century,

as Alonso did, was one avenue to professional fulfillment, but not the only one. It is

important to consider this to fully understand Alonso’s agency in molding her artistic

trajectory. For her, performing the ballets from the Romantic and Classical eras and

280 A. Kisselgoff, “Jerome Robbins, 79, Is Dead: Giant of Ballet and Broadway,” in New York Times, Jul. 30, 1998, A1; and D. Hering, “Robbins, Jerome,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen, accessed online through Temple University’s Library, Aug. 25, 2008.

188 making of them a hallmark of her artistic personality was not a default alternative, but the result of conscious decisions toward reaching this specific goal.

The fact that Alonso possessed the bodily type and technical strengths thought of as ideal for the classical repertory set her on route to master the technically difficult roles of the Romantic and Classical ballets. Even when she was virtually unknown to the ballet world, a recent arrival from Havana taking lessons in New York, Alonso captured the attention of teachers and fellow students with her natural turnout, proverbial leg extensions and precise technique. The dancer Leon Danelian, who in 1938 took Enrico

Zanfretta’s classes in New York together with Alonso, gave a testimony of how she stood out: “I didn’t pay much attention [to her] until Zanfretta gave an adagio at barre and asked for développé à la seconde and, my God, that Cuban leg just shot up to the ceiling.

I had never seen an extension like that in my life.”281 Similarly, Anatole Vilzak, one of

Alonso’s teachers as the School of American Ballet, praised the perfection of her fifth position, setting her as an example to his other students. According to Alonso, “he would stop the class and say ‘Look! Look at that fifth position!’”282 Another of Alonso’s

teachers, Alexandra Fedorova, used to put her on the spot in her classes by directing the

attention of professional dancers to the ease with which she, still a student, executed the

exercises. Alonso reminisced, “Fedorova tried to have them work harder by hurting their

pride, saying things such as: ‘I don’t understand why you can’t do it right at least once.

281 In a développé à la seconde, the gesturing leg rises to the side with a progressive unfolding movement. Quoted in W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 12.

282 In fifth position, the feet are crossed and held together, the toes of one foot touching the heel of the other, and vice versa. The ability to do this correctly is an indicator of leg turnout, an essential element that facilitates executing most ballet steps with ease. A. Alonso, “Interview with Alicia Alonso,” conducted by M. Hunt, Nov. 19-21, 1977, typescript, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 10.

189 Just look at how Alicia can do it perfectly as many times as she wants. Look at her easiness!’” (Alonso 1981c, 60).283 Still, Alonso’s physical advantages did not guarantee, in themselves, a road free of obstacles to starring in titles such as Giselle and Swan Lake.

Obtaining access to the European nineteenth-century repertory required well- thought-out decisions and a great determination on Alonso’s part. For instance, she carefully chose which companies to dance for, bearing her career’s long-term future in mind. In 1939 Alonso declined a spectacular offer from Leonid Massine inviting her to join the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo as a principal dancer. This would have been an incredible breakthrough for the Cuban artist. She would have launched her international career with top billing in an acclaimed ensemble, performing the works of one of the most noted choreographers of the time. Retrospectively, Alonso explained that taking a shortcut to stardom would not have benefited her at such an early stage of her career. In her view, taking the time to slowly rise through the ranks, while learning and growing as an artist, was preferable (A. Alonso 1981c, 61).284 She joined Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet

Caravan, where she held no special rank. Alonso’s reason to turn down Massine’s offer, thinking it wiser to mature as a dancer before assuming title roles, may be valid but raises skepticism. The professional life of dancers is so short and non-soloist salaries are so

meager that most dancers are eager to perform principal roles when the opportunity

presents. This must have been particularly true in the American ballet environment of the

1930s and 1940s, when professional opportunities were extremely limited and jobs in a

283 For a more detailed discussion of Alonso’s technique, see M. del C. Hechavarría, Alicia Alonso, más allá de la técnica [Alicia Alonso, beyond technique] (Valencia, Spain: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 1998).

284 Alonso expressed the same belief in a second interview. See A. Alonso, “Pas de Seul Alicia,” interview by R. E. Peláez, in Granma (Havana), Jan. 17, 1982, reproduced in Diálogos, 257.

190 corps de ballet paid poorly. Dance historian Olga Maynard, who lived through this period, reminisced: “North American ballet dancers lived in economic scarcity and

instability. They were hired and fired as if they were farmers of the lowest socioeconomic

stratum. Companies formed and disbanded with astonishing regularity.”285 If low-ranking

jobs were difficult to obtain, contracts as a principal dancer were practically unavailable.

In view of this, there is reason to believe that Alonso had additional motivations, apart

from wanting more time to develop as a dancer, to decline the well-paid job as a principal

dancer with the Ballet Russe. She must have had misgivings about the Spanish-themed repertory that Massine offered to her. The choreographer was looking for a dancer who would specifically assume the leading parts in Capriccio Espagnol and The Three-

Cornered Hat, works heavily inflected with Spanish folkloric dances. That Alonso turned down this tempting offer is telling of how she did not envision herself in these roles— even if she had a passion for Spanish folklore. One could hypothesize that, in choosing the Ballet Caravan over the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo, she was driven, at least in part, by the fear of being pigeonholed as a Latin performer of Spanish folkloric ballets and that she was wary of the consequences that such typecasting could have for her future.286 In the long term, in Pedro Simón’s view, Alonso ended up having access to “more variety in

285 O. Maynard, “Los primeros años de la Alonso” [Alonso’s first years], in Cuba en el Ballet (Havana) vol. 6, no. 2, Apr.-Jun. 1987, 25.

286 No references to declining Massine’s offer on the grounds that it might have led to ethnic typecasting exist in the broad selection of Alonso’s texts consulted for this dissertation. It could be that this thought motivated Alonso unconsciously.

191 choreographic and artistic experiences” in the Ballet Caravan than she would have had in the Ballet Russe.287

Yet, as much as the Ballet Caravan offered a better alternative to Alonso, her

engagement with this ensemble turned out to be only transient. After a few months,

Alonso decided to pursue the repertory of nineteenth-century classics and left the Ballet

Caravan, whose programs were comprised of modern works with American subject

matter.288 On April 11, 1940, she had attended a Ballet Russe de Montecarlo’s

performance of Giselle in New York, featuring the British dancers Alicia Markova and

Anton Dolin. This event was a mesmerizing experience for Alonso, to the point that it

prompted her decision to commit to the classics. She recounted how this first encounter

with the Romantic masterpiece made her question the view, epitomized in the philosophy

of the Ballet Caravan, that the classics were antiquated and irrelevant: “It was immediately clear to me that though the classics may be old, they could be very much alive. For me, Markova’s dancing—so different from the sharp, strong style we were

accustomed to in Ballet Caravan—brought a whole new dimension to the art of ballet.”289

The vaporous and ethereal choreography struck a chord with the young Alonso, who was

“fascinated by the illusion of fragility of the ballerina in the second act” (A. Alonso 2000,

328). There was an immediate identification on her part with the work’s Romantic style.

“[This presentation of Giselle] fulfilled me with its style and drama,” she explained.

287 F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: Órbita de una Leyenda [Alicia Alonso: orbit of a legend] (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores de España, 1996), 27-28.

288 For a discussion of the repertory of the Ballet Caravan, see the section “The United States: From ‘Ballets Americains’ to American Ballet,” in Chapter 2.

289 A. Alonso, “Performing Giselle,” in C. Payne, American Ballet Theatre (New York: Knopf, 1977), 334.

192 (Ibid.) Watching Markova broadened Alonso’s notion “of what a ballerina could be,” to the point that the Cuban dancer saw herself in a new light: “I thought that Giselle had

everything in it for me. I was seventeen or eighteen years old then and said to myself that

I would dance this ballet” (Ibid.)

Alonso’s fascination with Giselle was more than a momentary infatuation.

Judging from her testimony, the dancer had set herself a firm goal: “I was sure I would

dance [Giselle] since I liked it so much—there was no doubt about it.” Her conviction

was not the result of overconfidence, but of determination. She reminisced about that

turning point in her career, “I knew that someday I would dance it [Giselle]. Not because

I thought I would be a great dancer or a ballerina, but that—if I worked hard enough—I would be able to do it”.290 This is not a romanticized recollection of her resolve, which

must have been undeterred indeed—throughout her epic career, Alonso proved in

numerous ways that her strong will and dedication to work allowed her to achieve the

unthinkable goals that she set for herself, from developing ballet in Cuba, to dancing in spite of her very limited eyesight, to delaying her retirement from the stage until she was in her early seventies. Finding a company in which she could dance the nineteenth- century repertory was Alonso’s first step. “I resolved at once that I must find a company in which I could dance the classics such as Giselle,” she explained (A. Alonso 1977b,

334). With this in mind, she joined Ballet Theatre in 1940.

The path that Alonso followed during her years in Ballet Theatre confirmed that her attraction to the Romantic and Classical works was a career-shaping ambition. She had to overcome obstacles that could have lured her away from her vision of dancing the

290 A. Alonso, “Alicia Alonso,” in Striking a Balance: Dancers Talk About Dancing, ed. B. Newman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), 62.

193 classics. As the artist observed, there were “in the first place, [the challenges] that any young dancer must face if she wants to grow and achieve a prominent position within such a hostile environment” as a competitive ballet company.291 Additionally, Alonso

had to battle the notion that a dancer of Cuban nationality was not apt to perform the title

roles of the classics. This study has already addressed how, early in her career, she faced

this stereotype. In her opinion, she was the target of ethnic typecasting during her first

seasons with Ballet Theatre: “Because of this, one the first important roles that they

assigned me was the Mexican Sweetheart in Billy the Kid” by Eugene Loring (A. Alonso

1988b, 283). Alonso also noted that Anton Dolin cast her and Fernando Alonso as

Mexican workers in Quintet, a work that he created in 1940 (A. Alonso 1977a, 52).292

Also, she danced as a Spanish maja in Tudor’s Goyescas. Nonetheless, other roles that

Alonso performed during her first year with the company included soloist parts in Adolf

Bolm’s Peter and the Wolf (the Bird), Anton Dolin’s Pas de Quatre (Mademoiselle

Grisi), Giselle (one of the two soloist willis in the second act) and Swan Lake (one of the two female dancers in the first act’s pas de trois).293 In spite of Alonso’s suggestion of

ethnic typecasting, this seems to have been a satisfactory list of roles for a junior dancer.

However, after the Russian impresario Sol Hurok assumed the management of Ballet

291 A. Alonso, “Lo inagotable en la danza” [The inexhaustible in dance], interview by A. Estévez in Granma (Havana), Oct. 13, 1988, reproduced in Diálogos, 283 .

292 In the interview with Marilyn Hunt, Alonso could not remember the title of Dolin’s ballet. In 1940, she danced in three original works by Dolin: Quintet, Capriccioso and Pas de Quatre. In her text “Alicia Alonso en sus muchos personajes” [Alicia Alonso in her many characters], Ann Barzel identifies Quintet as the ballet in which the dancer appeared as a Mexican worker. Barzel’s text, written in English, was intended to be a part of a book on Alonso’s career that this dance critic never completed. Cuba en el ballet published it in a Spanish translation in 2002. A preface to the essay indicates that the original is stored in the National Dance Museum in Havana. A. Barzel, “Alicia Alonso en sus muchos personajes,” in Cuba en el Ballet, no. 100, Jul.-Dec. 2002, 32.

293 See Appendix.

194 Theatre in 1942, opportunities to perform soloist and leading roles diminished sharply for the non-Russian dancers in the company. Most of the important roles went to ballerinas who were Russian either by origin or by adopted name, such as Alicia

Markova, Irina Baronova, Tamara Toumanova and Vera Zorina.294 According to Terry,

Hurok “assumed, sadly but perhaps rightly, that the American public thought of ballet not

as international or even American but as Russian ballet. Thus, he sold the company as

purveyors of Russian ballet” (Terry 1981, 23).295

Given the lack of chances to dance title roles, it was not surprising that Alonso

jumped at the opportunity of replacing Markova for a performance of Giselle on

November 2, 1943. With Markova taking an unexpected leave due to a hernia, the management of Ballet Theatre urgently needed to find a replacement for the sold-out presentation. According to Alonso, the role was offered to her, Nora Kaye and Rosella

Hightower. However, taking the place of a ballerina who was a favorite of the audience and a consummate interpreter of the part was more of a risk than an opportunity. Kaye and Hightower rejected the offer, fearing negative comparisons to Markova. Alonso

recalled that her first reaction was one of trepidation: “none of us was about to expose

herself to the New York critics and the discriminating Metropolitan audience in an ill-

prepared, under-rehearsed debut performance of one of the most challenging roles in the

ballet repertory” (A. Alonso 1977b, 336). Yet, the Cuban artist, who was so determined

to dance Giselle that she had learnt the choreography by heart from watching the ballet

over and over, ultimately accepted the challenge. Under the guidance of Anton Dolin, she

294 See the passage on the “Russification” of Ballet Theatre in the section “The United States: From ‘Ballets Americains’ to American Ballet,” in Chapter 2.

295 Italics in the original.

195 worked on her interpretation over a few sessions, which barely added up to eight hours of rehearsal.296 Against all odds, the performance was a success. John Martin’s

review for The New York Times carried the subtitle “Young Ballerina Applauded in

Difficult Role of the Classic Ballet at Metropolitan.” The critic commented,

[It] proved to be one of the most distinguished performances of the season. Its chief interest lay as a matter of course in the first appearance of Alicia Alonso in the title role, a role which is the richest and the most demanding in the entire classic repertory. That Miss Alonso acquitted herself with brilliance was no surprise to those who have followed the career of this gifted young artist.297

Martin praised Alonso for her command of the Romantic style and for playing the role

with simplicity and honesty, in a way that he found eloquent and touching. Counting on

the strong foundation that she showed in this debut, the critic foresaw that in due time

Alonso would achieve perfection in this ballet.

However, a successful debut in Giselle did not bring with it the opportunity for

Alonso to dance the leading roles of the Romantic and Classical ballets on a regular basis.

She found that “Hurok’s conviction that all ballerinas must have Russian parentage or at

least a Russian name” stood in the way of her dancing Giselle again (A. Alonso 1977b,

337). Effectively, for the following seasons, Markova and Toumanova held a monopoly

over this ballet. The Cuban dancer did not gain the chance to perform it a second time

until January 27, 1945 in Seattle, when none of the Russian stars were available. Two

more performances of Alonso in Giselle followed in Long Beach and San Diego, but they

296 Alonso listed the details of her rehearsal schedule in “Performing Giselle,” 336.

297 J. Martin, “Alonso in Debut Here in Giselle,” in New York Times, Nov. 3, 1943, 22.

196 gave no satisfaction to the dancer.298 She compared herself to Toumanova in the following terms: “My towns were Seattle, Long Beach, and San Diego. Toumanova’s

were San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York” (A. Alonso 1977b, 337). The

comparison, of course, alluded to the fact that the cities in which she performed were not the largest nor the ones recognized as centers of culture, where she would have been in front of bigger and more knowledgeable audiences and been reviewed for influential newspapers and magazines. In the New York Times, John Martin denounced the unfairness of the situation: “Here, indeed, is one the great classic dancers of the day, and why she is not doing all the classic roles in the repertory is one of the mysteries of the ballet world.”299

In spite of the disadvantages of not being a featured Russian star, over the next

two seasons Alonso began to increasingly appear in a number of important Romantic and

Classical roles. Her repertory incorporated parts from Sleeping Beauty (Blue Bird, Lilac

Fairy and Princess Aurora), Swan Lake (second act’s pas de deux), The Nutcracker

(second act’s pas de deux) and Don Quixote (third act’s pas de deux). She also performed in works that recreated the Romantic era, such as Fokine’s Les Sylphides (different solo parts) and Dolin’s Romantic Age (Nymph Elora) and Pas de Quatre (Mademoiselle

Taglioni). At the same time, she danced the main parts in two modern ballets choreographed in the Russian Classical style: Balanchine’s Waltz Academy and David

Lichine’s Graduation Ball. Amassing these roles was no small accomplishment. Still,

298 The information on Ballet Theatre’s casting of Giselle between 1940 and 1945 comes from Alonso’s essay “Performing Giselle,” in Payne’s American Ballet Theatre. The essay contains footnotes by Paine, who, as the company’s historian and archivist, confirms that the information is correct, sometimes providing additional details.

299 J. Martin, “Ballet Presents Series of Firsts,” in New York Times, Apr. 16, 1945, 26.

197 Alonso noted that her appearances in these ballets were often the result of serendipitous last-minute substitutions when the principal dancers of the company fell ill or were not available (A. Alonso 1977b, 335-36). The artist remained dissatisfied with these performances not being frequent and not taking place in central locations.

Eventually, Alonso’s perseverance paid off and she became a principal dancer of

Ballet Theatre in 1946. However, this only happened after Markova and Toumanova left the ensemble and Hurok stopped acting as its manager and booking agent (A. Alonso

1977b, 339). For Alonso, the change could not have been more dramatic: from underdog to glamorous international star. In the summer of that year, she was featured prominently in the company’s debut season at the Covent Garden Theatre, in London. Alonso danced title roles every day and, sometimes, twice a day in matinee and evening performances.

Consider her appearances during the last few days of the season: on July 15, she danced in Giselle; on the next day she performed the role of the Italian Ballerina (The Goddess of

Dance) in Tudor’s Gala Performance; one day later she appeared in two presentations of

Giselle; on July 18, she danced the part of Terpsichore in Balanchine’s Apollo; the following day she was back in Giselle; and on the final day, July 20, she danced in matinee and evening performances of Apollo.300

After her promotion, the Cuban artist added other roles from the classics to her

repertory. She made her debut in La fille mal gardée, the Black Swan pas de deux of

Swan Lake and the Rose Adagio of Sleeping Beauty, as well as in new works

choreographed in the style of the Russian Classical ballet such as John Taras’s Graziana,

Anatole Oboukhov’s Pas de Deux, Bronislava Nijinska’s Schumann Concerto and

300 Schedule reproduced in A. Alonso, “Performing Giselle,” 339.

198 Balanchine’s Theme and Variations. In spite of her rank, Alonso still had to compete for these roles with other dancers. She recalled having to court Lucia Chase, the director of Ballet Theatre, to obtain a contract as the company’s classical ballerina in 1947. In an act of honesty, Alonso made her intentions clear to Rosella Hightower, a colleague contending for the same position:

I told Rosella, “Rosella, Lucia Chase is asking me for the contract. I’m going to ask her to dance Swan Lake […] and some of the classics. I want to be the classical ballerina; I want to dance the classics […] If she doesn’t allow me, if she says no, I will leave the company.” [Alonso had been offered a position with the Ballet de Marquis de Cuevas]. So she said to me, “Okay, I will ask too.” I said, “Okay, Rosella. It’s you and I; let’s see what happens” (A. Alonso 1977a, 41).

In the end, Alonso secured the position with Ballet Theatre—while Hightower went to dance with the Ballet de Marquis de Cueva. The anecdote shows Alonso’s determination

to make the nineteenth-century repertory her own: securing the classics as her province was the prime condition upon which she stayed with Ballet Theatre. The young star, finding herself in high demand, did not hesitate to use leverage to negotiate a contract

that allotted her frequent performances of the classics. In the following years, she

regularly danced Giselle with Ballet Theatre in the United States and major venues in

France (1950, 1953), Latin America (1951) and Italy (1953). She also performed this

work with the troupes of the Kirov and Bolshoi Theatres in the Soviet Union, in 1958, as

the first guest artist from the West invited to appear across the Iron Curtain.301

The eclectic repertory of Ballet Theatre provided Alonso with opportunities to

dance works from different periods and in different styles, beyond the nineteenth-century

301 See the chronology of Alonso’s work in Giselle in Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Alicia Alonso, Giselle (Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de La Habana, 1993). Also, see a report on Alonso’s Soviet tour in “News of Dancers,” in Ballet Today (London), Apr. 1958, 16.

199 titles. For instance, she appeared in several of Fokine’s ballets. In addition to Les

Sylphides, she performed Le Spectre de La Rose, Petrouchka and Bluebeard. Also, although she apparently avoided the Spanish-themed works of Massine a few years earlier, in Ballet Theatre she ultimately danced in his Aleko and Capriccio Espagnol.

Alonso participated, too, in pieces that explored a North American style, such as Loring’s

The Great American Goof and Catherine Littlefield’s Barn Dance.302 Additionally, she worked closely with Tudor and Balanchine, cult-inspiring choreographers who shaped the careers and identities of many dancers. These two modern masters greatly influenced

the ballerina but, unlike many of her colleagues, she did not commit exclusively to either

Tudor or Balanchine. Her relationships with these two artists shed light on her determination to keep the classics at the center of her stage career.

Between 1940 and 1948, Alonso performed in Tudor’s Goyescas, Jardin aux

Lilas, Pillar of Fire, Gala Performance, Undertow, Shadow of the Wind and Romeo and

Juliet.303 According to the critic Ann Barzel, the dancer gave outstanding renditions of

the dramatic roles in these ballets. For instance, her interpretation of the Italian Ballerina

in the satirical ballet Gala Performance was so hilarious that Tudor himself, sharing the

stage with Alonso, had a hard time hiding his laughter from the audience: “Laughter was

the order of the day. There was always a great deal of laughter when Alonso danced this

role” (Barzel 2002, 34-35). At the other end of the dramatic spectrum, Alonso left strong

impressions as Ate, in Undertow. In Tudor’s choreography, Ate is a vicious temptress

who crudely flirts with a group of men in a situation that leads to her being raped. For

302 See Appendix.

303 Ibid.

200 Barzel, this was the role that “sealed Alonso’s reputation as a genius of theatrical dance.” Her “powerful and unforgettable interpretation” made Ate the most riveting role in the ballet, even though it was not the principal character (Barzel 2002, 39). In reviews of Undertow, John Martin commented that Alonso gave a “superb,” “excellently performed,” “brutally coarse and evil” portrait of Ate.304 Similarly, she made the

secondary role of the Abandoned Wife in Shadow of the Wind a central element in the

work: she “created the most memorable episode of the ballet […] Each of her gestures

was pure genius. She offered a mimetic representation of the character’s cry” (Barzel

2002, 42).

In spite of her success in these dramatic ballets, Alonso retained her identity as a

classical ballerina. She did not limit herself to the category of “dramatic dancer,” then applied to Nora Kaye and other members of Ballet Theatre who worked closely with

Tudor. David Nillo, a member of the ensemble at the time, explained that during the years of Russian domination in Ballet Theatre an aspiring ballerina such as Nora Kaye

did not have any choice but to commit to Tudor: “After Baronova and Markova came

into the company, she had no chance to move up to the leading roles [in the classics]

claimed by those two.”305 This strategy worked well for Kaye. Throughout the period of

Ballet Theatre’s “Russification,” she was able to appear in the leading roles of Tudor’s

ballets, if not in the classics. Out of her association with the choreographer, she became

the ensemble’s only American principal dancer at the time and emerged as “America’s

304 J. Martin, “New Tudor Ballet in Premiere Here,” in New York Times, Apr. 11, 1945, 18; “Ballet Presents Series of Firsts,” in New York Times, Apr. 16, 1945, 26; “Michael Kidd Wins Plaudits in Ballet,” in New York Times, Oct. 31, 1945, 30; and “Ballet Features Favorites of Past,” in New York Times, Apr. 9, 1946, 34.

305 Quoted in D. Perlmutter, Shadowplay: The Life of Antony Tudor (New York: Limelight Editions, 1995), 133.

201 dramatic ballerina assoluta” (Perlmutter 1995, 134). Alonso greatly admired the

British choreographer. In her view, Tudor was one of the most extraordinary teachers that she had. She credited him with contributing to her education as a dancer and choreographer by helping her to “clarify how to feel movement and project it in an expressive way” (A. Alonso 2000a, 132). Still, Alonso’s affinity with the choreographer and his ballets did not derail her from pursuing the classics. For her, the dramatic roles in his modern ballets were a complement, not a substitute, to the Romantic and Classical roles in her repertory. In 1948, Alonso took Kaye’s place in rehearsals toward the premiere of Agnes de Mille’s Fall River Legend. This highly theatrical ballet, in the same spirit of Tudor’s works, told the real-life story of Lizzie Borden, who in 1892 murdered her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. With Kaye ill and bedridden,

Alonso premiered the work and continued to dance in it for the rest of the season. In spite of her later acknowledgement that this was one of the most important roles of her career, at the time she resented that her casting in de Mille’s ballet and in Tudor’s works interfered with her ability to perform the nineteenth-century repertory:

They put me to do practically all the Fall Rivers, and I had to protest so they would allow me to do the classical ballets. They kept putting me only in ballets like Fall River and Undertow. They are wonderful ballets. They are masterpieces. I like them very much, but I wanted to do the classics too […] I did not prefer them [over the modern works]. I liked them both. But I didn’t want to be attached to one style. I liked to dance all the styles (A. Alonso 1977a, 17).306

Although Alonso was interested in performing these choreographers’ novel works, she would not do it at the expense of relinquishing her position as the company’s classical

ballerina. She sought a balance between classical and modern works in her repertory.

306 Emphasis in the original.

202 This balance, however, was hard to attain and she protested when her performances in the new works outnumbered her appearances in the classics.

Similarly, Alonso kept a distance from the luring figure of George Balanchine. He was one of her teachers at the School of American Ballet and, as indicated already, in

Ballet Theatre she danced in three of his works: Apollo, Waltz Academy and Theme and

Variations, the last one specially created for her in 1947. Also, Balanchine coached

Alonso in Swan Lake. The ballerina acknowledged that, through her work with this

Russian artist, she gained a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between music and movement, and that he occupied one of the first places among the choreographers who contributed to her artistic growth.307 Yet, there are no indications

that Alonso ever considered leaving Ballet Theatre to work more closely with Balanchine in his own company. At the time, it was not uncommon for dancers from Ballet Theatre to venture outside the ensemble or leave the company altogether to work for Balanchine.

That was the case with Melissa Hayden, Janet Reed, Diana Adams, Barbara Fallis, John

Taras, André Eglevsky and Jerome Robbins, among many others. Attracted by

Balanchine’s choreographic genius, a number of distinguished dancers from the Ballet

Russe de Montecarlo, such as Maria Tallchief and Patricia Wilde, joined his company too.308 It is surprising that Alonso, having enjoyed tremendous success in Balanchine’s

307 A. Alonso, “George Balanchine: el gran músico de la danza” [George Balanchine: the great musician of dance], first published as “‘Tema y variaciones’ a 40 años de su estreno” [‘Theme and Variations’ forty years after its premiere] in Cuba en el ballet vol. 6, no. 4, Oct.-Dec. 1987, 24-26, and later revised for the program notes of a gala in tribute of George Balanchine by the National Ballet of Cuba in Havana, Oct. 20, 2000, reproduced in Alonso’s Diálogos, 136-39. Additionally, see A. Alonso, “Bailar ha sido vivir,” 331, and Alicia Alonso Coaching Excerpts from Theme and Variations, VHS (New York: The George Balanchine Foundation, 1998).

308 This list of dancers was compiled through a survey of the casts that premiered works by Balanchine between 1938 and 1959, the years during which Alonso resided in the United States. The

203 Theme and Variations, never danced in the choreographer’s own ensemble. It could be that Balanchine never extended her an invitation to do so. However, in trying to understand why the Cuban ballerina never danced with the New York City Ballet, the extension of such an invitation seems to be less relevant than the fact that the company, with a repertory consisting mostly of new works by Balanchine, offered Alonso little possibility of performing the classics—during her years in the United States, the only nineteenth-century works that Balanchine produced for his ensemble were The

Nutcracker and Swan Lake (second act).309 This further indicates that, for Alonso, a

repertory where the classics were well represented and the ability to perform frequently in them were the central criteria in choosing the companies for which she danced.

The fact that Alonso charted her own course and avoided confinement to the orbits of such powerful choreographers as Tudor and Balanchine should not be overlooked. This was not an obvious career pattern for a ballerina in the 1940s and 50s.

According to Barzel, this feature set Alonso apart from her contemporaries:

The way in which she used her training and the course that she gave to her talent were the result of her own decisions. The majority of the ballerinas of international renown are the fruit of schools and promoters. Balanchine molded the style of Maria Tallchief […] Ninette de Valois and Frederic Ashton transformed the ductile and talented Peggy Hookham into the charming Margot Fonteyn. Antony Tudor noticed the possibilities of the

information is available in the choreographic catalogue of the Russian artist, in the website of the George Balanchine Foundation, http://balanchine.org/balanchine/chrontitlelist.jsp, accessed on Sep. 12, 2008. Additionally, Robert Garis addresses the exodus of these dancers to the New York City Ballet. R. Garis, Following Balanchine (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995), 126-27.

309 See the choreographic catalogue of the Russian artist in the website of the George Balanchine Foundation, http://balanchine.org/balanchine/chrontitlelist.jsp, accessed on Sep. 12, 2008.

204 young Nora Kaye and helped her to become the greatest dramatic ballerina of North America […] But Alicia Alonso set her own path.310

That path, as seen so far, was closely linked to her ambition to own the repertory

of nineteenth-century classics.

Alonso’s firmness in molding her career ultimately resulted in her departure from

Ballet Theatre in 1955, when her status as the troupe’s leading classical ballerina was put in question. In that year, a dispute erupted between Alonso and the management over issues of publicity.311 It is significant that, in recollecting the confrontation, Alonso did

not provide details about the publicity problem and stressed, instead, an argument with

Lucia Chase that revolved around her position as the company’s classicist:

The only trouble I had with [Chase] was when I left the company because I was unhappy with the publicity. But I heard that she was trying to get other dancers and pay them more money and bring them as a name. I heard [it]. Somebody told me […] I don’t know if it was true or not. But it could have been true […] She was talking to other dancers to take the classical roles and to do more things. I think it was Maria Tallchief […] When I spoke to her I said, “Why Lucia? Is there something wrong?” She said—I remember this well—, she said something like, “Well, my dear, you are not big enough. I don’t consider you as Margot.” She was referring to Margot Fonteyn (A. Alonso 1977a, 39).

In this account, the possibility of losing jurisdiction over the classics seemed more

important than the publicity issue Alonso cited as her reason to leave Ballet Theatre.

While she had shared the leading roles in nineteenth-century works with Kaye, it was

well established that Kaye was the company’s dramatic ballerina and Alonso, the

310 A. Barzel, “Tres bailarinas en la historia de la danza” [Three ballerinas in dance history], lecture delivered at the National Library, Havana, Nov. 26, 1976, published in Spanish in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 8, no. 2, May-Aug., 1977, 45.

311 Previously, in 1948, Alonso was involved in a dispute with Ballet Theatre about issues of publicity. According to Payne, the Cuban dancer requested top billing ahead of Nora Kaye in the company’s publicity. The dispute led to an impasse and delays in signing all the dancers’ contracts. As a consequence of it, Ballet Theatre did not operate for the 1948-49 season. C. Payne, American Ballet Theatre, 163-64.

205 classical. However, competition from Maria Tallchief, who had made a reputation in

Balanchine’s staging of Swan Lake and other of his classical-inspired works, would have

meant a direct challenge to the Cuban artist’s status as Ballet Theater’s classicist.312

Furthermore, the prospect that Tallchief would be paid higher fees and the insinuation that Alonso was not on a par with Margot Fonteyn, the celebrated classicists of the

Saddler’s Wells Ballet in London, directly questioned Alonso’s stature as a classical ballerina. In the end, she left Ballet Theatre, although she returned to it as a guest dancer on several occasions in the future.

On May 12, 1955, a brief note in the New York Times announced that Alonso and her dance partner Igor Youskevitch were joining the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo.313 The note specified that Alonso would be dancing with this company for only half a season every year and that she would spend the rest of her time working with her own ensemble

in Havana. For the next five years, Alonso toured with the Ballet Russe as a guest star,

frequently appearing in Giselle, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker (Barzel 2002, 45). In

Terry’s view, this was a successful period that sealed Alonso’s reputation: “her stellar

status with the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo consolidated her position as a glittering prima

ballerina” (Terry 1981, 40).

Reviews from Alonso’s last years with Ballet Theatre and from her seasons with

Ballet Russe confirmed her prominence and maturity as a performer of the nineteenth-

312 Balanchine created leading parts for Tallchief in Symphonie Concertante (1947), Symphony in C (1948), Sylvia: Pas de Deux (1950), Capriccio Brillante (1951), Swan Lake’s second act (1951, after L. Ivanov), Scotch Symphony (1952, a work reminiscent of Bournonville’s La Sylphide), The Nutcracker (1954, in which she danced the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy) and Raymonda’s Pas de Dix (1955, after M. Petipa), among other ballets. See Balanchine’s choreographic catalogue in the website of the George Balanchine Foundation, http://balanchine.org/balanchine/chrontitlelist.jsp, accessed on Sep. 12, 2008.

313 New York Times, “2 Join Ballet Russe,” May 12, 1955, 33.

206 century repertory and, in particular, Giselle. On April 15, 1955, John Martin made the following assessment in the New York Times after attending one of her performances of

Giselle with Ballet Theatre:

Miss Alonso has long been a first-rate Giselle, but with the passing of the seasons she has deepened the colors of the role, broadened its range, and found justification for all its bursts of bravura. It is not too much to say, indeed, that on this occasion she proved herself a great Giselle. In this most endearing relic of the romantic period she has captured both the vivacity and the pathos of the ideal ballerina, and has made them credible within the charming artifices of the style.314

In a review of the same performance for The New York Herald Tribune, Terry proclaimed

that Alonso was “one of the great Giselles of the time,” the owner of “an impeccable

classicism,” who danced “the entire ballet with a rich range of dramatic colors.”315 The

following year, a Giselle by Alonso and Youskevitch with the Ballet Russe attracted an

audience of sixteen thousand spectators to the Lewisohn Stadium, in New York. Selma

Jeanne Cohen said of this performance in the New York Times, “Alicia Alonso and Igor

Youskevitch gave remarkably touching portrayals in their tragic roles. Miss Alonso’s ethereal lightness was the quintessence of the spirit of nineteenth-century romantic ballet.

She looked, indeed, as if she could skim over grass without bending a blade of it […]

Technically, both of them were excellent.”316 These opinions reflected Alonso’s success

in fashioning herself into a classical star. Not only had she climbed to top positions in

Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Russes, but also she had acquired the status of a

consummate performer of the classics in the eyes of the critics. The most important

314 J. Martin, “Ballet: Bursts of Bravura,” in New York Times, Apr. 15, 1955, 20.

315 W. Terry, “The Ballet Theatre,” in New York Herald Tribune, Apr. 15, 1955, reprinted in W. Terry, I Was There: Selected Dance Reviews and Articles, 1936-1976 (New York: Dekker, 1978), 295.

316 S. J. Cohen, “Dance: Stadium Visit: Ballet Russe Is Seen to Disadvantage,” in New York Times, June 25, 1956, 19.

207 voices of American dance criticism agreed that Alonso excelled in all elements of the

role of Giselle: her dramatic characterization showed depth and nuance, her technique

displayed feats of bravura and her dancing offered a thorough embodiment of the

Romantic style.

Since 1948, Alonso had split her time between her international career and her work in Havana. With the inception of the Ballet Alicia Alonso, the opportunities for the dancer to perform nineteenth-century works multiplied. These ballets were well represented in the ensemble’s repertory, which also included twentieth-century works that recreated the Romantic and Classical styles. Between 1948 and 1956, the company’s repertory grew to include full productions of La fille mal gardée, Giselle, Coppélia, Swan

Lake and The Nutcracker, as well as excerpts from Sleeping Beauty (third act) and Don

Quixote (third act’s pas de deux). Among the neo-Romantic works were Fokine’s Les

Sylphides and Keith Lester and Anton Dolin’s Pas de Quatre, and among the neo-

Classical ones, Alberto Alonso’s Concerto, Alicia Alonso’s Ensayo sinfónico and José

Parés’s Un concierto en blanco y negro.317 Souvenir programs of the seasons 1948-49,

1949-50 and 1950-51 held in the New York Public Library show that these works

received frequent performances in Havana and other Latin American cities.318 Although

the Library’s collection of programs does not chronicle all the appearances of the

company during these seasons, it offers a picture of how roles were distributed among the ballerinas in the ensemble. Alonso occasionally appeared in works of recent creation such

317 See the company’s repertory from 1948 to 1998 in M. Cabrera, El Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria (Havana: Ediciones Cuba en el Ballet, 1998), 72-109.

318 Programs catalogued as “Ballet Alicia Alonso [Programs],” and “Ballet Alicia Alonso [Souvenir program, 1949-50]” in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

208 as her own Ensayos Sinfónicos, Enrique Martínez’s Fiesta, and Alberto Alonso’s

Concerto, Sombras and La Valse. However, the titles that she danced with more regularity were Giselle, the third act of Sleeping Beauty, the second act and the Black

Swan pas de deux of Swan Lake, and the pas de deux of The Nutcracker and Don

Quixote. Judging from the programs, Alonso was not likely to share these ballets with the other female soloists of the groups, except for a few exceptions.319 Those dancers were

more like to appear in twentieth-century works. They performed leading parts in Fokine’s

Les Sylphides, Petroushka and Prince Igor, Balanchine’s Apollo, Adolf Bolm’s Peter and

the Wolf and Dolin and Lester’s Pas de Quatre. The casting for the Ballet Alicia Alonso’s

season at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Theatre in Mexico City, in 1950, was a case in point

illustrating this situation. Three programs corresponding to presentations on May 8

(evening) and May 17 (matinee and evening) show that Alonso danced the classical ballerina roles consistently. She appeared in Swan Lake’s second act and in the pas de deux of Don Quixote, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, as well as in Concerto. In the

meanwhile, Barbara Fallis, Paula Lloyd, Dulce Wohner, Carlota Pereyra and Edith

Brozak alternated in Pas de Quatre, Petroushka and Concerto, without any of them

assuming nineteenth-century title roles.320 In sum, the Ballet Alicia Alonso was a vehicle

for the Cuban ballerina to further her profile as a classicist.

319 Barbara Fallis danced the pas de deux of The Nutcracker on October 28, 1949, at the Casino Theatre in Buenos Aires. Nora Kaye starred in a performance of Giselle on March 14, 1951, at the Auditorium Theatre in Havana. Carlota Pereyra danced the pas de deux of Don Quixote on July 29, 1951, at the Tapia Theatre in San Juan.

320 On May 8, the evening started with Alberto Alonso’s Concerto, featuring Alicia Alonso and Royes Fernandez in the leading parts. The show continued with Pas de Quatre, with Barbara Fallis, Paula Lloyd, Dulce Wohner and Edith Brozak. The closing section consisted of Swan Lake’s second act, with Alonso and Michael Maule as Odette and Prince Siegfried. On May 17, Fallis led the cast in Concerto, while Alonso danced the pas de deux of The Nutcracker and the role of Princess Aurora in Sleeping

209 After 1959, Alonso’s affiliation with the regime of Fidel Castro meant that she stopped all long-term engagements with foreign companies and that her own troupe, renamed the National Ballet of Cuba, became her permanent base. The versatility that she had shown in Ballet Theatre, where she danced in both classics and modern ballets, marked her stage work with the National Ballet of Cuba as well. Between 1960 and 1995, when she retired from the stage, she added fifty-four roles to her repertory, most of them in new ballets by Cuban choreographers, including some of her own.321 At the same time,

Alonso continued dancing her signature repertory of classics, both in Cuba and in the

international tours that took the ensemble to Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, Latin

America, Asia and the United States. She was also invited to dance as a guest artist in

Giselle with Les Grand Ballets Canadiens (1967), the Royal Danish Ballet (1969), the

Paris Opera (1972), and the American Ballet Theatre (1977), among other troupes.322 In the 1960s, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry documented her superb performances of the classics. She was featured in a filmed version of Giselle

(1963), dancing with the Russian dancer Azari Plisetski and the National Ballet of Cuba.

Additionally, in 1968 the films Alicia and Historia de tres ballets (History of three ballets) showed the forty-eight-year-old ballerina in excerpts of the nineteenth-century repertory, including the extremely difficult Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake, of

Beauty’s third act, with Maule as her partner in both titles. Later in that same day, a second presentation of the company included Pas de Quatre, with Fallis, Wohner, Pereyra and Brozak, the pas de deux of Don Quixote with Alonso and Maule, and Petroushka with Lloyd. 321 See Appendix.

322 See the chronology of Alonso’s involvement with Giselle in Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Alicia Alonso, Giselle (Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de La Habana, 1993).

210 which she offered a masterful performance, and fragments from Coppélia, La Fille

Mal Gardée and Don Quixote.323

The classics retained a special place in Alonso’s work even as she aged and,

experiencing serious eyesight limitations, found it more difficult to meet the technical

demands of this repertory. While moving into old age, Alonso focused her energies on

remaining active in Giselle and Swan Lake for as long as she could.324 Outside Cuba, the

ballerina’s last complete performance of Giselle took place in Istanbul, Turkey, on June

22, 1983. In that same year, on December 24, at age sixty-three, she danced the ballet in

full for the last time in Cuba, coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of her debut in the

title role. Yet, Alonso performed excerpts from these works for the next ten years,

prolonging her commitment to the classics beyond all expectations. In 1984, during

presentations of the National Ballet of Cuba in London (May 10), Liverpool (May 19)

and Buenos Aires (June 27), she appeared in just the second act of Giselle. In other instances, she merely danced fragments of the pas de deux of the second act. That was the case in the gala celebrating the one hundred years of the Metropolitan Opera House in

New York (May 13, 1984) and in the 11th International Ballet Festival of Havana

323 The excerpts from Coppélia, Swan Lake, La Fille Mal Gardée and Don Quixote included in these two films, plus Alberto Alonso’s Carmen, were reissued in Alicia Alonso: Prima Ballerina Assoluta, DVD (New York: VAI, 2005).

324 Additionally, in her sixties and early seventies Alonso often danced works suited to her decreasing physical skills and accentuated blindness. Among the ballets in which the author saw Alonso during this period were Renato Magalhaes’s Devaneo (1985, Fling); Iván Monreal’s Lances (1992); Alberto Méndez’s La Diva (1982, The diva), La viuda alegre (1986, The Merry Widow), Poema del amor y del mar (1990, Poem of love and the sea) and In the Middle of the Sunset (1995); and Alonso’s own Dido Abandonada (1988, Abandoned Dido), Sinfonía de Gottschalk (1990, Gottschalk’s Symphony), Retrato de un vals (1990, Portrait of a waltz), Juana, razón y amor (1993, Juana, reason and love), Cleopatra eterna (1994, Eternal Cleopatra), and Farfalla (1995, Butterfly). She also appeared in Las cuatro estaciones (1993, The Four Seasons), co-choreographed by Iván Tenorio, Alberto Méndez, Gustavo Herrera and herself. See Appendix.

211 (November 10, 1988).325 Finally, her last appearances in Giselle and Swan Lake took place at the Havana Grand Theatre in 1993, during a season in tribute of the fifty years of her debut as Giselle and the forty-fifth anniversary of the National Ballet of Cuba: she danced the adagio of the pas de deux of Swan Lake’s second act (October 29) and a scene of the pas de deux of Giselle’s second act (November 2).326 At this point, she was

seventy-three years old.

Alonso found other ways of remaining connected to the balletic legacy of the

nineteenth century. For instance, she collaborated with the Cuban choreographer Alberto

Méndez in the recreation of two lost works from the Romantic period. The result was the

reconstruction of duets from La Péri in 1976 and Robert le diable in 1980. Both works,

icons of the Romantic period, were originally produced by the Paris Opera. The dance

scene in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le diable (1831) marked a seminal moment

in Romantic ballet. Choreographed by Filippo Taglioni for his daughter, Marie Taglioni,

the scene introduced the use of the calf-length tutu of white tarlatane, defining the

vaporous image of the Romantic ballerinas. This was also one of the earliest occasions on

which women danced en pointe to create the illusion of floating.327 Meanwhile, La Péri

(1843) had historical significance of its own as an attempt to repeat the success of Giselle

by bringing together three of this ballet’s creators: the librettist Théophile Gautier, the

325 Dates obtained from F. Rey, “Giselle y Cuba: algunos momentos” [Giselle and Cuba: some moments], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 3, no. 1, Jan.-Mar., 1992, 32-36.

326 The author witnessed these two performances. The programs of the season celebrating the fifty years of the National Ballet of Cuba are reproduced in F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: Órbita de una Leyenda, 183-94.

327 See M. Kant, “The Soul of the Shoe,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. M. Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), 188.

212 choreographer Jean Coralli and the dancer Carlotta Grisi.328 Méndez’s recreations of

these works provided Alonso with a vehicle to display her mastery of the Romantic style

in choreography suited to her physical abilities at the time. The choreography was not as strenuous as in most Romantic ballets. It omitted any big leaps, complex turns and high leg extensions. Still, these two works were rich in steps in which Alonso could show some elements of her virtuoso technique that, astonishingly, were still intact in spite of her advanced age and eyesight problems. Video recordings of the ballerina in Robert le diable and La Péri, from 1980 and 1985 respectively, show her frequent and prolonged balances en pointe, the complexity and exquisite filigree of her pas de bourrée and the fast, crisp beating of her feet in cascades of small jumps. Alonso also displayed her substantive knowledge of the Romantic style through her play with the head, torso and arms, as well as in her rendition of pantomimic passages.329

Alonso’s work as a restager of the classics contributed yet another dimension to her involvement with this repertory. She projected her identity as a classicist on her own troupe, using her expertise in the Romantic and Classical styles to educate the dancers

under her leadership on the performance of the nineteenth-century works. Already in the

first season of the ensemble, in 1948, the ballerina assumed the task of restaging Giselle

and the third act of Sleeping Beauty. Similarly, in 1952 she claimed credit for

choreographing La fille mal gardée. In its early years, the group also incorporated

328 S. Au, “Péri, La,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen, accessed online through Temple University’s Library, Sep. 28, 2008.

329 A description of the features of the Romantic style, in Alonso’s words, follows in the next pages. The videorecording of Robert le diable, performed in the gala “The Romantic Era” during the International Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1980, is part of The Romantic Era, VHS (ABC Video Enterprises, 1980). La Péri, videorecorded in Cuba in 1985, is part of the DVD Alicia Alonso, Prima Ballerina Assoluta.

213 productions of the classics restaged by other choreographers. In 1948, Leon Fokine set Coppélia. A version of Don Quixote’s pas de deux, added in 1950, was attributed to

Anatole Oboukhov. Meanshile, Mary Skeaping, Charles Dickson and Fernando Alonso shared the credit for producing The Nutcracker in 1953. One year later the company presented Swan Lake in a staging by Skeaping.330 Over the next decades, however,

Alonso replaced these choreographers’ stagings with her owns, with the result that all major productions of the Romantic and Classical works in the National Ballet of Cuba have, ever since, been attributed to her.

The version of the The Nutcracker by Skeaping, Dickson and Fernando Alonso did not stay in the repertory for too long. The company continued to dance, instead, excerpts from this classic staged by Alicia Alonso—the pas de deux of the second act,

1950; the scene of the Snowflakes, 1973; and the Waltz of the Flowers, 1996—until she produced a new full version of the ballet for the Cuban company and the ensembles of the

Carlo Felipe Theatre in Naples and the La Fenice Theatre in Venice in 1998.331 Another work that Alonso expanded from excerpts to a full production was Sleeping Beauty. After dancing only its third act for many years, the Cuban troupe presented the ballet in its

330 These productions’ credits and dates are taken from Cabrera’s chronological list of the National Ballet of Cuba’s repertory. It is necessary to clarify that, in the case of La Fille Mal Gardée, the restaging was not based on the original choreography, although the credit of the Cuban production indicates that the choreography is “based upon Jean Dauberval’s original.” Dauberval’s choreography from 1789 is considered lost. As John Chapman observes, since the nineteenth century many choreographers have created productions of the ballet that only resemble the original in the narrative and, in some cases, the music. M. Cabrera, El Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 73-75; J. Chapman, “Fille Mal Gardée, La,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen, accessed online through Temple University’s Library, Sep. 21, 2008.

331 The choreographic catalogue of the National Ballet of Cuba shows that excerpts from The Nutcracker staged by Alberto Méndez were also part of the troupe’s repertory—a suite of dances from the second act, from 1978, and the Dance of the Chocolate, from 1992. M. Cabrera, El Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 74-75, 84, 104, 107. Also, see the notes on The Nutcracker in the website of the National Ballet of Cuba, http://www.balletcuba.cult.cu/repertorio/cascanueces.html, accessed on Sep. 22, 2008.

214 integrity in 1974.332 Alonso also participated in the staging of a full version of Don

Quixote for the National Ballet of Cuba in 1988. This version was unusual in that three dancers shared the credit for the production: María Elena Llorente, Marta García and

Karemia Moreno. Still, it seems that Alonso closely supervised the production, given that she was listed as its “artistic and choreographic director” (Cabrera 1998, 98-99). She was also credited, in specific, for the staging of the third act’s pas de deux of this Don Quixote

(Rey and Simón 1996, 62). Meanwhile, her adaptations of Coppélia and Swan Lake

developed progressively. The program notes for performances of Coppélia by the

National Ballet of Cuba in 1999, acknowledged, “An exact date cannot be determined for

when Alicia Alonso’s choreographic version of Coppélia came definitively into being. It

never received an official premiere given that it was the result of slow and continuous

work undertaken over the years in parallel to the ballet’s stage life.”333 Similarly, a

program for performances of Swan Lake in 2002 explained that, soon after the company

presented Skeaping’s production in 1954, Alonso started “careful work on the

choreography, style and dramaturgy of Swan Lake,” in what was “a long process of

distillation and immersion that spanned over several decades.”334

332 Ballet Nacional de Cuba, VI Reunión de Ministros de Cultura de Países Socialistas [6th Meeting of Ministers of Culture from Socialist Countries], souvenir program for the premiere of Alicia Alonso’s production of Sleeping Beauty, Havana, May 15, 1974.

333 The program notes identify important moments in the development of Alonso’s conception of Coppélia, such as her staging of the ballet in 1957 at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, her major revisions of the work for the National Ballet of Cuba in 1967, and her staging for the Bellas Artes Ballet in Mexico in 1976. Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Coppélia, ballet en tres actos [Coppélia, ballet in three acts], souvenir program, Havana, Jun. 12 and 13, 1999, 8.

334 Ballet Nacional de Cuba, El lago de los cisnes [Swan Lake], souvenir program, Havana, Oct.- Nov., 2002, 8. An earlier program details that two important landmarks in the progression of Alonso’s revisions of Swan Lake were the stagings of the ballet for the National Ballet of Cuba in 1965 and 1979. Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 12. Festival Internacional de Ballet, 1990, El lago de los cisnes [12th

215 As new generations of Cuban dancers developed, Alonso increasingly started to share the leading roles in the classics with the younger ballerinas that she trained. In the 1970s, she stopped casting herself in new productions of the classics. The program for the company’s premiere of the full version of Sleeping Beauty shows that the role of

Princess Aurora went to Josefina Méndez, Mirta Plá and Marta García (Ballet Nacional de Cuba 1974, 7). Neither did Alonso dance in excerpts of Romantic and Classical works that the company added to its repertory in that decade and the following ones. Among the new additions were excerpts from Bournonville’s La Sylphide, Napoli, La Ventana and

Flower Festival in Genzano; Saint-Léon’s La Vivandière and Petipa’s Raymonda,

Paquita and La Bayadère.335 Learning and performing the ballerina parts in these titles

was beyond Alonso’s physical abilities by the time the National Ballet of Cuba

incorporated this group of works. The fact that she went on enlarging the company’s

Romantic and Classical repertory, in spite of not dancing in the new productions, marked

a transition between roles in her identity as a classicist: from a ballerina who gave

outstanding performances of the nineteenth-century masterpieces and reserved primacy in

their title roles for herself, to a choreographer who developed her own stagings of these

International Ballet Festival of Havana, 1990, Swan Lake], souvenir program, Havana, Nov. 5, 6, and 7, 1990.

335 These and other related titles entered the repertory of the National Ballet of Cuba in the following years: pas de deux from Raymonda and La Bayadère, 1970; pas de deux of Diana and Actaeon from Esmeralda (choreography by Agrippina Vaganova as an addition to Jules Perrot’s original ballet), 1977; the scene of the Kingdom of the Shadows from La Bayadère, 1981; grand pas from Paquita, 1984; grand pas from La Sylphide and grand pas from Raymonda, 1985; pas de trois from La Ventana, 1991; pas de trois from Paquita, 1992; pas de deux from Nathalie ou La Laitière Suisse (reconstructed by Pierre Lacotte after Filippo Taglioni’s original), 1992; ballabile from Napoli and grand pas from La Vivandière, 1995. Additionally, the company staged La Sylphide, in its integrity, in 1994. M. Cabrera, El Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 72-109.

216 ballets, to an artistic director who encouraged the presentation and preservation of this legacy by the younger generations of dancers under her guidance.

In parallel to the transition that led her from being primarily a performer of the classics to assuming the staging of these works and passing her knowledge of them to other dancers, Alonso became an active writer and speaker giving numerous interviews, participating in many public forums and authoring her own articles. In the 1980s, after four decades of accumulated experience as a dancer, choreographer and educator, she started to spend more time chronicling the events of her career and expressing a body of knowledge and personal opinions. She often addressed her involvement with the classics and engaged with this repertory in a discursive way. Her frequent discussion of these works operated as a narrative through which she articulated her identity as a classicist.

The rest of this chapter looks at specific ways in which Alonso formulated such narrative.

Narrative theories advanced by philosophers, psychologists and literary critics provide a framework through which to look at Alonso’s formulation of her identity.

These theories propose that identity is not a preexisting, fixed or objective essence but an entity that emerges in the stories that are part of an individual’s processes of self- representation and social interaction. Jerome Bruner summed up this position when he said that “it is through narrative that we create and re-create selfhood,” and that “[the]

self is a product of our telling and not some essence to be delved for in the recesses of

subjectivity.”336 For the purpose of studying identity, narratives are relevant not just

because of the information and anecdotal material that they contain, but also because of

the insights that they provide on how individuals see themselves or expect to be seen by

336 J. Bruner, Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), 85-86.

217 others. As explained by George Ronsewald and Richard Ochberg, the narrator’s self- assigned role in the story, point of view in recounting the events and editorial choices in constructing a narrative are among the elements that make stories particularly insightful:

How individuals recount their histories—what they emphasize and omit, their stance as protagonist or victims, the relationship the story establishes between teller and audience—all shape what individuals can claim of their own lives. Personal stories are not merely a way of telling someone (or oneself) about one’s life; they are the means by which identities may be fashioned. It is this formative—and sometimes deformative—power of life stories that makes them important.337

The recognition that individuals exert control on their narratives and that they choose to

shape them and deliver them in the context of specific situations, with the purpose of

producing certain effects, led linguist Wendy Patterson to coin the concept of strategic

narratives:

Narrative, or specific narratives, can be described as strategic. This takes narrative theorizing and analysis beyond the notion that narrative is simply a text, a representation, a form, a function, a mode, a model, or a code and opens up ways of thinking about narrative as action, having real and far- reaching effects and implications for the self and the world.338

It is in this light that the following sections look at Alonso’s enunciation of her identity as

a classicist. Through a narrative in which she made strategic use of self-portraits,

genealogies, geopolitical maps and ritualized tribute galas, she established classicism as a

determinant force in both her artistic persona and the identity of the Cuban ballet.

The body of texts that constitute Alonso’s literary production is a mixture of essays, interviews, assorted writings, and transcripts of documentaries, speeches and other public appearances. Alonso delivered these texts to meet different situations, such

337 G. C. Rosenwald and R. L. Ochberg, ed., Storied Lives, The Cultural Politics of Self- Understanding (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992), 1.

338 Strategic Narrative, ed. W. Patterson, 1.

218 as expressing her acceptance of awards, answering the questions of journalists or communicating with her spectators through program notes—to name just a few examples.

For the most part, Alonso’s texts are dispersed, except for those grouped in her book

Diálogos con la danza (Dialogues with dance, 2004). Because of these circumstances, they do not correspond to a narrative in a strict literary sense, if one considers a narrative to be a mode of storytelling. The ballerina’s narrative is rather pieced together from the

stories, anecdotes, recollections, judgments and personal views in different texts.

Regardless of this, these documents embed a consistent account of her identity as a

classicist. Moreover, her narrative, as understood here, is not restricted to literary texts.

The breadth of documents analyzed below includes items such as photographs of the

dancer and charts of her artistic genealogy. The study of the narrative articulation of

Alonso’s identity is also taken beyond her first-person accounts to include institutional

representations of her artistic persona, produced by the National Ballet of Cuba and the

magazine Cuba en el ballet, that were part of the collective discourse of the Cuban ballet.

Self-portrait: Custodian of the Romantic and Classical Styles

Among the reasons that Alonso cited to continue to dance excerpts from Giselle

and Swan Lake until she was seventy-five years old was her motivation to display her

command of the Romantic and Classical styles. Asked about it, the ballerina responded,

“I felt the responsibility of passing on my knowledge. I was conscious that I was teaching

a lesson” (A. Alonso 2000b, 333). However, her efforts to share this knowledge did not

take place solely on the stage: Alonso discussed the need to keep certain ballet styles

219 alive in essays, interviews and documentaries dating back to the 1980s. These texts offer an insight into how Alonso portrayed herself as a custodian of the Romantic and

Classical styles, developing a narrative that elaborated on her stage work to cement her status as an authority on the classics. Her discourse on the nineteenth-century ballet styles was instrumental in bringing the classicist side of her artistic persona into focus. In this regard, she exemplified how “it is through narrative that we create and re-create selfhood” (Bruner 2002, 85).

In an interview from 1980, Alonso explained that she focused on three areas in her preparatory work to perform a ballet. One area was the honing of the bodily skills

needed to execute the steps correctly. Another one was the dramaturgical exploration of

her character’s actions, emotions and psychological profile. As important as these two

was the study of the style of the ballet, which Alonso loosely defined as “a way of

collocating the arms or placing the body as a whole.”339 She elaborated on how she

approached this stylistic inquiry, providing examples of the different ways of shaping the

arms: “Maybe the arms could be more elongated. Or maybe the wrists could reach high, which, more or less, is typical of Romanticism. Or the arms can be very stretched, always

aiming for long lines, a characteristic of the modern ballet. This is the study of the styles”

(A. Alonso 1980, 215). If this particular explanation of what constitutes a style was rather

schematic, she hinted at the depth of the concept when she clarified that there are the

styles associated with certain periods, such as Romanticism, and, within each period, the

styles specific to individual choreographers.

339 A. Alonso, “Buscarle una historia al propio movimiento” [Searching for a story in movement itself], interview by O. Taquechel, in Bohemia (Havana), Oct. 31, 1980, 10-13, reprinted in Diálogos, 214- 23.

220 Alonso’s description of the Romantic style in her essay “El ballet romántico”

(The Romantic ballet, 1981) reflected, in a more detailed manner, her profound understanding of the many elements that inform a style:

Dancing en pointe and conveying the sensation of floating are not the only elements determining the style of Romanticism. It takes into account, too, a compound of other elements, such as the specific ways of placing the body, the arms and the head, and, in general, a very peculiar way of using the technique. In the Romantic style, the steps may be academic but the intention and the accent are markedly different if compared to the Classical and Neoclassical academicism—later styles in which the steps are performed in all their plenitude, with an accent on their dynamism, strength and development. In the Romantic style, technique is displayed in a different way, without the intention of virtuosity so popular since the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century. Within the Romantic style, virtuosity is achieved in an absolutely different manner, always subordinated to a sense of lyricism, unreality and elevation […] The power of Romanticism, the uniqueness of its style, lies in the creation of an emotive image beyond human physicality, transcendent of the corporeal and the conventional.340

Period lithographs show Romantic ballerinas standing en pointe with the torso and the

head tilted forward, the shoulders pressed down and the arms shaped in rounded, open

ports de bras.341 To ballet specialists, this posture is instantly recognizable as Romantic.

Yet, in her essay Alonso insisted that there is more to the Romantic style than holding the

body in this particular placement and offering an ethereal image. She established

connections between style, technique and aesthetics, and described the kinetic effects of

these connections, in terms of bodily projection and accentuation of movement. Her

attempt to conceptualize the styles in ballet involved a historical analysis: she weighed

340 Cuban dancers and dance critics often use the term “Neoclassical” to refer to the technique and style of Balanchine and the choreographers who followed in his footsteps. A. Alonso, “El ballet romántico,” La era romántica [The Romantic era] (Mexico: Festival Internacional Cervantino-Salvat Mexicana de Ediciones, 1981), 11-12, reprinted in Diálogos, 84-86.

341 See reproductions of lithographs by Alfred Chalon, Pierre-Louis Grévedon, Achille Devéria, Joseph Bouvier and other artists in Great Ballet Prints of the Romantic Era, ed. P. Migel (New York: Dover Publications, 1981).

221 how the aesthetics of ballet evolved through history and considered how the artist and audiences of each era valued specific elements, such as spiritual transcendence and technical virtuosity.

Alonso insisted on the link between style and other elements of a dance performance in her article “Danza e interpretación teatral” (Dance and theatrical interpretation, 2001):

What is the relationship between technique and style, or between technique and dramatic intention? The great ballet styles—Romanticism, Classicism and Neoclassicism—were anchored in the development of the technique in each of these time periods and, at the same time, they conditioned and determined to a high degree the pathways for the development of the technique. Simultaneously, dramatic intention must be concomitant of the technique, spring from it and use it in service of the character and its profile.342

This view, which formulated style, technique and dramatic intention as a triad of

interrelating elements, was consistent with the ballerina’s preparation for performing as a

process that addressed all three areas.

Alonso’s interest in the subject of the styles was emblematic of her position as an

authority on nineteenth-century ballet. In the performing arts, knowledge of the subtleties

of style connote the highest level of sophistication that performers achieve when they

specialize in a repertory, composer or period—as in the case of actors who are authorities

on the performance of Shakespearean dramas, dance scholars who reconstruct Baroque

choreography and musicians who concentrate on Renaissance performance practices, to

name just a few examples. In keeping with her role as such an authority, not only did

Alonso undertake the task of illuminating the differences between certain ballet styles,

342 A. Alonso, “Danza e interpretación teatral,” in ADE Teatro (Madrid), no. 87, Sep.-Oct., 2001, 170-71, reprinted in Diálogos, 89-91.

222 but also she criticized dancers who blurred stylistic distinctions, holding them responsible for eroding the nineteenth-century ballet legacy. In 1995, when the National

Ballet of Cuba participated in the festival “United We Dance” in San Francisco, Alonso was asked to contribute an essay to the souvenir program in which she expressed her views on the state of classicism.343 In response to this request, she voiced her concerns

about “what would happen to ballet classicism in the twenty-first century.” She discussed

classicism as a late-nineteenth-century style and linked the deterioration of this legacy to

what she saw as alarming trends in the international ballet community: cultivation of

virtuoso technique at the expense of artistry, standardization of bodily types and lack of

depth in dramatic characterization.

The overemphasis on technique and the erasure or confusion of the styles can cause great damage to classical ballet […] There is a tendency to dance everything in the same way: displaying brilliant techniques, splendid bodies and beautiful lines, but little or no mastery of the styles. At the same time, there are not many figures able to use their dancing to delineate theatrical characters in accordance with the ballets that they perform. The result is a dance spectacle that may be beautiful in appearance but that does not convey deep emotions or constitute a transcendent aesthetic experience. This can make the traditional repertory look more superficial and unjustified every day, and produce dancers who are more athletes than artists.344

This was not the first time that Alonso expressed preoccupation about what she

saw as the progressive disappearance of stylistic distinctions in the performances of

younger generations of dancers. The interviews that she conceded for Terry’s book Alicia

and her Ballet Nacional de Cuba (1981) contained earlier statements in this regard. In

343 The Festival “United We Dance” took place at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House between May 5 and 9, 1995. It commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the inception of the United Nations in that city.

344 The text, presumably published in English in the souvenir program of “United We Dance,” appeared in a Spanish translation in Cuba en el Ballet that same year. See A. Alonso, “El clasicismo hoy y mañana” [Classicism today and tomorrow], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 6, no. 1-3, 1995, 15.

223 one of them, Alonso criticized the dancers of the Paris Opera for their incorrect use of certain stylistic elements:

How could anyone think for an instant that Aurora, Giselle and Swanilda [respective main characters of Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and Coppélia] move alike? And yet so many young dancers, even ballerinas, make no distinction in the way they do the classical steps, in the movements, in the gestures in these ballets. This is something that worries me profoundly […] In Paris, when I was engaged to stage Giselle, the dancers’ arms were all right out of Swan Lake! I know perfectly well that the Soviet dancers have gorgeous arms when they do Swan Lake and that for a while there was a tendency to imitate whatever they did, but that is no reason to put a good imitation in the wrong place! But all young dancers are susceptible to fads, and they go on with them without knowing why. We, as teachers and older, more experienced dancers, must take care that our heritage is clear and that we pass knowledge, not fads, to the next generation. It is one thing to do Giselle and quite another thing to do Swan Lake. Coppélia demands its own highly individual approach, and Nutcracker, for example, is wholly different in style and accent and characterization from the other three (Terry 1981, 74).

The same argument found its way into the documentary Giselle eres tú (You are Giselle,

1988), in which Alonso expressed once more her concern that dancer of all ranks,

including top ballerinas in respected ballet companies, “dance very well but have no idea

of what the styles are.” Both as a spectator of ballet performances and as a judge in

international ballet competitions, she noticed that dancers blurred the ballet repertory by

diluting the “different stylistic tonalities” of works such as Swan Lake, Giselle and

Coppélia. She warned that this problem put “these ballets in great danger, especially

Giselle, since one of its great values is featuring the Romantic style.” Thus, she called for

dancers, régisseurs, choreographers and company directors to correct this situation.345

345 Giselle eres tú, VHS, directed by R. Ferguson (Havana: Televisión Educativa, 1988). Excerpts of the documentary are available under the heading “Reflexiones de Alicia Alonso sobre Giselle” [Alicia Alonso’s reflections on Giselle] in Alicia Alonso: “Giselle,” la Leyenda [Alicia Alonso: Giselle, the legend], DVD, vol. 1 (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores de España, 2005).

224 To illustrate the stylistic diversity within the nineteenth-century repertory,

Alonso compared the pas de deux from The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty.346 Both

ballets originated in the Maryinsky Theatre, in St. Petersburg: Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty in

1890 and Ivanov’s Nutcracker in 1892. Acknowledging that they belong to the same

period and geographical location, Alonso categorized them as exemplars of the Russian

Classical style. Still, she contended that each work features a style of its own. She

observed that the characters, the narratives and the settings of both ballets correspond

with fantasy worlds, but drew attention to the differences between the fictional

environments depicted in each title. In Sleeping Beauty, conceived as a tribute to the

ballet spectacles of the court of Louis XIV, fictional characters like Princess Aurora and

Prince Désiré are representations of real European royal figures like the Sun King and his

courtiers, even if in a loose, imaginative way.347 Meanwhile, the Sugarplum Fairy and the

Nutcracker Prince in The Nutcracker live in a pure fantasy world. Their duet takes place

in the Land of the Candies, as dreamed by Clara, a little girl. With this distinction in

mind, Alonso gave advice on how dancers should embody these characters and approach

the choreography. In the case of Aurora and Désiré, she prescribed, “movement possesses

the elegance typical of a court setting; the tone of the movement is more ‘human’; the

mechanics of the academic technique are more conscious and accented.” The two royal

characters strive “for elegance, for a beautiful line, for noble and aristocratic gestures.” In

346 A. Alonso, “La quitaesencia de la fantasía” [The quintessence of fantasy], in Diálogos, 146-50. A footnote in the article indicates that it reunited Alonso’s “earlier reflections on The Nutcracker.” The article is dated 2000, but the footnote indicates that the text was published for the first time, “in its current form,” in the 2004 edition of Diálogos.

347 For an in-depth discussion of Sleeping Beauty’s references to Louis XIV, including Petipa’s choreographic archaisms inspired by Baroque dance, see T. Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine, Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet (London: Routledge, 1994), 22, 23, 27-32.

225 contrast to this, the dreamed world of The Nutcracker calls for qualities in the dance that emphasize the unreality of the characters and their environment. In Alonso’s view,

“even if [the Nutcracker’s pas de deux] is a Classical duet, at all times the dance expresses certain resplendent romanticism. There is a glimmering gentleness in its

Classical sobriety.” She related the style of dancing to the specific nature of the

characters. In her opinion, the dance for the Sugarplum Fairy “must be light, aerial, of

great delicacy, with the accents very clearly upward.” She suggested that the sensation

must be similar to that in Romantic ballets, as in the second act of Giselle. This effect, however, “must be achieved using the ballet technique in the specific way required in the

Classical style.” In turn, she described the Nutcracker Prince, who in the ballet leads an army of tin can soldiers, as a “fantasy military officer,” and a “prince that, without stopping from being Classical, features a certain demicaractère tone.” The term

“demicaractère” refers to choreography that, although assembled with academic steps, is not purely classical as it may contain elements from folk dances such as czardas and mazurkas, or, in this case, vestiges of military movements. Alonso’s use of the term, in the case of the Nutcracker Prince, conveys that his identity is not that of the archetypical palatial prince, as Sleeping Beauty’s Désiré, but of a military officer. Accordingly, she called for “a certain martial air in his poses,” as well as for “more marked and cutting” musical accents in his movements (A. Alonso 2004b, 148-49).

In a comparison of the same sort between the main characters in Sleeping Beauty and Giselle, Alonso further illuminated her conception of the style in the role of Aurora:

She is delicate but not fragile [in contrast to Giselle, who suffers from a heart condition]. She doesn’t come from a farm, a village [like Giselle, who is a peasant]. She’s from a palace and she’s very elegant. She is first

226 of all a princess. A princess of this sort is in my mind a very pure child, and we meet her at the moment when she wakes up to life! So, of all these ballet heroines, Aurora, a princess in a palace, should be danced in the most correct academic style. The arms, especially, must adhere to the very elegant rules of deportment, of port de bras, and an aura of purity must touch everything she does” (Terry 2001, 74).348

These stylistic prescriptions for Aurora, Desiré, the Sugarplum Fairy and the

Nutcracker Prince were consequent with Alonso’s view that style is integrally related to

technique and dramaturgy. In considering the style of each work, she delved into an

analysis of how the narrative and the specificities of the characters determined stylistic

elements such as the emphasis on certain bodily parts, the intentionality and quality in the

use of technique, the approach to movement phrasing and the sensations that the

performers should strive for in their interpretations. By paying attention to these

subtleties, Alonso conferred a specific tone to each of these ballets, even though they

were choreographed with the same technical vocabulary. Instead of placing Sleeping

Beauty and The Nutcracker within the same group, as exemplars of the Russian

Classicism, she looked at these ballets as individual entities.

Out of Alonso’s reiteration of these ideas emerged a picture of the ballerina as a

concerned custodian of the legacy of nineteenth-century styles. To a large degree, this

picture was a self-portrait. Alonso set her own restagings of the classics as examples of

how to use stylistic distinction to keep these historical pieces alive in all their richness.

She proposed that her productions of these works constituted repositories of historical styles. For instance, referring to her staging of the The Nutcracker, she wrote, “I have conceived this choreographic production with the highest degree of fidelity to the work’s

348 Italics in the original. The quote is part of a larger comparison between, on the one hand, Giselle and, on the other hand, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia and Swan Lake.

227 original style as established by Lev Ivanov—who contributed his own nuances to

Marius Petipa’s heritage. Also, I have respected what without doubt belongs to the original choreography” (A. Alonso 2004b, 146). Furthermore, she asserted the value of her production by directly comparing it to other versions: “Presently, one can see different stagings of it [the pas de deux of the Sugarplum Fairy and the Nutcracker

Prince], not always fortunate in their stylistic and choreographic conception, and every day farther from the original” (Ibidem, 147). It is clear in these observations that Alonso regarded the connection to Ivanov’s original choreography as an important criterion in judging productions of The Nutcracker. Claiming the “highest degree of fidelity” for her own staging, she dismissed other productions that were “farther from the original.” Issues of authenticity, artistic heritage and membership in ballet genealogies were part of the overall narrative through which Alonso depicted herself as a custodian of a trove of historical styles.

Ballet Genealogies: Continuous Tradition or Fractured History?

In establishing overarching links to the past, an individual’s genealogy addresses questions about where she comes from and, by extension, who she is. A genealogy, as an account of the subject’s descent, not only connects her to a lineage of ancestors but, also, reveals her identification with history and tradition. It takes the form of a narrative that explains the origins, successive generations and historical developments that led to the

person in the present. Being a narrative, the genealogical account acts as a means of self-

perception and self-representation. Such narratives of lineage are common among ballet

228 dancers. These artists often formulate their identities in relation to their artistic ancestry. Ballet knowledge and traditions reside, to a high degree, in the dancers’ own memories and bodies. With each new generation of dancers, that knowledge is transmitted and re-stored in younger memories and bodies. This makes the technique, styles and repertory of ballet an ephemeral oral-bodily tradition that travels from teachers to students, from choreographers to performers, and from older to younger dancers. In this context, a dancer’s artistic genealogy—whom she studied with, which choreographers she danced for and which older dancers she had as mentors or models— shapes her artistic identity and knowledge of the art form.

As seen in Alonso’s statements of concern over the erosion of the nineteenth-

century styles, the fact that ballet is an oral-bodily tradition entails a discussion on how

each new generation of dancers preserves the art form’s legacy of knowledge. As the

tradition passes down from generation to generation, intentional and unintentional

variations are unavoidable. This leads to contestation over how close present-day stagings

of the classics are to the original productions, and how dancers keep alive the

performance styles and conventions associated with the historical repertory. In this

context, genealogies become a tool for argumentation: dancers and choreographers often

call upon their lineage to support claims that their performances and productions of the

classics are invested with authenticity. However, as a warrant of the authenticity of

present-day stagings of the classics, genealogical narratives embody a paradox. This

section’s analysis of Alonso’s genealogical discourse reveals two competing visions of

the historical process through which the classics have been kept alive. On the one hand,

Alonso cast genealogies as narratives of historical continuity, stressing the notion that the

229 choreography in some of her productions traveled from the nineteenth century to the present unaltered. On the other hand, she attested to the existence of deep lacunae in the preservation of this repertory, exposing the fact that generational transmission, the very same process upon which genealogies are established, is responsible for the loss of much of the original choreography of the classics.

Insisting that “purity of style” and “strict respect for what remains of Ivanov’s choreography” were features of her production of The Nutcracker, Alonso offered a case in point of a claim to authenticity grounded on genealogical connections (A. Alonso

2004b, 147). Her account of how she learned the choreography of the second act’s pas de deux from sources connected to the original deserves to be quoted at length:

In the mid 1940s, when I was preparing to dance this famous classical duet for the first time, I started with the choreography that Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin performed back then. Markova’s version was trustworthy in its authenticity since she danced in the first staging of Ivanov’s choreography outside Russia, produced by Nikolai Sergeyev in England in the early 1930s [for the Vic-Wells Ballet, London, 1934]. When The Nutcracker premiered at the Maryinsky Theater in 1892, Sergeyev was finishing his studies at the Imperial School in St. Petersburg. He immediately joined that theater’s ballet company and went on to work for many years at the Maryinsky as a ballet teacher and general régisseur [the person entrusted with preserving the choreography of the ballets in a company’s repertory]. He always enjoyed great respect for his zealousness in taking care of the classical tradition, which he knew in depth. It is said that he arrived to London with choreographic notations of several ballets from the Maryinsky’s repertory. Not only did he work taking care of the classics in that theater for several years, but he also was familiar with a method for notating choreography. This was of great significance since Ivanov’s choreography was already falling into oblivion. Fedor Lopukhov had created an entirely new production of The Nutcracker for the Kirov Ballet (formerly the Maryinsky Ballet) in Leningrad in the late 1920s [1929]. At the same time that Sergeyev staged Ivanov’s Nutcracker in London, Vasily Vainonen premiered his own new version, for the Kirov Ballet too. Meanwhile, Alexander Gorsky had conceived his own production of the work for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow many years earlier [in 1919], which in time was replaced with Vainonen’s (Ibid.)

230 In this passage, Alonso made several points to establish the pedigree of her staging of the Nutcracker’s pas de deux. Of great importance in her argument is the contention that the two major ballet companies in Russia, the Maryinsky and the Bolshoi, abandoned the original choreography. Using a level of detail that is more typical of a historian’s account than a dancer’s explanation, she described how productions by Gorsky, Vainonen and

Lopukhov had replaced Ivanov’s. This observation challenged the general belief that these two troupes have always been bastions of the preservation of the classics. In particular, it warned against the assumption that the Maryinsky, by virtue of being the birthplace of The Nutcracker, automatically acted as the guardian of the original choreography. Alonso inferred that, instead, the ballet was better preserved outside

Russia and invoked her genealogy to represent herself as an actor in that process. The particular genealogical connection involved two highly respected British performers of the classics, Markova and Dolin, former stars in Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. As Alonso observed, Markova had learnt the pas de deux from Sergeyev, who was thoroughly familiar with the original. This made Alonso a third-generation inheritor of the choreography down the Ivanov-Sergeyev-Markova-Alonso line. From a genealogical perspective, this situated her relatively close to the original, considering that her 1998

restaging of this ballet took place one-hundred-and-six years after its premiere.

Establishing the reliability of Sergeyev, a warrant that The Nutcracker traveled from

Russia to London unadulterated, was essential to Alonso’s claim of authenticity. She

substantiated Sergeyev’s credentials by noting that he had a direct link to the Maryinsky;

that he worked for many years in that theatre in the various roles of dancer, teacher and

231 general régisseur; and that he had restaged the ballet from a notated choreographic score that he had taken with him to London.349

In the same article, Alonso established another connection to the original

choreography through a second branch in her genealogical tree:

Although I knew the pas de deux as Sergeyev took it to London, I inquired and researched as much as possible, aiming to achieve the greatest choreographic exactitude and stylistic purity in accordance with Ivanov’s original. For this, I counted upon all too valuable help from Alexandra Fedorova, who was one of the most influential teachers in my education. Fedorova, sister-in-law of Mikhail Fokine, graduated from the Imperial School in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the century and became an outstanding soloist at the Maryinsky Theater, where she danced for many years. She had a great ballet culture and possessed an extraordinary choreographic memory, which allowed her to successfully stage a full production of The Nutcracker in 1928 for the Riga Opera, where she worked for a long time. In 1940, she staged her production for the Ballet Russe de Montecarlo. I danced in it in 1957. I had the opportunity to crosscheck Sergeyev’s staging with the choreography as remembered by Fedorova and I found that the second act’s pas de deux was essentially the same (Ibid., 147-48).

In this case, too, Alonso found it necessary to defend the trustworthiness of her source.

First of all, she underlined her teacher’s direct connection to the Maryinsky, indicating that Fedorova danced in that company for many years and achieved the rank of an outstanding soloist in it. Unlike Sergeyev, Fedorova did not work with a notated score when she restaged The Nutcracker in the West. The fact that she relied on her memories raises the question of how much of the original she was able to retain. Alonso countered any possible objections in this regard by assuring readers that Fedorova had precise

349 Sergeyev’s records of the ballet in the Stepanov notation system are part of the Harvard Theatre Collection, at Harvard University. The archive’s catalogue gives 1909 as the notation’s year of creation, which confirms the fact that it preceded the productions by Gorsky, Lopukhov and Vainonen in 1919, 1929 and 1934 respectively. This gives validity to Alonso’s idea that, as a source, Sergeyev was chronologically closer to the original than these other restagers of the ballet in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The entry for the choreographic notation of The Nutcraker in the Harvard Theatre Collection is titled “Sergeev, Nikolai, 1876-1951. Nikolai Sergeev dance notations and music scores for ballets: Guide,” and catalogued as MS Thr 245.

232 choreographic memory. Furthermore, Alonso surmounted objections about the possible deterioration of Fedorova’s memory by emphasizing the continuity of her teacher’s involvement with The Nutcracker: she had learned it early in the twentieth century, performed it frequently, restaged it for the first time in 1928 and for a second time in 1940. Calling upon the sophisticated tools of argumentation that are typical of a historian’s work, Alonso strengthened her claim on the authenticity of her Nutcracker by cross-checking sources. Having compared the two versions of the pas de deux as they traveled down through different genealogical branches and having found that they were

“essentially the same,” Alonso concluded that the choreography, as she received it, had remained true to the original and that, therefore, her sources were reliable.

Moreover, Alonso bolstered her argument by invoking external evidence in the form of an expert’s opinion. She related a testimony from Galina Ulanova, the leading dancer of the Bolshoi Ballet in the 1940s and 1950s, that confirmed her claim: “I don’t forget the kind, sincere and emotional words of Galina Ulanova after I danced [The

Nutcracker] in the Soviet Union. She thanked me for ‘giving her back Ivanov’s choreography,’ which Galina had learned from her mother and which was the first version of the ballet that this great artist and friend danced” (Ibid., 150). With this

anecdote, Alonso reinforced her earlier statement that dancers in Russia had neglected the

choreography and that it was in the West that the pas de deux survived, asserting that she gave it back to that country. For Alonso’s, Ulanova’s praise of her performance was meaningful not only because the Russian ballerina, as one of the greatest dancers of the century, enjoyed the status of an authority, but also because of Ulanova’s own place in the genealogy of this ballet. Ulanova, too, was genealogically connected to the original:

233 she had performed it after learning it from her mother, Maria Romanova, a former dancer with the Maryinsky.350 This qualified her as an arbiter of the authenticity of

Alonso’s staging. In sum, genealogies were at the heart of all the threads of Alonso’s

narrative.

Although not in as much detail as in the case of The Nutcracker, Alonso equally

resorted to genealogical arguments to establish the authenticity of her productions of

Swan Lake and Coppélia. The National Ballet of Cuba’s program notes for performances of Coppélia in 1999 indicated,

The first staging of this work for the company was commissioned to Leon Fokine—the son of Alexandra Fedorova […] He brought to Cuba a production that followed Fedorova’s staging for the Riga Opera upon Marius Petipa’s original. [In her own production,] Alicia Alonso retained as much as possible the original elements—from Saint-Léon to Petipa— applying rigorous criteria to establish the features of the Classical- demicaractère style corresponding to this ballet (Ballet Nacional de Cuba 1999, 7).

Its publication in a souvenir program conferred institutional character to this text (its author is not credited). Still, it is fair to assume that it reflects Alonso’s point of view as the choreographer of the production and the director of the company. Here, again, artistic lineages are brought together to relate Alonso’s staging to the original. Coppélia

premiered at the Paris Opera in 1870 with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon. In 1884,

Petipa restaged the ballet for the Maryinsky Theatre. It is the latter production on which

Fedorova relied for her staging at the Riga Opera. In the case of the duet from The

Nutcracker, Alonso counted on evidence that allowed her to validate her faithful

preservation of the choreography. Such detailed evidence was not available to her in the

case of Coppélia, judging from how the account of her genealogical connection to the

350 See A. Degen, “Galina Ulanova 1910-98,” in Dance Magazine, June 1998, 46.

234 original fails to provide details. The text of the program shows that, in a broad manner, she was a modern-day recipient of the choreography, without illuminating how well her genealogical link guaranteed her knowledge of the original. In view of this,

Alonso’s claim to fidelity concerned the original “Classical- demicaractère style” rather than the choreography itself. Indeed, the program notes directly addressed the many additions of Alonso to this Coppélia, contributions that “transformed the work in a radical manner,” and “enriched the choreography with many moments of technical virtuosity, both in the strictly classical scenes and in the character dances” (Ibid). This raises the question of how Alonso, or any other modern restagers of the work, could accurately recreate the style of the ballet if knowledge of the original choreography is not complete. Such contradiction points to the fact that most contemporary restagers of the classics, including Alonso, show a strong authorial point of view in filling in the gaps of today’s limited knowledge of nineteenth-century choreography.

Along the same line of genealogical validation, the souvenir program for presentations of Swan Lake by the National Ballet of Cuba in 1990 specified that the company’s first complete production of this ballet was the 1954 staging by “Mary

Skeaping, from the Sadler Well’s Ballet in London, upon the version by N. Sergeyev that followed the original by Petipa and Ivanov” (Ballet Nacional de Cuba 1990, 4). Once more, Sergeyev emerged as a key figure linking Alonso to the Russian repertory. She also credited Fedorova, among other sources, for informing her production of Swan Lake:

Roles [such as Odette and Odile in Swan Lake] arrived at Ballet Theatre through different channels. Dimitri Romanoff and Anton Dolin were key in passing down the traditional features of these roles to the company. In the case of these two roles, I also had the assistance of Alexandra

235 Fedorova, an eminent teacher and connoisseur of the classical tradition descending from Petipa and Ivanov. I critically approached the performances of the ballerinas who danced these roles back then and, as much as possible, I carried on documentation work on stylistic and historical aspects. However, what was determinant for me was the performance practice alongside great partenaires with whom I danced [the White Swan and the Black Swan] pas de deux in the 1940s and 50s, such as Anton Dolin, André Eglevsky, Igor Youskevitch, John Kriza, Erick Bruhn and Royes Fernandez.351

Although Alonso referred to genealogical lines that allowed her a degree of access to the original via respected régisseurs and teachers, the fact that she also studied the performances by fellow ballerinas and dance partners suggests that the information that she inherited from Sergeyev and Fedorova, who knew the original first hand, and from

Dolin and Romanoff, who knew it second-hand, was not consistent or sufficient. In the context of Ballet Theatre, the dancers that Alonso used as models interacted closely and, as her own example suggests, influenced one another’s conceptions of Swan Lake. If such exchanges facilitated the circulation of elements of the original choreography, they must have also helped to spread any inaccuracies, distortions and twists that were part of these artists’ individual interpretations. No wonder that Alonso thought that she had to

“critically approach” the material and carry on “documentation work” to filter, edit and crosscheck different interpretations. She understood that attempting an exact replica of the initial choreography was impossible. Accordingly, in the case of Swan Lake, too, she defined faithfulness to the original in terms of preservation of the style and, in the best possible scenario, any isolated fragments that had survived the passing of time:

351 A. Alonso, “Dos personajes en una obra magistral” [Two characters in a masterwork], first published as “El Lago de los cisnes (un adagio magistral)” [Swan Lake (a masterful adagio)] in T. Gutiérrez, Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: imagen de una plenitud, testimonios y recuerdos de la artista, 1981, 121; revised and expanded for the souvenir program of a performance of Swan Lake by the National Ballet of Cuba, at the National Theatre, Havana, on Oct. 21, 2000; reprinted in Ballet Nacional de Cuba, El lago de los cisnes [Swan Lake], souvenir program, Havana, Oct.-Nov., 2002, 11-15.

236 Petipa and Ivanov’s original choreography for Swan Lake has not survived in its integrity. But this work’s concept of style and some key passages of its choreography remain. Because of this, the work of the restagers is essential in today’s productions of the great classics. Restagers must preserve everything that undeniably belongs to the original and recreate the rest of the work using their deep knowledge of the style, the modes of expression and the theatrical practices from the ballet’s historical period (Ballet Nacional de Cuba 2002, 8).

In acknowledging that large parts of the original choreography of Swan Lake and

Coppélia are lost and that present-day productions of these work are deeply indebted to

the knowledge and subjectivity of contemporary restagers, Alonso presented a more

realistic view of the task of preserving the classics—not as the pristine conservation of

static museum pieces but as a highly subjective process of reconstruction. Although

Alonso looked to her genealogical connections for reassurance of her knowledge of the

classics, it was in the very same process of genealogical transmission that the

choreography of the classics varied from generation to generation, to the point of making

the originals retrievable only in a fragmentary manner. This idea exposes the double role

of genealogies in historical accounts. They validate traditions at the same time that they

expose fractures within these traditions. It is in the latter sense that historian Michel

Foucault proposed a critical approach to writing genealogies. From a Foucauldian

perspective, a true “genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken

continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things.” Quite the opposite,

for Foucault tracing a genealogy is “to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations—or conversely, the complete reversals—the errors, the false appraisals and the faulty calculations.”352 The French

352 M. Foucault, “Nietzche, Genealogy, History,” in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite, ed. S. Bachelard et al. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 145-72, reprinted in Language, Counter-memory,

237 writer proposed this approach in the context of his discussion of the work of historians who have researched the origin and evolution of concepts such as morality, liberty and justice as though these categories have followed a linear, teleological development, insulated from the vicissitudes, accidents and jolts of history. In his view,

the search for the descent of these ideas should be pursued in a way that “disturbs what

was previously considered immobile,” “fragments what was thought unified,” and

“shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself” (Foucault 1971,

147). Looking at balletic genealogies through the lens of this discourse may seem a far-

flung extrapolation, but not if one considers that those dancers and restagers who discuss

the transmission of the classics from the nineteenth century to the present are stepping, as

historians do, into a debate over issues of linearity/accidentalness and

continuity/discontinuity. Alonso stood within this critical paradigm when she researched,

filtered, edited, crosschecked and documented the choreographic material that came to

her through different genealogical branches. She had no illusions about the possibility of

restoring the original choreography of the classics in its integrity.353 Even in the case of

The Nutcracker, in spite of her great certainty of the accuracy of the choreography passed

Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Michel Foucault, ed. D. F. Bouchard, trans. D. F. Bouchard and S. Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977), 146.

353 According to Alonso, she did not even find it desirable to stage exact replicas of the original classics. She believed that these works should be updated and modified to appeal to the sensibility of modern audiences: “I staged the Romantic and Classical masterworks in the repertory of the National Ballet of Cuba with the greatest respect for the tradition, but without forgetting the development in technical and theatrical resources verified since the creation of these works. I also kept in mind that today’s dancers and audiences are different from those of the historical periods that produced these works. I attempted to rescue the essence of ballet Romanticism and Classicism and make these movements viable for contemporary spectators. This is, in my view, the best way of paying respect to the classics.” A. Alonso, “El clasicismo hoy y mañana,” 15.

238 down to her, Alonso limited her claims of authenticity to the pas de deux of the second act.

Although Alonso’s philosophy as a restager of the classics resonated with

Foucault’s view of genealogies as critical accounts of the irregularities and ruptures of history, the ballerina’s narrative use of genealogies pointed, too, in the opposite direction.

She often equated her artistic genealogy with an uninterrupted lineage, obscuring the fractures in ballet history and representing herself as heir of the most pure ballet tradition.

As noted by psychologist Mark Freeman, “autobiographical narrative […] customarily involves the attempt to interpret the past in the light of one’s present understanding, interests and desires.”354 In this sense, genealogies were one more element at play in the

artist’s articulation of her identity. They were part of a narrative about her artistic persona

that emphasized her image as inheritor and custodian of the classics.

Nowhere is this better captured than in a genealogical tree charting Alonso’s

artistic lineage published in Francisco Rey and Pedro Simón’s Alicia Alonso: órbita de

una leyenda (Alicia Alonso: orbit of a legend, 1996) and reprinted in María del Carmen

Hechavarría’s Alicia Alonso, más allá de la técnica (Alicia Alonso, beyond technique,

1998).355 In these books, the headings “The Ballerina and the Tradition” and “Alicia

Alonso and the Tradition” introduce a genealogical diagram with lines connecting Alonso

to her immediate teachers and collaborators, who at the same time are connected to their

teachers, who are linked to an earlier group of teachers, and so on. In this fashion, the

354 M. Freeman, “The Burden of Truth: Psychoanalytic Poeisis and Narrative Understanding,” in Strategic Narratives, ed. W. Patterson, 16.

355 F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda, 53-55; M. del C. Hechavarría, Alicia Alonso, más allá de la técnica, 54-56.

239 diagram traces an arch that spans over several generations of dancers, teachers and choreographers from Alonso to Pierre Beauchamps, an essential figure in the origins of ballet. As a choreographer, Beauchamps collaborated with Molière and Jean-Baptiste

Lully in the spectacles in the court of Louis XIV. He served as the dance teacher of the monarch and directed the Académie Royale de Danse, the organization that the Sun King instituted in 1661 to codify ballet and make its practice a professional activity.356 The chart comprises another thirty-eight artistic ancestors of Alonso, all of them personalities that represent significant moments in ballet history. Among them are listed, traveling back in time, artists who were part of the wave of Russian émigrés who popularized ballet in Europe and America in the twentieth century (Balanchine, Fokine and Anna

Pavlova), teachers and choreographers who played a significant role in the development of the Russian Classical style in the last decades of the nineteenth century (Petipa, Ivanov and Enrico Cecchetti), a prominent figure of the Danish school and Romantic ballet

(August Bournonville), artists responsible for the consolidation of the nineteenth-century

Italian school (Carlos Blasis and Salvatore Vigano), key actors in the emergence of

French ballet d’action at the end of the eighteenth century (Jean-Georges Noverre, Jean

Dauverbal, Pierre Gardel and Gaetano Vestris), and exponents of French ballet de cour in the seventeenth century (Beauchamps and Louis Pécourt). This genealogy highlights the longevity of the ballet tradition by giving the years of birth and death for each figure in the tree—the earliest moment being 1636, for Beauchamps’ birth.357 In its hyperbolic

356 R. Astier, “Beauchamps, Pierre,” in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, ed. S. J. Cohen, accessed online through Temple University’s Library, Oct. 20, 2008.

357 The International Encyclopedia of Dance gives an earlier date for Beauchamps’ birth (Oct. 1631). Ibid.

240 scope, this genealogy stands as an attempt to symbolize the continuity between the past of the dance form and its present as embodied by Alonso. The tree, with its many connecting lines and its generational structure, gives visual representation to the proposition that Alonso was the vessel of an uninterrupted tradition going back four centuries.

The diagram’s appearance in two different publications raises the question of who created it and whose point of view it captures. The authors of these two books are closely linked to Alonso and the National Ballet of Cuba. Simón, who married Alonso in 1975, is the editor of the magazine Cuba en el ballet as well as the director of the National Dance

Museum, institutions under the umbrella of the National Ballet of Cuba. His collaborator,

Rey, worked for many years as a dance historian for Cuba en el ballet. Meanwhile,

Hechavarría was a soloist for the National Ballet of Cuba, where she continues to work as a teacher. The close ties of all three authors to the National Ballet of Cuba suggest that the genealogy captures this institution’s point of view—and, possibly, Alonso’s own point of view as its director, associate of the authors and Simón’s wife. The source constitutes an example of an institutional account of Alonso’s identity that overlaps with the ballerina’s own narrative of self-representation. As Couze Venn indicates, narrative identity is “entangled in the stories that a person tells or that are told about her or him”

(Venn 2002, 34). In this regard, Alonso’s personal stories and institutional accounts such

as this genealogy are equally important threads in the public representation of the

ballerina’s identity. In pointing out that narratives are “the form in which the events of a

life and of a community can be configured and communicated and kept as a memory,”

Venn directs attention to the role of narratives in chronicling not only personal events but

241 also the events of a community, and how it is through narratives that a community represents itself (Ibid.)358 Several sources related to the National Ballet of Cuba can be seen in this light. If at one level they are institutional accounts of Alonso’s identity, at another level they also help to formulate the National Ballet of Cuba and the Cuban school of ballet’s own narratives of identity. Indeed, the term “Cuban school of ballet” appears directly below Alonso’s name in the genealogical diagram. Thus, the tree conveys the notion that the Cuban ballet has a solid connection to the trunk and the roots of the dance form, with Alonso serving as the articulating point between an ancient

European ballet tradition and ballet on the Island today.

In 1991, the National Ballet of Cuba commemorated the 150th anniversary of

Giselle with eight performances of this work in Havana (December 19-29). The souvenir program for these presentations stands as another instance of how, within this

organization, the artistic lineage of Alonso was invoked to articulate an institutional account of her identity as a classicist.359 In this particular case, the narrative is told

through the program’s illustrations and photographs of noted performers of Giselle. The

images are laid out chronologically. The first image is a reproduction of a well-known

lithograph by François Jules Collignon, from 1945, depicting a scene from Giselle’s second act.360 It shows Giselle flying through the dense foliage of a forest while Albrecht

358 In this discussion, Venn was referencing the ideas of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, which this dissertation discusses in Chapter 5.

359 Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Giselle, 150 aniversario [Giselle, 150th anniversary], souvenir program, Havana, Dec. 1991.

360 The lithograph was originally included in T. Gautier et al., Les beautés de l'opéra, ou Chefs- d'oeuvre lyriques, illustrés par les premiers artistes de Paris et de Londres sous la direction de Giraldon, avec un texte explicatif rédigé par Théophile Gautier, Jules Janin et Philarète Chasles [The beauties of the Opera, or the lyric masterworks, illustrated by the principal artists of Paris and London under the direction

242 reaches for her from the ground. Two other lithographs show images of Carlotta

Grisi, who premiered the title role. One of them depicts her as a weightless Giselle standing en pointe. The other one is a formal portrait framed by vines and ribbons. What follows is a gallery of outstanding performers of the role in the twentieth century: Anna

Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Spessitseva, Galina Ulanova, Alicia Markova and

Yvette Chauvire, all of them photographed as Giselle. Finally, there are three pictures of

Alonso. The examples and their place in a timeline suggest a lineage as these artists predated Alonso (Grisi, Pavlova, Karsavina and Spessitseva), were older than her

(Markova) or, at least, were her contemporaries (Ulanova and Chauvire). More recent performers of the role, such as Carla Fracci, Natalia Makarova or Gersey Kirkland, are omitted, possibly because they were younger than Alonso. This underscored the proposition that Alonso was the last one in a line of great Giselles.

In the souvenir program’s iconography of famous Giselles, the final image of

Alonso stands out. Due to a graphic design effect, the photograph is highly suggestive of a Romantic ballet lithograph. The grey tones typical of the photograph are absent, the contrast between black and white is accentuated, and a reduced resolution blurs the small details. Such alterations flatten the image of Alonso and diminish the sense of volume and perspective characteristic of modern photography, making the picture look more like a drawing or lithograph. This imitation of a lithograph is full of meaning: lithographs are valued as precious historical records and symbols of ballet’s Romantic era. By showcasing the image of Alonso as if in a lithograph, the souvenir program signifies that the ballerina perfectly embodied the aesthetics and style of Romantic ballet. In the

of Giraldon, with an explanatory text written by Théophile Gautier, Jules Janin and Philarète Chasles] (Paris: Soulié, 1845), 21.

243 booklet, the equivalent of this particular picture is not found among the realistic photographs of the outstanding twentieth-century Giselles mentioned above. Instead, from a visual standpoint, this image of Alonso correlates with the lithographs of Grisi in the earlier pages of the program. Reinforcing this connection, the final image in the book,

following the pictures of Alonso, is an additional lithograph of Grisi flying over a bed of

flowers.361

In a strict sense, the assemblage of images in the program is not a genealogy of

teachers and disciples: it does not claim that the portrayed ballerinas worked together to

pass the role of Giselle from one generation to the next one—although when Alonso debuted as Giselle in Ballet Theatre, she followed the example of Markova, the reigning

Giselle in that ensemble, and was coached by Anton Dolin, who had danced in the ballet

with both Markova and Spessitseva. In spite of not constituting a genealogy in a strict

sense, the formulated lineage of great Giselles is part of the same narrative proposing that

Alonso was the inheritor of nineteenth-century traditions. The Cuban ballerina is seen as

a modern reincarnation or a true heir of Carlotta Grisi. This institutional narrative was

reinforced in the discourse of the Cuban ballet. In the article “Giselle, siglo y medio de

historia” (Giselle, one century and a half of history), published in Cuba en el ballet in

1992 on occasion of the 150th anniversary of Giselle, Isis Armenteros established a direct link between Alonso and the creators of the ballet as the two ends of a seemingly uninterrupted tradition: “From Heine to Gautier, from Grisi and Coralli to Alonso. One

361 The souvenir program also features portraits of Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, choreographers of Giselle, as well as of Heinrich Heine, whose volume De l’Allemagne (1835) provided Théophile Gautier with inspiration for the libretto of the ballet. The program reproduces, too, the poster announcing the first performance of the ballet at the Paris Opera in 1941, and a photograph of Aurora Bosch, principal dancer with the National Ballet of Cuba, as Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis.

244 hundred-and-fifty years ago a light was lit for the first time. It has illuminated many artists and many audiences. Today, it remains alight.”362 An earlier version of the article

had appeared in the souvenir program analyzed above. The version in the magazine was

accompanied with a set of illustrations of the same lineage of performers of the title role.

In 1993, the National Ballet of Cuba published another booklet—Alonso,

Giselle— that similarly posited Alonso as an heir of Grisi.363 The cover is a full-page

reproduction of the 1845 lithograph by Collignon in which Giselle flies through treetops while Albrecht reaches for her from below. In this reproduction, however, the figure of

Giselle-Grisi was cut out and replaced with a picture of Alonso holding a similar aerial

pose. Here, too, the photograph of Alonso was modified to resemble a lithograph and,

thus, it blends seamlessly with the background. But, while the background is printed in

subdued tones of silver and grey, the figure of Giselle is highlighted in a bright shade of

white that brings immediate attention to the substitution of Grisi with Alonso. The clever

modification of the lithograph is bold in its implication. Since lithographs are cherished

symbols of the Romantic ballet, Alonso replaces Grisi not only in the physical space of

the lithograph but also at a semiotic level: she takes the place of Grisi as a signifier of the

Romantic tradition. If the goal of genealogical narratives is to connect a descendant to her

ancestors, then this visual metaphor is the ultimate lineage account as far as it unites

ancestor and descendant into a single entity—Alonso’s body filling the contour of

Grisi’s—tradition embodied in the present, seemingly intact. From a Foucauldian

362 I. Armenteros, “Giselle, siglo y medio de historia,” in Cuba en el ballet vol. 3, no. 1, Jan.-Mar., 1992, 22-31.

363 Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Alicia Alonso, Giselle.

245 perspective, however, the metaphor could not be any farther from being a true genealogy, given that it suppresses history by collapsing the past and the present.

Further drawing on the status of lithographs as signifiers of the Romantic ballet tradition, the booklet includes a second image of Alonso in Giselle treated to look like a lithograph. Its circular design is suggestive of a medallion. Alonso stands en pointe, holding an arabesque, with her arms and head reaching upward and wings protruding from her back. The background depicts a dense forest: a maze of vegetation surrounds this Giselle. Upon turning the page, the reader finds a lithograph of Grisi in an almost identical pose and setting: in an arabesque sur le pointe, a winged Grisi reaches up with her arms, surrounded by plants.364 In equating Alonso with Grisi, these mirroring images

reinforce the visual metaphor from the cover of the booklet: Alonso, as a modern Grisi,

embodies the past. Two other pages in the booklet feature the medallion, making the

Alonso-Grisi identification a visual leitmotif.365

As noted earlier, Alonso projected her artistic identity on the National Ballet of

Cuba. Her strong association with Giselle translated into this work becoming the centerpiece in the repertory of the ensemble. As such, Giselle played a fundamental role in defining the image of the National Ballet of Cuba. The Cuban ballet’s discourse of self-representation, thus, mirrored Alonso’s genealogical accounts as an inheritor of the

Romantic tradition. Reflecting this, the booklet Alicia Alonso, Giselle includes a chronological outline of the history of Giselle in Cuba that aims to connect the National

364 Drawing by John Brandard, lithographed by Haguental in Paris, reprinted in Great Ballet Prints of the Romantic Era, ed. P. Migel, 41. According to Migel, the date of the drawing is unknown.

365 In that same year, a souvenir program of the National Ballet of Cuba reprinted the medallion, thus giving it the character of an official icon for the celebration of the fifty years of Alonso’s debut as Giselle. Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Temporada de homenaje a Alicia Alonso [Alicia Alonso homage season], souvenir program, Havana, Oct. 28-Nov. 7, 1993.

246 Ballet of Cuba with the past of this work. It highlights that the first performance of the ballet on the Island took place at the Tacón Theatre, in Havana, on February 14, 1849, only eight years after its Parisian premiere: Enriqueta Javelly-Wells (Giselle), Enrique

Wells (Albrecht), Francisco Ravel (Hilarion) and Adela Lehman (Myrtha), part of the touring troupe of the Ravels, played the leading roles. The chronology also draws attention to a performance by Ana Pavlova and Alexander Volinin on February 8, 1917, at the National Theatre in Havana. Referenced as well is the first staging of the ballet by

Alonso, for the Pro Arte Musical Society, presented on June 5, 1945. Finally, the chronology lists the company’s own premiere of the work on October 30, 1948, as the

Ballet Alicia Alonso, and asserts that since then “the National Ballet of Cuba, through its forty-five years of existence, has kept Giselle in its repertory.” A more detailed chronology, Rey’s “Giselle y Cuba: algunos momentos” (Giselle and Cuba: some moments), published in Cuba en el Ballet in 1992, similarly traces the history of Giselle in Cuba to nineteenth-century antecedents close in time to the work’s Parisian premiere.

It identifies presentations by visiting European ensembles as the first events of local involvement with the Romantic masterpiece. On February 3, 1847, Ana Trabattoni and

Henry Finart performed “the first fragment of Giselle ever seen in Cuba” at the Tacón

Theatre: a waltz from the first act of the ballet. One year later, on February 21, 1848,

“Adèle and Hippolyte Montplaisir premiered the second act’s pas de deux in Cuba” (Rey

1992, 32). These two timelines, juxtaposed to Alonso’s genealogical narratives, depict the history of Giselle in Cuba as a long and rich tradition, integral to the identity of the

Cuban ballet.

247 Referencing Ballet’s History in Performances and Political Maps

In formulating her artistic persona in connection with the nineteenth-century

European ballet, Alicia Alonso emphasized her bonds with events and figures from the past. As seen so far, her narrative of identity highlighted such bonds as it established

Alonso’s claims to safeguarding the Romantic and Classical styles, genealogic links with the original choreography of specific ballets and equation with iconic performers such as

Carlotta Grisi. In addition to this, performances that referenced significant chapters in the history of ballet and maps of her career that highlighted her association with historic

European venues were other means through which Alonso established symbolic links to the past.

In her work as a performer and a choreographer, Alonso intentionally referenced, recreated or paid tribute to figures and events of historic significance in the evolution of ballet. As mentioned earlier, her performances in Alberto Méndez’s reconstructed duets from La Péri and Robert le diable served the practical purpose of broadening her repertory with choreography suited to her stylistic and technical strengths during the late period of her stage career. However, the recreation of these duets was also an act of tribute to the Romantic ballet and two of its most famed ballerinas—Taglioni and Grisi.

At a symbolic level, Alonso’s appropriation of these pieces reinforced the view that she was a modern carrier of the Romantic legacy and a member of a lineage of ballerinas stretching back to these early greats.

Alonso’s Dido abandonada (Abandoned Dido, 1988) constituted another example of a choreographic work in which she referred to an earlier chapter in ballet history. It

248 resulted from her effort to recreate Gaspero Angiolini’s Le Départ d'Énée, ou Didon

Abandonnée, premiered in St. Petersburg in 1766. Angiolini was a key figure in the development of ballet d’action, a genre that embodied many of the ideas of the

Enlightenment. Promoters of ballet d’action called for works with coherent narratives that featured Aristotelian unity of place, time and plot. At the same time, they asked for choreography and performance to be expressive of human nature and emotions. They also eliminated singing and declamation in ballets and, thus, made dance an expression that stood in its own.366 These were fundamental developments that shaped ballet for

centuries to follow. However, in spite of the significance of ballet d’action, no works

from this period survive in the repertory of modern ballet companies.367 Given this

situation, Alonso saw the recreation of Dido as an opportunity to raise awareness about

the work of Angiolini and the reforms of ballet d’action. In the article “Dido recuperada”

(Recovered Dido, 1993), she commented on the need to make Angiolini known to

contemporary audiences: “In all truth, this forgetfulness [of Angiolini]—even in Italy, his

native country—is a great injustice, since he was an important personality who made

tremendous contributions to the development of dance.”368 The opportunity to recreate

Dido arose after the dance historian Lorenzo Tozzi discovered a copy of the score of the

music, composed by Angiolini himself, and offered it to Alonso. She saw her goal not as

reconstructing the choreography faithfully; according to her, this would have been “a

mission completely impossible.” Instead, she tried to come up with a “recreation of the

366 See D. Weickman, “Choreography and Narrative: the Ballet d’Action of the Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. M. Kant, 53-64.

367 It could be claimed that Dauverbal’s La fille mal gardée is a surviving ballet d’action but, in reality, the original choreography is lost. See footnote 59.

368 A. Alonso, “Dido recuperada,” 1993, in Diálogos, 158-59.

249 style of the era, following as closely as possible the libretto and annotations on the score,” while taking into consideration “Angiolini’s aesthetic-choreographic criteria, deduced from his writings” (A. Alonso 1993a, 158-59).

In 1995, in another attempt to reach back to the past, Alonso choreographed La commedia é... danzata (The comedy is… danced), a tribute to the Italian commedia dell’arte featuring the stock characters Columbina, Arlecchino, Pantalone, Pedrolino

(Pierrot) and the Doctor.369 In this case, the historical reference pointed to an earlier

period in ballet history. The Italian actors and dancers of the commedia dell’arte

occupied a special place in the hybrid spectacles of the French courts in the seventeenth century. The extravagant productions of that period incorporated many forms of movement, from social dances to ceremonial processions to acrobatics, which brought noblemen and popular entertainers together in the same ballets. Marina Nordera, a specialist on the history of ballet de cour, indicates that “the ballets were interpreted by

court nobility but the grotesque characters required the employment of professional

dancers and actors, frequently people from the commedia dell’arte.”370 As in the case of

Dido abandonada, Alonso made no claims that her commedia dell’arte ballet was a

faithful reconstruction of a theatrical practice long lost—in fact, for this work she used

piano music by the twentieth-century Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, by all measures

an anachronistic pairing with the commedia dell’arte.

369 See the notes on this work in the section dedicated to the repertory of the National Ballet of Cuba in the company’s official website, http://www.balletcuba.cult.cu/repertorio/Wc3212f172f80e.htm, consulted on Oct. 26, 2008.

370 M. Nordera, “Ballet de cour,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. M. Kant, 28.

250 By necessity, Dido and La commedia were incomplete renditions of the past that exposed the lacunae that contemporary choreographers, performers and scholars face when they look back at the history of ballet. Alonso’s recreation of episodes from the history of ballet d’action and ballet de cour exposed—even more so than her stagings of

the nineteenth-century classics—the illusory character of those genealogies that promote

the notion of an uninterrupted ballet tradition. However, even if these works were just

imaginative recreations of irretrievable events, they afforded Alonso the opportunity to

connect to a remote past at a symbolic level. No matter how distant from the originals,

these productions stood for traditions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Their celebration of the long history of ballet further solidified Alonso’s image as the

fruit and embodiment of an artistic legacy going back to the origins of the dance form.

In another way of representing her links to the ballet tradition, Alonso drew maps

of her international appearances as a dancer and a choreographer in which she brought

especial attention to historic European theaters and cities where she performed or staged

the classics. Repeatedly, she visited the most distinguished stages in Europe and the

Americas, and occasionally venues in Asia, Africa and Australia. On her official website,

the list of only the main theaters where she worked comprises eighty-five venues in forty

countries.371 However, in accounts of her worldwide appearances that were part of her

narrative of identity as a classicist, Alonso invested certain European locations with

geopolitical symbolism by highlighting their rank as historical centers of the ballet

culture. The previous chapter has already related how she regarded her staging of Giselle

371 The list, available in the artist’s official website under the heading “Principales teatros donde ha actuado” [Main theatres where she has performed], refers to appearances outside Cuba: http://www. portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/alicia132.htm, consulted on Nov. 8, 2008.

251 for the Paris Opera in 1972 as a “triumph of the Latin American culture.”372 She took

immense pride in having restaged this Romantic gem for the company that premiered it in

1841. Referring to her work for the Paris Opera and other emblematic ballet venues,

Alonso commented,

Staging my production of Giselle at the Paris Opera was a beautiful experience. It was an honor because we gave Giselle back to the place where it was born. It was a rejuvenated Giselle, which, according to the French critics, was “the best production that they had ever seen.” That was a great honor for us. [In 1969, dancing] in Copenhagen was equally exciting because it is a place where one finds the great tradition of the Danish school and, above all, of the Romantic school. There, I felt that I was in the cradle of tradition, in one of the few places where the Romantic tradition remains alive […] I felt the same way when I rehearsed and staged our production of Giselle in the Opera of Vienna [in 1980]. In this city the renowned Fanny Elssler, the ballerina who practically created the first act, brought fame to Giselle. It is true that Carlotta Grisi brought fame to Giselle as a whole and especially to its second act, the scenes of the wilis, with her fragility, illusion of flight and exact style. However, according to the commentaries and reviews of the time, it was Fanny Elssler who made the first act strong, who placed value on the mad scene, highlighted it and gave it more weight (Giselle eres tú, 1988).

Alonso also staged her Giselle for the ballet company of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, in 1981. She indicated that this, too, was a meaningful experience because Naples was

“the birthplace of ballet in Italy and the whole world” (A. Alonso 1982c, 260). Cuba en el Ballet described the staging of Alonso’s Giselle in that city as a “success of the Cuban ballet.” In its note on the event, the magazine offered its own perspective on why the San

Carlo Theatre was a historically emblematic location: this is “a stage where the legendary

372 A. Alonso, “Las verdades artísticas no tienen fronteras” [Artistic truths know no boundaries], interview by L. Peirano and J. Larco, in QueHacer (Lima), no. 17, Jun., 1982; reprinted as “Verdades sin fronteras” [Truths without boundaries] in Diálogos, 271.

252 Salvatore Vigano, Carlos Blasis, Salvatore Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Fanny Cerrito,

Carlotta Grisi and Jules Perrot left their transcendental legacy.”373

Other venues that adopted the Cuban production of Giselle were the Colón

Theatre in Buenos Aires (1958), the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles (1958) and the Bellas

Artes Theatre in Mexico City (1976). However, it was not these New World theatres but the European institutions that Alonso highlighted when she discussed her achievements in restaging Giselle. This may be seen as selective treatment of information, which is typical of narratives of identity. In Strategic Narratives, Wendy Patterson calls attention to the fact that “all personal narrations involve a selection from all the possible experiences that could be told” (Patterson 2002, 5). Stressing some events over others is one means of investing narratives with a strategic character. When Alonso mapped her productions of the ballet, she represented the European companies, theatres or cities as

entities that embodied the ballet tradition. In a most obvious way, these references

underlined how meaningful it was for her to work in these theatres: given the prestige and

historical significance of the cited venues, working in them would convey a measure of success and recognition for any dancer or choreographer. Alonso’s comments, however, were part of a broader strategy consonant with her goal of connecting to important

episodes in the history of ballet.

Given that she was a ballerina from the Americas, Alonso’s categorization of her

appearances in European theatres as prized achievements had geopolitical connotations

hard to ignore—geopolitical as far as they pointed to the confluence of geographical,

cultural and political elements in her narrative. As Jerome Bruner explains, a narrative of

373 “La versión cubana de Giselle en el Teatro San Carlo de Nápoles” [The Cuban version of Giselle in the San Carlo Theatre, in Naples], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 1, no. 1, Jan.-Mar., 1982, 13.

253 identity is often a means of political contestation: “the instrument of the oppressed for battling the hegemony of the ruling elite and their experts, the way to tell one’s own story as woman, as ethnic, as dispossessed” (Bruner 2002, 112). Alonso, a Cuban ballerina trained in Havana and New York, a figure of the Ballet Theatre and the National Ballet of

Cuba, often forced to prove that non-Europeans could successfully practice ballet, showed that her Giselle was not out of place in the European venues that had formed the historical circuit of the Romantic ballet. In bringing attention to the acceptance of her

Giselle in Europe, she underscored that the specific geographic details of her career— such as the coordinates of her birthplace, ballet training and professional activities in

Havana and New York—were not an impediment to her acting as a carrier of the nineteenth-century ballet legacy.374

A special location on the map of Alonso’s career was Russia, which she visited

for the first time in the winter of 1957-58 and to which she returned several times in front

of the National Ballet of Cuba—in 1960, 1964, 1969, 1972, 1979, 1981, 1984 and

1989.375 The biography on the dancer’s official website puts her initial trip to Russia in

historical perspective: “She was the first dancer from the Western hemisphere invited to

perform in the former Soviet Union, and the first principal dancer from the Americas to

appear as a guest artist with the ensembles of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the

374 Alonso’s stagings of the classics for European venues were not limited to Giselle. She also staged her productions of The Sleeping Beauty for the Paris Opera in 1974 and the Alla Scala Theatre in Milan in 1983; La Fille Mal Gardée, for the Prague National Theatre in 1980 and the Sofia Opera in 1985; The Nutcracker for the Carlo Felipe Theatre, in Naples, and the La Fenice Theatre, in Venice, in 1998; and Don Quixote, for the Danish Royal Ballet in 2008. See the section “Montajes” [Stagings] in Alicia Alonso’s official website, http://www.portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/alicia143.htm, consulted on Dec. 30, 2008. Also, see A. Piñeiro, “Cuban Don Quixote: A Success in Denmark,” http://www.cubanow.net/pages/loader.php?sec=12&t=2&item=4261, consulted on Dec. 30, 2008.

375 See “Giras internacionales” [International tours] in M. Cabrera, El Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 178-86.

254 Kirov [Maryinsky] Theatre in Leningrad [St. Petersburg].”376 Alonso’s first tour of

the Soviet Union also included presentations in the opera houses of Kiev and Riga. Her

repertory consisted of Giselle, Swan Lake, Les Sylphides and the pas de deux from Don

Quixote’s third act (Cabrera 1998, 55). As part of her analysis of Alonso’s technique,

Hechavarría relates an anecdote from the tour involving an exchange between Alonso and

Ulanova. The exchange revolved around the correct way of executing the pose known as

attitude derrière. According to Hechavarría, after seeing her Cuban colleague in

performance,

Ulanova commented to Alonso, with admiration, that it had been a long time since she had seen a correct attitude, the right one, as Alonso had just shown it. She was referring to the Cuban dancer’s way of executing this pose, with the back in a right angle with the line formed by the knee and the foot. [Cuban dancers execute the attitude with the gesturing leg parallel to the floor.] Alonso replied that she believed that it was the Soviet ballerinas’ attitude, with the foot raised upward [on an inclined level in relationship to the floor] that was correct, but Ulanova explained that this was only a recent fad among the Soviet dancers (Hechavarría 1998, 80).

It is safe to assume that Hechavarría, who did not participate in the tour, collected this

anecdote directly from Alonso. Although Hechavarría did not identify her source, the

similarity between this anecdote and Alonso’s own story of Ulanova’s reaction to her

performance of The Nutcracker points to the Cuban dancer as the source. Ulanova, who welcomed Alonso’s Nutcracker as a restoration of the original choreography to Russia, also saw in Alonso an example for the Russian dancers of how to execute a proper attitude derrière, an element of the ballet technique that, according to this account, they

376 See the section labeled “Biografía” [Biography] in Alicia Alonso’s official website, http:// www.portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/index.htm, consulted on Nov. 3, 2008.

255 had corrupted. Once again, here is a message underscoring the status of Alonso as a trusted keeper of ballet traditions—in this instance, standards of technical correction.

The same motif stressing the restoration of a legacy to its place of origin resurfaced when Alonso discussed her performance of Dido abandonada at the Bolshoi

Theatre in 1989: “Dido, Queen of Carthage, [is] a character that I have frequently performed on many stages across the world, including the Bolshoi Theatre—in a way, this was a historic performance since we were restoring to a Russian venue a work that had been premiered in St. Petersburg over two hundred years ago” (A. Alonso 1993a,

159). In her article on Dido, Alonso mentioned that the premiere of the work took place to great acclaim on November 8, 1988, during the 11th International Ballet Festival of

Havana, and that in 1991 she danced Dido at the Edinburgh Festival, where it received

the Critics Award. Not detailed in her account are the many other locations where she

performed this ballet. In the five years between the work’s premiere and the publication

of the article, the National Ballet of Cuba visited twenty-one countries, many of them

several times. In most cases, the visits to these countries comprised presentations in

several cities.377 Such a heavy touring schedule suggests that, as acknowledged in the article, Alonso danced the ballet on many occasions across the world. However, out of her many international appearances in this work, she singled out the performance at the

Bolshoi Theatre as the most significant. She referred that the premiere in Havana encountered a “great positive reception among the audience and the critics,” and that the performance in Edinburgh earned her a distinguished award (A. Alonso 1993a, 159).

Nonetheless, these references to the Havana and Edinburgh events reflected the

377 See the list of international tours of the National Ballet of Cuba in M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria, 184-85.

256 perspectives of spectators and critics. In contrast to this, she did not chronicle how

Muscovite audiences or critics received Dido, but she assured readers that, from her own perspective, the occasion was remarkable from a geographical and historical standpoint.

As she did in the cases of Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna and Naples, Alonso stressed the

longevity of the ballet tradition in Moscow in particular and in Russia in general,

reminding her readers that Angiolini conceived Dido for a Russian ensemble over two

centuries ago. In highlighting this specific performance and stating that she was returning the ballet to its original environment, Alonso drew on the symbolism of a landmark

Russian venue to, once more, give a measure of how she was an undisputed custodian of certain aspects of the European balletic legacy.

Tribute Galas: The Staging of a Historical Persona

At home and abroad, Alicia Alonso was the subject of frequent tributes. Among them were several galas that celebrated her long involvement with Giselle. The first of these took place on November 3, 1968, on occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut in the title role of this ballet. Others followed on November 2, 1978; December 24,

1983; and November 2, 1993—respective commemorations of the thirty-five, forty and fifty years of Alonso’s initial performance of the role.378 The National Ballet of Cuba,

members of the international dance community and prominent figures in the artistic and

378 See the chronologies of Alonso’s involvement with Giselle in Rey and Simón’s Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda, 95-132, and in Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Alicia Alonso, Giselle. Other highly visible tributes to Alonso were the galas for the fifty years of her stage debut, in Mexico and Havana in 1981; the gala for the seventy years of her stage debut, in Havana in 2001; and the UNESCO’s gala dedicated to the Cuban dancer in celebration of World Dance Day in 2003. See Cuba en el Ballet, no. 2, 1982; no. 99, 2002; and no. 101, 2003.

257 political life of Cuba participated in these events, which took place at the Havana

Grand Theatre in front of large audiences. Alonso’s role in the galas was ambiguous: being the recipient of the tributes, presumably she also sanctioned them and participated in their preparation, given that it was the institution under her leadership, the National

Ballet of Cuba, that hosted the celebrations. Thus, these events might be interpreted as exhibiting a certain self-commemoratory aspect, which is puzzling because Alonso enjoyed such widespread recognition, proven by many other tributes and prestigious awards, that apparently there was no need for her to indulge in self-celebratory behavior.379 However, the galas might be better understood as rites of passages that

facilitated Alonso’s progressive retirement from the stage and, at the same time, publicly

ratified many of the motifs in her narrative of identity as a classicist. This final section of

the chapter discusses how these events, and in particular the gala for the fifty years of her

debut as Giselle, integrated ritualistic elements with the purpose of reaffirming the ballerina’s status as one of the greatest performers of this role, while also seeking to leave a definitive historical record of her achievements.

379 By 1993, when the gala took place, Alonso had been conferred the title of Dame and honored with the orders “Carlos Manuel de Céspedes,” “Félix Varela,” “Frank País,” and “Juan Marinello”— significant official distinctions in her country. She had also been named Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba, in addition to being granted the National Dance Award. The University of Havana and the Institute for Higher Education in the Arts had distinguished her with degrees of doctor honoris causa. Foreign countries and cities, too, had bestowed their recognition on the dancer. She had received honorary doctoral degrees from the Universities of Guadalajara and Zacatecas (Mexico). Among the foreign civilian honors that she had collected were the Order of the Aztec Eagle (Mexico), the Medal “Elizabeth II” (UK) and the Order “Isabel la Católica” (Spain). Additionally, Alonso had received some of the most prestigious distinctions in the dance world, such as the Dance Magazine Award (United States), the Anna Pavlova Award (France), the Irene Lidova Prize to a Career in Dance (France), the Porselli Award to a Life for Dance (Italy) and the Edinburgh Festival’s Critics Award (UK). Also, she had been granted the Badge of the Bolshoi Theatre, the Medal of Honor of the Vienna Opera and the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris. See the sections titled “Cronología” [Chronology] and “Distinciones” [Recognitions], in Alonso’s official website, http://www.portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/index.htm, consulted on Mar. 27, 2009.

258 The 1993 gala began with Armando Hart Dávalos, the Cuban Minister of

Culture, reading a letter that Fidel Castro had written to Alonso, congratulating her for her fifty years dancing Giselle.380 Castro, who was absent, praised the ballerina for her

work: “In you, dear Alicia, we recognize not only an artist without equal but also a will

without dismay, a dedication without rest that has allowed you to reach the relevant place

that for many years you have occupied in the history of international dance.”381

Commonly, Castro and other high-ranking Cuban officials attended important ballet

performances, such as these galas and the opening ceremonies of the International Ballet

Festivals of Havana. For instance, in 1978 Castro attended the gala marking the thirty-

five years of Alonso’s performance of Giselle. More recently, he was present at the opening of the 17th festival in 2000, and gave speeches at the inauguration of new

facilities of the National School of Ballet in 2001, and at the opening gala of the 18th

festival in 2002.382

The 1993 gala interspersed performances of excerpts of the Romantic works in

the repertory of the National Ballet of Cuba with the reading of messages submitted by

dancers and critics from all over the world. Among the messages were those of the

380 The author attended this gala.

381 The letter is reproduced in F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda, 135-36. This source thoroughly chronicles the gala, 131-54.

382 In 1990, Minister of Culture Armando Hart attended the opening of the 12th International Ballet Festival of Havana. Ricardo Alarcón, President of the National Assembly of the People’s Government, gave the inauguration speech of the 14th Festival, in 1994. Carlos Lages, Vice President of the State Council of Ministers, delivered the opening speech of the 16th Festival in 1998. These are just a few examples, and not an exhaustive list, of occasions in which political authorities participated in important performances of the National Ballet of Cuba. For records on their attendance and the transcripts of their speeches, see XLV Aniversario del debut de Alicia Alonso en el personaje de Giselle [45th Anniversary of Alicia Alonso’s debut in the role of Giselle] (Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de La Habana, 1988); and Cuba en el ballet vol. 2, no. 1, 1991, 18-19; vol. 2, joined nos. 2 and 3, 1994, 3; no. 93, 1999, 14-15; no. 98, 2001, 2-7; and no. 100, 2002, 20-21.

259 choreographer Maurice Béjart, the Maryinsky Theatre’s artistic director Oleg

Vinogradov and the dancers Galina Ulanova (Bolshoi Theatre), Natalia Dudinskaya

(Maryinsky Theatre), Eva Evdokimova (Berlin Deutsche Oper, English National Ballet)

and Maina Gielgud (Ballet du XXe Siècle, Australian Ballet), as well as of the critics Ann

Barzel (The Chicago Times, Dance Magazine), Richard Philp (Dance Magazine),

Clement Crisp (The Financial Times), René Sirvin (Le Figaro) and Jean-Claude Diénis

(Les Saisons de la Danse). Collectively, these messages symbolized the voice of the

international ballet establishment. In her letter, Evdokimova called Alonso “a living

legend, part of dance history,” who had inspired generations of dancers and spectators.

Vinogradov, too, referred to Alonso as a legend and a phenomenon. Gielgud remembered

the Cuban’s Giselle as “a portrait that will live forever, as long as the ballet continues to

live, next to the legends of Grisi, Elssler, Pavlova, Spessitseva and Ulanova.” Meanwhile,

Ulanova herself stated her admiration of Alonso’s “extraordinary artistic trajectory.” On

her part, Dudinskaya praised Alonso as “the personification of the art of ballet” and

asserted that her interpretation of Giselle had no equal. Among the dance critics, Barzel

addressed the Cuban artist as “the ballerina that history will remember as the greatest

Giselle of the twentieth century,” and Philp described her as “definitively the Giselle of

our time.” Diénis restated the view that Alonso belonged together with Taglioni, Pavlova

and Ulanova. Crisp categorized Alonso as “a glorious and lasting example of a traditional

prima ballerina,” whose Giselle was, in his view, more eloquent than any other of her

generation and descended from the lineage of Markova and Spessitseva.

Some international figures traveled to Havana to participate in the gala. Igor

Youskevitch, Alonso’s dance partner during her time with Ballet Theatre and the Ballet

260 Russe de Montecarlo in the 1940s and 50s, addressed the audience. He affirmed,

“Alicia is a miracle of a ballerina […] Alicia is a total artist.” Donald Saddler, Alonso’s former colleague in Broadway and Ballet Theatre, took his turn expressing his admiration: “A great ballerina and a great actress, Alonso is a consummate artist.” The

Italian critic Alfio Agostini, editor of the magazines Balletto Oggi and Ballet 2000, took the word as well: “To say Alicia Alonso is to say Giselle […] Thanks to Alicia Alonso,

Giselle continues to be an artistic reality today” (Rey and Simón 1996, 136-45).

The dance program featured excerpts from Bournonville’s La Sylphide, Napoli and Flower Festival in Genzano, as well as Saint-Léon’s La Vivandière. It also included

Alonso’s Grand Pas de Quatre—her adaptation of Anton Dolin and Keith Lester’s recreation of Jules Perrot’s 1845 ballet for Taglioni, Grisi, Fanny Cerito and Lucile

Grahn. Closing the program, Alonso danced a scene of the pas de deux from Giselle’s second act with Lienz Chang, principal dancer of the National Ballet of Cuba (Ibid., 190-

91). This turned out to be Alonso’s last appearance as Giselle—although there was no announcement of it at the time. The spectators, who filled the theatre to the brim, stood up to give an ovation to Alonso as she entered the stage and remained standing for the whole length of her performance. After the duet, Youskevitch offered a bouquet of flowers to Alonso, who took countless bows while a prolonged rain of flower petals fell from above the stage.

To end the ceremony, Alonso and a group of Cuban and foreign personalities attended the unveiling of a commemorative plaque in the vestibule of the theatre. It read,

“On November 2, 1993, Alicia Alonso danced a scene from Giselle in this theatre, fifty years after her debut in the [title] role at the Met, in New York; 1943-1993.” The poet

261 Cintio Vitier, one of the most respected voices in the Cuban literary world, read a text written especially for the occasion (Ibid., 145-54).

Galas like this one were well-deserved celebrations of Alonso’s accomplishments.

However, in view of the widespread recognition that Alonso had achieved in Cuba and

abroad, one wonders why it was necessary to celebrate not one, but four galas in commemoration of her debut in Giselle between 1968 and 1993, and why the ballerina agreed to it. One way to look at these galas is as rituals. These ceremonies were rituals because they aimed not only to entertain and provide an aesthetic experience but also to achieve symbolic and practical results. According to Richard Schechner, who studies the relationship between performance and ritual, such sense of “purpose is the most important factor determining whether a performance is a ritual or not.”383

The galas served to assuage Alonso’s anxieties about retiring from the stage. By

the time the first tribute took place, Alonso was forty-eight years old and must have

already considered retiring: not only was she over the retirement age in the profession,

but also she was dealing with serious eyesight limitations. However, since she kept

delaying the moment of leaving the stage, galas in her honor continued to take place until

she finally retired at the age of seventy-three, breaking all records of longevity for a ballet

dancer. As mentioned earlier, in her final years on stage she only performed excerpts of

Giselle, which got briefer as time went by. Her performances in these galas were significant because they constituted evocations of earlier performances from a time when

she was at the peak of her career. Hence, the events reflected a shift in Alonso’s status:

from active performer in full control of her abilities, to historic reference for the

383 R. Schechner, Performance Studies, An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2002), 71.

262 interpretation of Giselle. Also, the tributes compensated for the decreasing number of her appearances in Giselle by solemnizing the few occasions in which she danced fragments of the ballet, and heightening public recognition during those occasions.

Moreover, these events ratified key motifs in the personal and institutional narratives of Alonso’s identity as a classicist. The messages read at the 1993 gala, even if they were not of Alonso’s authorship or produced by the National Ballet of Cuba, mirrored those narratives with precision. Overwhelmingly, the authors of the congratulatory messages categorized Alonso as one of the greatest Giselles of the twentieth century and an authority on Romantic ballet. They also reaffirmed the centrality of Alonso’s involvement with the classics to her individual profile as a dancer.

Additionally, the messages insisted, over and over, that the Cuban ballerina was part of a lineage of selected dancers stretching back to the great Romantic icons of Grisi, Taglioni and Elssler, and encompassing distinguished interpreters of Giselle such as Pavlova,

Spessitseva, Markova and Ulanova. These opinions perfectly aligned with Alonso’s view of herself as the contemporary personification of a European ballet tradition and endorsed her claim that she was part of the lineages and genealogies through which that tradition remained alive. Because such comments came from a group of prestigious voices from the international ballet establishment, they gave official validation to Alonso’s narrative.

Furthermore, they carried the thread of her narrative forward, contributing statements that

Alonso herself could not have enunciated due to conventions of propriety and modesty.

These voices labeled Alonso a living legend and asserted that the artist had carved a lasting place in the history of the art form for herself.

263 What is more, the galas were attempts to officialize the legend of Alonso’s

Giselle for posterity. The events provided a forum for Alonso to perform her own historic persona, and for spectators, political figures, dance critics, disciples and colleagues to consecrate such a legendary persona. This consecration transcended the galas, as it was documented into an official history of sorts. For instance, the 1993 gala generated documentation such as the detailed booklet Alicia Alonso, Giselle that supplemented the souvenir program. The gala also inspired a special issue of the magazine Cuba en el

Ballet and Rey and Simón’s book Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda.384 The magazine

and the book chronicled the events of the evening in great detail, illustrating them with

photographs. These publications also reproduced Castro’s letter, the full text of all the

messages submitted to Alonso and the transcripts of the speeches by guests and

participants. These historical records were biased due the galas’ exclusive emphasis on

veneration. Yet, they carried the aura of an official history endorsed by the political and

artistic establishment. This dissertation’s necessary reliance on such sources, even in a

critical way, reveals the efficacy of such rituals in promoting an image of Alonso that

transcended the specific discourse of the galas and entered the historical record.

Also, the galas confirmed the view that the Cuban ballet was a depository of the

European traditions that Alonso embodied. The dance program in the 1993 tribute showed the prominence of the Romantic works in the repertory of the National Ballet of

Cuba, offering proof that Alonso had passed down her knowledge to many generations of dancers. Among the figures performing in the gala, Loipa Araújo and Aurora Bosch belonged to the first generation of dancers trained in Cuba by Alicia and Fernando

384 Cuba en el Ballet vol. 4, no. 3, Sep.-Dec., 1993, 3-26.

264 Alonso. Marta García and María Elena Llorente represented a second generation, while Rosario Suárez stood for a third generation. The younger ballerinas in the program were Aydmara Cabrera and Galina Álvarez, in their late twenties, and Lorna Feijóo, in her early twenties, at the time a recent graduate from the National School of Ballet.385 All in all, the program featured six generations of dancers, from Alonso to Feijóo. At first glance, such a showcase signified the success of Alonso in developing ballet in Cuba.

However, it also represented the Cuban ballet lineage as an uninterrupted genealogy.

These artists illustrated the intergenerational connectedness that is so essential for the transmission of the ballet legacy, pushing into the future the four-century genealogy that

Alonso claimed for herself. Dancing side by side, these generations conveyed the message that the survival of Romantic ballet in Cuba was assured for years to come.

In conclusion, Alonso developed into a classical ballerina through her strategic practice of the art form. Her actions and the events of her career shaped this identity.

Motivated by her goal of performing the nineteenth-century ballets, Alonso fought for casting opportunities: she overcame ethnic typecasting and stereotyping, accepted challenges such as last-minute substitutions for established stars, competed with

European and American dancers to carve a place for herself in performances of the classics, and, after achieving star status, made political use of her leverage to negotiate contracts that granted her control over this repertory. She discriminately chose which ballet companies to join or to avoid, taking into consideration how their programming

385 Loipa Araújo and Aurora Bosch achieved the rank of principal dancer in 1967; Marta García, in 1974; María Elena Llorente, in 1976; Rosario Suárez, in 1986; Lorna Feijóo, in 1996; and Galina Álvarez, in 1997. Aydmara Cabrera defected from the country before being promoted to principal dancer. See the historical list of the National Ballet of Cuba’s principal dancers (1948-98) in M. Cabrera, El Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de Gloria (Havana: Ediciones Cuba en el Ballet, 1998), 138-40.

265 determined her access to the classics. When she founded her own troupe, she made the classics the backbone of its repertory and cast herself as the undisputed classical ballerina of the ensemble. Alonso carefully assessed how working with modern choreographers such as Tudor and Balanchine allowed her to diversify her roles and artistic experiences without losing her autonomy and identity as a classical dancer. Out of these decisions, Alonso built a broad personal repertory of nineteenth-century works that she performed frequently. In the public view, Alonso became one of the most respected interpreters of the classics, as attested in reviews that praised her sophisticated performances of these works and, in particular, Giselle. She stayed active in these ballets longer than any other ballerina, even as she transitioned into old age and cut down in her performances of the classics. Furthermore, the ballerina undertook the restaging of these works and handed down this repertory to the Cuban dancers whom she educated.

In parallel to her work with this repertory as a dancer, restager and educator,

Alonso articulated her classicist identity through narrative accounts that took the form of self-portraits, genealogies and maps of her career. Through her self-portrayal as a custodian of the styles of the nineteenth-century ballets, the artist denounced the erosion and blurring, in contemporary performances, of the stylistic elements of this repertory.

She discussed how these styles were complex artistic entities determined by aesthetical, technical, dramaturgic and historical considerations, and pointed to her own work as an example of how to establish stylistic differences between ballets such as The Sleeping

Beauty and The Nutcracker.

Alonso represented herself as a member of a genealogy of dancers, teachers and choreographers from whom she inherited a trove of choreographic and stylistic

266 knowledge. She defended the authenticity of her stagings of the classics by asserting that the branches of this genealogical tree connected her to the original productions of

these works. She defended the reliability of links in her genealogy such as Nikolai

Sergeyev and Alexandra Fedorova in passing down the Russian balletic tradition to the

West. Alonso even contended that certain elements of that tradition were better preserved in the West and that she restored them to their original Russian environment, where they had deteriorated. Although she drew on her genealogy to establish a narrative that depicted her as the carrier of an uninterrupted tradition, Alonso was aware that this legacy did not arrive intact to her and that, to a great degree, the original choreography of classics such as Swan Lake and Coppélia had been lost due to reinterpretation, fractures and the dead ends that characterized the transmission of these works from generation to generation. Thus, Alonso’s narrative stood as an example of the paradoxical nature of genealogies as signifiers of both historical continuity and fragmentation.

Further stressing her links to the nineteenth-century ballet legacy, Alonso mapped her career in a manner that underscored her association with the places where that tradition flourished. She conferred special meaning to her work in the prestigious opera houses of Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna, Naples and Moscow, cities that enjoy the status of historic centers of ballet culture. The mentions of her success in these European theatres were imbued with geopolitical symbolism. They could not be read independently from the subtext of her Cuban nationality and affiliation with the North American ballet: by insisting on the triumph of her Giselle in these venues, Alonso implied that, in spite of being a dancer from the Americas, she was a trustworthy keeper of a European heritage.

267 In pieces that she danced and/or choreographed, such as La Péri, Robert le

Diable, Dido abandonada and La commedia é… danzata, Alonso referenced dancers, subjects, works, practices or aesthetic movements that had occupied a special place in the development of ballet. She strengthened her image as an artist in dialogue with the history of the art form through these attempts to recreate certain lost chapters from the past and to revive the contributions of a number of dancers and choreographers.

Alonso’s narrative of identity was anchored in first-person accounts that intersected with institutional accounts by the National Ballet of Cuba and Cuba en el

Ballet. These overlapping first-person and institutional accounts contributed to the articulation of not only Alonso’s artistic persona but also the Cuban ballet’s identity. In books that captured this institutional perspective, genealogical charts linked Alonso to the major actors in the four-century history of the art form. Meanwhile, the iconography in souvenir programs and magazine articles on Alonso’s Giselle represented the ballerina as a member of a lineage of great performers of the ballet, going back to Carlotta Grisi, who premiered this work. Photographs modified to look like Romantic ballet lithographs made

Alonso appear as a modern reincarnation of Grisi and a newly minted symbol of the

Romantic ballet. By representing the ballerina in this fashion, the National Ballet of Cuba and Cuba en el Ballet also contributed to the formulation of the Cuban ballet’s collective identity. Given that Alonso was the point of articulation between the Cuban ballet and its

European antecedents and that it was through her work as performer, choreographer, pedagogue and artistic director that the classics became an essential part of ballet in

Cuba, such representations of Alonso as classicist established the authority of the

National Ballet of Cuba as a legitimate depository of the nineteenth-century works.

268 Along the same line, the company’s chronologies of Giselle in Cuba established this ballet’s long history on the Island, dating back to its first performances in Havana by

European troupes a few years after the Parisian premiere. In casting Giselle as a long- established asset in the artistic life of the country, these chronologies validated the centrality of the classics in the repertory of the Cuban ballet.

The international ballet establishment, the National Ballet of Cuba, and the local intelligentsia, political authorities and audiences ratified the narrative of Alonso the classicist through a series of galas that asserted her status as one of the greatest performers of Giselle. The messages delivered in these galas repeated the motifs of the ballerina’s first-person narrative: critics and colleagues sanctioned her role as a custodian

of a nineteenth-century tradition and unquestioned member of a lineage of outstanding artists. The galas were rites of passages that marked Alonso’s progressive retirement as a dancer. They sought to officialize the narrative of Alonso’s classicist persona, while documenting it for posterity.

269

CHAPTER 5

MUSICALITY, SIGNIFIER OF A CUBAN AESTHETICS IN BALLET

In an interview with Performing Arts Review in 1978, Alicia Alonso indicated

that the distinctiveness of the Cuban school of ballet was self-evident in the works of

local choreographers who drew on “our rhythms, our music, [and] our themes,” and who

adapted “folkloric steps, injecting them into the ballet movement.”386 Yet, faithful to her

conviction that the Cuban ballet should not be reduced to the hybridization of ballet and

local folklore or to the exclusive production of works with local themes and music,

Alonso stated that the authentic manner in which Cuban dancers approached the

European repertory was equally crucial to the identity of the school.387 In consonance

with her representation of the National Ballet of Cuba as a stronghold of classicism and

of its dancers as custodians of the styles of the nineteenth century, the ballerina explained

that the school is also defined by “the way we have gone to the roots of the composition

of the classics, researching their history, the reason behind the movements, how [dancers] moved in those times” (A. Alonso 1978, 290-91). Reaffirming this connection to the

European tradition, Alonso asserted, “Classicism is the foundation of each aspect of the

386 A. Alonso, “Alicia Alonso’s Passion and Exuberance,” interview by S. B. Cherson, in Performing Arts Review vol. 8, no. 3 (1978), 291. A footnote with a full citation indicates the first reference to a source in the chapter. For the sake of keeping footnotes to a minimum, the source is cited with the author-date system in subsequent references.

387 For a discussion of Alonso’s stance on the role of folklore in the representation of a Cuban identity in ballet see the section “Cubanizing Ballet, Provincializing Europe” in Chapter 3.

270 Cuban ballet’s artistic life […] Just like other famous ballet schools, such as the

Russian, French and English, our school embodies a heritage developed over several centuries.”388

While casting classicism as a cornerstone of the Cuban ballet, Alonso emphasized

that “the Cuban national culture, with its particular aesthetics,” informed the Cuban

dancers’ practice of this dance form (A. Alonso 1995, 15). Setting herself as an example,

the ballerina insisted that the reason why she danced differently from dancers from other

countries was cultural: “It’s my tradition, my culture […] my background, my own taste”

(A. Alonso 1978, 292). She clarified that the methodology of the Cuban ballet, while

“anchored in the most strict classical tradition,” was determined by “our dancers’ physique, culture and temperament, as well as by the demands of the contemporary

world.”389 Not only Alonso but also the local scholars who have discussed the Cuban

school have insisted that the Island’s cultural, historical and social characteristics

translated into a distinctive aesthetics in ballet. According to Pompeyo Pino, a ballet

school is “an artistic response to the common features of a people, as well as to the

historical, social, ethnic, psychological, geographical and climatologic factors that

intervene in the configuration of that people’s culture.”390 Similarly, Pedro Simón argued

that a school reflects a national identity and “the history resulting from a country’s

388 A. Alonso, “El clasicismo hoy y mañana,” in Cuba en el Ballet (Havana) vol. 6, no. 1-3 (1995), 15.

389 A. Alonso, “La danza: triunfo ilimitado de nuestras culturas” [Dance: unlimited triumph of our cultures], acceptance speech for an honoris causa degree at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, Dec. 3, 2002, in Cuba en el Ballet no. 100 (Jul.-Dec. 2002), 70.

390 P. Pino, “Lo cubano en la coreografía” [Cubanness in choreography], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 1, no. 1 (1990), 18.

271 economic and social development.”391 In promoting the idea that the Cuban school is

a projection of local reality, such theses express nationalist and postcolonial attitudes,

already analyzed in earlier chapters, that sanction the incorporation of European genres in

Cuba culture when a spirit of critical assimilation prevails and new artworks crystallize

that feature a synthesis of the imported genre and the national culture.

However, how could the local culture and temperament translate into uniquely

Cuban performances of the classics without this being detrimental to the choreography’s

European style? There exists an apparent contradiction between the claim that Cuban

dancers are faithful custodians of the classics and the proposition that they bring their own aesthetics to this repertory. Yet, Alonso did not see a paradox in this.

Alonso articulated the Cuban aesthetics in the classics as a series of nuances, accents and subtleties that, without departing from the style of the originals, conferred certain distinctiveness to the performance. This reflects the undeniable fact that performances of historical repertory are always rendered through the idiosyncrasies of the performers. Alonso explained that, since “the basic ballet technique is the same all over the world,” the essence of the Cuban school is “about the accent we put on certain things, the importance that we attribute to others.”392 She conceptualized the Cuban school as “a

way of dancing ballet” with the “peculiar expressive sense” of Cubans (A. Alonso 2002,

70). Similarly, in Pino’s opinion, the school became evident in “styles and subtleties that

give nuance to a universal technique” and in the collective “coherence of artistic

projection, taste in expression and line of work” of Cuban dancers (Pino 1990, 18). For

391 P. Simón, “La escuela cubana de ballet” [The Cuban school of ballet], in Conjunto (Havana) no. 17 (Jul.-Sep. 1973), 89-90.

392 Quoted in P. Simón, “La escuela cubana de ballet,” 95.

272 Simón, meanwhile, those nuances emanated from a common training method. In his view, a number of “stylistic features, technical characteristics and affective ways of projecting on stage” were the sign of the dancers being trained within similar principles

(Simón 1973a, 89). In summary, these general definitions regard the Cuban school of ballet as firmly rooted in the dance form’s European heritage, yet distinguished by a particular Cuban aesthetics consisting of a series of expressive, stylistic and technical nuances shared by local ballet dancers and reflecting a Cuban taste, culture and reality.

A number of interviews, articles and books by Alonso and Cuban scholars describe some of the technical and aesthetic characteristics associated with the Cuban school. In addition to Alonso, Simón and Pino, other authors who have addressed this topic are Isis Armenteros, Mayda Bustamante, Miguel Cabrera, Ramona de Sáa and

María del Carmen Hechavarría.393 Their publications are part of the Cuban school’s institutional discourse of self-representation: all these authors have worked for the

National Ballet of Cuba, the National School of Ballet, or the magazine Cuba en el

393 A. Alonso, “Sobre la escuela cubana de ballet” [On the Cuban school of ballet], summary of various talks and texts, in A. Alonso, Diálogos con la danza [Dialogues with dance], third edition (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1993), 19-26, reprinted in the fourth edition (Mexico: Océano, 2004), 64-72; A. Alonso, “Defender nuestra identidad: diálogo con Pedro Simón” [Defending our identity: dialogue with Pedro Simón], transcript of a public talk on Jan. 19, 1973, in Diálogos (2004), 73-83; A. Alonso, “La Alonso y el arte del partenaire,” interview in two parts by I. Armenteros, in Cuba en el ballet vol. 8, no. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 1998) and no. 3 (Jul.-Sep. 1998), reprinted as “El arte del partenaire” [The art of the partner] in Diálogos (2004), 299-307; A. Alonso and P. Simón, “Fuentes y antecedentes de la escuela cubana de ballet” [Sources and antecedents of the Cuban school of ballet], transcript of a conversation on Nov. 10, 1978, in A. Alonso, Diálogos, first edition (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1986), 17-64; A. Alonso and R. de Sáa, “Definir cómo bailamos” [Defining how we dance], interview of Alicia Alonso and Ramona de Sáa by Pedro Simón, in Cuba en el Ballet no. 104 (Jan.-Apr. 2004), 20-33; P. Simón “La verdad en los clásicos” [The truth in the classics], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1973), 32-33; M. Bustamante and P. Pino, Giselle: paradigma de la concepción de Alicia Alonso sobre los ballet románticos [Giselle: paradigm of Alicia Alonso’s philosophy about the Romantic ballets] (Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de La Habana, 1985); M. del C. Hechavarría, Alicia Alonso, más allá de la técnica [Alicia Alonso, beyond technique] (Valencia, Spain: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 1998); and M. Cabrera, Ballet Nacional de Cuba: medio siglo de gloria [Ballet Nacional de Cuba: half a century of glory] (Havana: Ediciones Cuba en el Ballet, 1998). In the rest of this chapter, all references to Alonso’s Diálogos are to the fourth edition, unless otherwise specified.

273 Ballet.394 However, none of their texts stands, in itself, as a comprehensive

classification of the features of the Cuban school. Some focus on specific aspects, such as

Alonso’s views on partnering, philosophy in restaging the classics or contribution to the

advancement of ballet technique. Others are incomplete attempts to index a variety of

elements of the Cuban aesthetics, a task that, in Simón’s opinion, is fraught with

challenges for the writer because “a ballet school is not a definite phenomenon, a recipe

that one can put in writing” (A. Alonso and Simón 1986, 25). This is an impediment that

Alonso acknowledged too when she indicated, “Cubanness exists. Who does doubt it?

But, at the same time, who is able to define it? Moreover, Cubanness is not a single thing

but many; it is something alive that is not easy to capture.”395

Rather than expanding upon these studies or aiming for a systematic taxonomy of

the features of the school, the present chapter directs attention to how the Cuban ballet’s

discourse of self-representation operates. In specific, the analysis focuses on Alonso’s

discourse on the musicality of Cuban dancers as a marker of their aesthetics in the

performance of the European classics. Alonso has contended that a certain sense of

phrasing, use of tempos and sensibility to melody distinguish these dancers’ musicality

and, in turn, reflect a Cuban culture and temperament. How do such notions relate to

normative narratives of what constitutes a Cuban cultural identity and, in particular, to

the widespread belief that Cubans are a musical people? Scrutinizing Alonso’s views on

394 As explained in previous chapters, Cabrera is the official historian of the National Ballet of Cuba, Hechavarría is a ballet mistress in this company and Simón is the editor of Cuba en el Ballet. Pino and Bustamante were writers for the same publication as well as members of the National Ballet of Cuba’s office of public relations. Ramona de Sáa, a former soloist with the National Ballet of Cuba, has worked for several decades as the chief pedagogical supervisor of the network of ballet schools in Cuba.

395 A. Alonso, “…Pero el artista sí” […But the artist does], interview by R. Moya and R. Rivero, in R. Moya, Estrictamente personal [Strictly personal] (Havana: UNEAC, 1985), 15-24; reprinted in Alonso’s Diálogos, 287.

274 the musicality of the Island’s ballet dancers, this study argues that the identity of the

Cuban ballet is not a fixed entity but rather a performative process of self-representation that incorporates shifting views, incongruous imagery and differing political objectives.

For the purpose of clarifying the main premise of this analysis, it is helpful to address the question of how cultural identities are constructed. Benedict Anderson defines the nation as an imagined community: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion […]

Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.”396 This notion implies that imagery and representation are

essential in the construction of national identities. Accordingly, Anthony D. Smith argues

that together with a geographical territory, a political structure and a common economy,

it is the concept of cultural identity and the collective narrative of myths and memories

that bring the members of a nation together, allowing them to see themselves as

belonging to a same community, partaking in common experiences and sharing a similar

identity.397

Elaborating upon Anderson’s proposition, Stuart Hall explains the process

through which a nation’s cultural identity takes shape:

A national culture is a discourse—a way of constructing meanings which influences and organizes both our actions and our conceptions of ourselves. National cultures construct identities by producing meanings about “the nation” with which we can identify; these are contained in the

396 Italics in the original. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised and extended second edition (New York: Verso, 1991), 6.

397 A. D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: Univ. of Nevada Press, 1991), 14.

275 stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present with its past, and images which are constructed of it.398

In other words, the formulation of a nation’s cultural identity is a symbolic process

through which memories, stories, myths, metaphors, beliefs, scenarios, rituals, landscapes and historical events are interwoven into a narrative “told and retold in national histories, literatures, the media, and popular culture” (Hall 1996, 613). The lens of identity narratives is therefore relevant to the analysis of how Alonso formulated a Cuban identity in ballet. As Paul Cobley indicates, narrative is a means for representing individual identities but, at the same time, is “also bound with the notion of large-scale identities such as nation.”399 In this sense, narrative is a tool that permits embedding the identity of

Alonso and the Cuban ballet within the larger frame of a Cuban national identity, and

vice versa.

Ballet Aesthetics and the Tropes of a Cuban Identity

Representations of a Cuban identity are interwoven with commonly held beliefs

of what makes someone Cuban, how a Cuban behaves or what a Cuban’s attitudes are.

These beliefs are partly myths, metaphors and self-stereotypes. As Ruth Wodak and her

collaborators acknowledge in The Discursive Construction of National Identity (1999),

images of this sort, which attempt to portray a typical homo nationalis, play a central role

in the formulation of cultural identities. Referring to the construction of an Austrian

398 Italics in the original. S. Hall, “The Question of Cultural Identity,” in Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, ed. S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 613.

399 P. Cobley, Narrative (London: Routledge, 2001), 38.

276 identity, these scholars note, “The stereotypical image of a homo Austriacus is connected to the belief that there is a ‘typical Austrian character,’ ‘typically Austrian’ behaviour, and an ‘Austrian mentality’ […] It has also served as a kind of avatar of

‘essentialist’ notions of what is specifically Austrian.”400 As examples of such images,

their study cites “Austrians’ supposed tolerance and musical talent,” as well as their self-

representation as “happy, comfortable, friendly people who enjoy life and place great

value on enjoyment, especially eating and drinking.” Austrians also perceive themselves

as humorous and easy-going (Wodak et al 1999, 54-55, 193-94). The examination of

Alonso’s texts allows recognitions of tropes of a similar nature that circulate within the

larger discourse on Cuban culture and that permeate the Cuban ballet’s narrative of

identity.

One recurrent trope in Alonso’s formulation of the aesthetics of the Cuban school

was the popular idea that Cubans are part of a multiethnic ajiaco or stew. This metaphor underlay her discussion of how the multiracial character of the National Ballet of Cuba

reflected the local demographics, setting the company apart from peer institution across

the globe.401 Alonso recycled Fernando Ortiz’s ajíaco metaphor in frequent references to how the Spanish and African roots of the Island’s culture informed the aesthetics of

Cuban dancers. Explaining how she developed her personal style she stated, “The criteria

400 Inquiry into these tropes occupies a relevant place in these authors’ methodology, together with an examination of Austrians’ self-definition vis-à-vis Germany and the European Union, their relationship with their country’s monarchic and Nazi past and their narrative of the Austrian nation as an independent modern state with a foreign policy of neutrality. R. Wodak et al, The Discursive Construction of National Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1999), 54.

401 Chapter 3 analyzes Alonso’s views on the multiracial character of the Cuban ballet, in the context of an examination of how she opposed the idea that ballet is the exclusive province of white Europeans. Also, an explanation of Fernando Ortiz’s concept of transculturation is found in the same chapter, alongside references to how he used the ajiaco metaphor to illustrate such a concept.

277 evolved from the issue of race (the mixture of Spanish and African heritage), through rearing, education and cultural tradition.”402

The belief that Latin Americans are expressive people also influenced Alonso’s

description of the Cuban ballet aesthetics. In her opinion, the National Ballet of Cuba

brought to its performances a signature Latin American expressivity. Lecturing before the

students of the National School of Ballet in 2001, she asked them to go beyond mastering technical intricacies and focus on executing movement with expressivity:

This is one of our great advantages; it confers a definite personality to the National Ballet of Cuba. It is part of the Cuban school of ballet. What astonishes the world and what the world recognizes as a Cuban school is the combination of two things: your knowing how to execute the steps and your approaching those steps with an artistic sense […] When the dancers of the National Ballet of Cuba go on stage they become characters in a story; they are not merely executing technical, automatic movements—no! They are acting. It is one of the principal virtues of the National Ballet of Cuba, in comparison to other great international ensembles […] From the principal dancers to the most humble member of the corps de ballet, they are all acting.403

In addition, Alonso echoed the widespread view that, in their way of

communicating, Latinos accentuate gesticulation and emphasize bodily movements. “The

Latin American expresses himself with his whole body,” she pointed out.404 The notion

that Cubans engage their entire body in the act of communication transferred into her

aesthetics: “Generally, ballerinas forget that all the body should dance, from here [she

signals to the point of the feet] to here [she touches the top of her hair], and from here to

402 Quoted in P. Simón, La escueba cubana de ballet, 95.

403 A. Alonso, “El que no construye no vive” [Who does not build does not survive], transcript of a lecture offered during the inauguration of the National School of Ballet’s current facilities on Mar. 15, 2001, in Havana, in Cuba en el Ballet no. 98 (May-Dec. 2001), 9.

404 A. Alonso, “El latinoamericano se expresa con todo el cuerpo” [The Latin American expresses himself with his whole body], interview by A. Dallal, in Balletomanía (Mexico City) vol. 1, no. 2 (Nov.- Dec. 1981), 20-24, reprinted in Alonso’s Diálogos, 247.

278 here [she signals from the tip of the middle finger all the way to the shoulder]. It’s not only the torso, but the entire body.”405 In particular, Alonso aimed that the feet be as expressive as the hands. In conversation with Simón, she identified such an approach as a distinctive feature of the Cuban style: “For me, a foot speaks or, at least, that’s what I aim

for. The movement of a foot should not be done just to complete a bodily line, but rather

like when one uses a hand, as an expressive element.”406 Elsewhere, she insisted on this

philosophy: “I like to work with the feet very much. I think it’s effective, yes. And I think

it says so much. Dancers can say so much with their legs, their feet, and their arms. If you

put them together to say [sic] a gesture, it’s practically like there were words [in] what

you are saying with your whole body.”407 The view that Cuban dancers communicate

with their whole body has been, indeed, key to their training, as confirmed by Ramona de

Sáa, chief supervisor of the country’s network of ballet schools: “The leg does not end in

the ankle. The foot is highly important; it must speak […] just like a hand” (A. Alonso

and de Sáa 2004, 24).

Alonso’s understanding of gender roles in ballet embraced another familiar notion

of what constitutes Cuban behavior. In her opinion, the femininity of Cuban ballerinas

and the masculinity of their male counterparts were unmistakable—an idea that resonates

with notions of gender within the Island’s predominant culture of machismo. “There must

be contrast and complementation between the woman and the man: the femininity of one

405 A. Alonso, “Pas de Seul Alicia,” interview by R. E. Peláez, in Resumen Semanal, supplement of Granma (Havana), Jan. 17, 1982, 6-8; reprinted in Alonso’s Diálogos, 264. The annotations in brackets are Peláez’s.

406 Quoted by in P. Simón, La escuela cubana de ballet, 97.

407 A. Alonso, “Interview with Alicia Alonso,” conducted by M. Hunt, Nov. 19-21, 1977, typescript, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 65.

279 and the masculinity of the other must not be altered, since they serve a dramatic

purpose,” Alonso explained.408 Because the duets in most narrative ballets, and especially

the pas de deux in the classics, depict heterosexual romantic relationships, she proposed

that dancers must enact clearly differentiated feminine and masculine behavior to make

their portrayal of heterosexual characters believable. Walter Terry noted that the Cuban

dancers’ construction of gender conformed to heteronormative codes: “The Cuban men

are macho, that is, they wear their virility like a cloak of honor […] The distaff side of

Ballet Nacional is utterly feminine […] You will find no machonas (tomboys) here.”409

Alonso suggested that these normative representations of gender enhance the sense of dialogue that, according to her, must characterize the interaction between female and male dancers. She rooted such traditional gender roles in the Island’s social dance traditions: “The man and the woman always dance for each other. This feature is very

Cuban. You notice it when you watch Cuban social dances such as son and danzón.”410

In making this connection, she aimed to validate the Cuban school’s philosophy on the

pas de deux as a reflection of local conventions that emphasize the role of dance as a vehicle for heterosexual courtship and communication.

The popular belief that Cubans are skillful and talented dancers informed, too,

Alonso’s discourse on the Cuban ballet. Speaking for her countrymen, the ballerina asserted, “We are a people who express our joy by means of the dance. We simply like

408 A. Alonso, “Bailar ha sido vivir” [To dance has been to live], interview by L. Tomé, in El Mercurio (Santiago, Chile), Nov. 19, 2000, E24, expanded and reprinted in Diálogos, 327-33.

409 W. Terry, Alicia and her Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1981), 62.

410 A. Alonso, “Plática informal” [Informal chat], transcript of an interview by A. Pérez Vidal for the TV program “Muy personal,” broadcasted by Cubavisión (Havana) on July 1, 1996, reproduced in Alonso’s Diálogos, 318.

280 dancing.”411 The image of Cubans as superb dancers has circulated not only locally

but also internationally and, thus, it has shaped perceptions of the Island’s ballet dancers

outside Cuba. For instance, watching the National Ballet of Cuba, the prominent New

York critic Clive Barnes saw “people flying through what is very clearly their element— dance.” In his view, Cubans had “a gift for the dance.”412 In the internal discourse on the

Cuban school of ballet, the equivalent of this image has been the listing of a number of

parameters of technical excellence. According to a conversation among Alonso, de Sáa

and Simón, the Cuban methodology goes farther than other training methodologies in

promoting meticulousness in the execution of ballet’s basic positions and emphasizing

the en dehors rotation of the legs to a 180º angle—elements that form the keystone of

ballet technique and are fundamental for displaying virtuosity. Among other technical

skills that, in these specialists’ opinion, make Cuban dancers stand out are a developed

sense of balance, precision and speed in beating the legs in petit allegro steps, and the

ability to execute a high number of consecutive pirouettes and other turns, as well as to

turn slowly with a sustained quality (A. Alonso and de Sáa 2004, 22-25, 27).413 Such

cultivation of the image of the Cuban ballet dancer as a first-rate virtuoso is tied easily to notions of the Cuban people as superbly talented dancers. Alonso deduced that since dance is “a form of spontaneous expression” for Cubans and an essential part of their

cultural and ethnic identity, they were “exceptionally, naturally gifted for the various

411 A. Alonso, “Alicia Alonso, Living on the Tips of Her Toes,” in Culture and the Cuban Revolution, Conversations in Havana, ed. J. M. Kirk and L. Padura Fuentes (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001), 44.

412 C. Barnes, “Cuban Ballet Enchanting,” New York Post, June 15, 1978.

413 See also P. Simón, “La escuela cubana de ballet,” 95-97. In this essay, Simón extensively quoted an analysis of the technical features of the Cuban school by Alonso, in which the ballerina confirmed that this set of skills was part of the arsenal distinguishing Cuban dancers.

281 manifestations of theatrical dance.”414 She conflated the myth with the fact that

outstanding training endows local ballet dancers with a highly developed technique.

A myth of similar character is the trope of the musical Cuban, according to which the Island’s inhabitants are innately musical or, to speak metaphorically, carry music in

their blood. Alonso incorporated this view in her discussion of the musicality of Cuban

ballet dancers, which she saw as a culturally-determined feature distinguishing them from

dancers from other countries. It is important to note that, in their essentialization of the

character of Cubans, this and the other tropes acquire a stereotypical dimension that cannot do justice to the heterogeneity among Cubans. The tropes that form a cultural identity should be understood as narrative attempts to represent a community cohesively by highlighting any perceived common features of its members—independently of whether these perceptions are valid in relationship to particular individuals in the group.

Additionally, these tropes are not exclusive to the Cuban discourse of self-representation.

Although a cultural identity narrative is a discourse of difference by means of which a community represents itself as dissimilar from other communities, such narrative cannot mask the fact that different cultures and peoples often share such culturally-constructed myths, stories and conventions. Cultures do not emerge in a vacuum but rather from the sediments and influences of other cultures. This hybridity, as Edward Said observes, is accountable for commonalities across national boundaries: “Far from being unitary or monolithic or autonomous things, cultures actually assume more ‘foreign’ elements,

414 A. Alonso, “La danza: triunfo ilimitado de nuestras culturas,” 69.

282 alterities, differences, than they can consciously exclude.”415 Furthermore, different

cultures may attach nationalist symbolism to features that, even when acquiring a

character specific to the culture, are common to most humanity. For example, both

Cubans and Austrians posit musicality as a cultural marker.

It is difficult to ascertain the degree to which Alonso was conscious of her

reproduction of myths, metaphors and stereotypes that circulate in the larger discourse on

Cuban culture. When she represented the Cuban ballet dancers as particularly musical,

technically gifted and in command of eloquent expressivity, she seemed to unconsciously

give voice to internalized notions of what it means to be Cuban. Meanwhile, her

insistence on the multiracial character of the Cuban ballet and the definite masculinity of

its male dancers and femininity of its ballerinas seemed the result of a deliberate alignment with the Cuban Revolution’s attitudes on race and gender. As no other national government before, Castro’s regime acknowledged the multiracial character of the

Island’s population and promoted racial equality. At the same time, it stigmatized homosexuals and encouraged heterosexual behavior, with the result that rigid views of masculinity and femininity reinforced the Island’s culture of machismo.416 It is beyond

the scope of this dissertation to analyze how each of these tropes has shaped the narrative

of identity of the Cuban ballet. Instead, the following sections focus on Alonso’s

recycling of the trope of the musical Cuban and conceptualization of musicality as an

element of the Cuban ballet’s aesthetics.

415 E. Said, Culture and Imperialism, first edition (New York: Knopf, 1993), second edition (New York: Vintage 1994), 15.

416 For an analysis of the Cuban government’s policies on race and homosexuality, see A. de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001), 259-339, and M. Leiner, Sexual Politics in Cuba: Machismo, Homosexuality and AIDS (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 21-59.

283 Features of a Cuban Musicality: Phrasing, Melody and Tempo

One of the features that cemented Alicia Alonso’s reputation as an outstanding

ballerina was her sophisticated sense of musicality. Professional dancers, who must

master complex rhythmic structures and phrase movement in varied manners, are

expected to respond to music with precision, eloquence and creativity. While this is a

requisite ability for all dancers, in Alonso’s case it was especially refined. She was

frequently praised for the specific ways in which she reacted to music or executed

movement with an intrinsic musical quality. For instance, explaining what made her “one

of the great Giselles of all times,” the British dancer Anton Dolin, an eminent authority

on nineteenth-century ballet, highlighted how attuned to music she was: “One of the

greatest assets that Alonso had since the very beginning of her great career was her

wonderful musicality. She is an extraordinarily musical dancer.”417 Critics, too, praised

and discussed Alonso’s musicality. After she performed Giselle in the Soviet Union in

1957, Tatiana Vecheslova commented in the magazine Soviet Culture that part of the

artist’s perfection was her ability to perceive the vibrations of the music.418 In 1967, her

appearances in the same ballet in London prompted John Percival, critic of Dance and

Dancers, to observe, “The way she phrases the principal solo in act 1 is breathtaking in

its smooth flow; she makes the movement sing.”419 Similarly, in a review for El Destino

that followed a performance of Giselle in Barcelona in 1969, Sebastián Gasch extolled,

417 Dolin made this remark in “Alicia Alonso,” telecast aired on WNET/13, New York, on May 9, 1971, available in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

418 An excerpt of Vecheslova’s review is reproduced, in Spanish translation, in XLV Aniversario de Alicia Alonso en el personaje de Giselle [XLV Anniversary of Alicia Alonso’s debut in the role of Giselle] (Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de la Habana, 1988), no page numbers.

419 J. Percival, “Caribbean Classic,” in Dance and Dancers (London), Jan. 1967, 42.

284 “Music dictates all her movements; she has an absolute sense of rhythm.”420 Two

years later, when she returned to Barcelona as Giselle, Alonso’s performance wowed

Juan Arnau, who praised the ballerina on the pages of Tele-Express for her emotional use

of musicality: “Yes, music; and how deep, how beautiful and, above all, how lyric! In her

dancing Alicia Alonso displays a superior technique but first she makes music. Alonso’s

musical phrasing shows her mysterious power for creating nuance and giving birth to a

world of subtle emotions.”421 Appearances as Giselle in Rome and New York in 1978

elicited similar observations. In Paese Sera, Vittoria Ottolengui described Alonso as “an

incredibly fascinating dancer of profound musicality,” while in the The New York Post

Clives Barnes brought attention to “her legato rhythm, her musicality” and “her very

confident musical phrasing.”422

The National Ballet of Cuba’s film of Giselle (1963) captures the musical qualities that made Alonso deserving of these comments.423 One of the most

accomplished scenes in the film is the initial duet of Giselle and Albrecht in the second

act. Albrecht, performed by Azari Plisetski, has just glimpsed the ghost of Giselle, but it

has been so fleeting a vision that he doubts what his eyes have seen. However, Giselle

has come out of the forest to dance with him, reassuring him of her presence. The

420 The review, titled “Una Giselle memorable” [A Giselle to Remember], is reprinted in El Ballet Nacional de Cuba en Europa, 1969: críticas [The National Ballet of Cuba in Europe, 1969: reviews] (Havana, 1969?), 5-7.

421 Quoted in F. Rey and P. Simón, Alicia Alonso: órbita de una leyenda [Alicia Alonso: orbit of a legend] (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores de España, 1996), 114.

422 A fragment of Ottolengui’s text is reprinted in Spanish in XLV Aniversario de Alicia Alonso en el personaje de Giselle, no page numbers. C. Barnes, “Cuban Ballet and Alonso Are Sensational,” in New York Post, June 15, 1978.

423 Giselle, film featuring Alicia Alonso, Azari Plisetski and the National Ballet of Cuba, directed by E. Pineda Barnet (Havana: ICAIC, 1963), released in VHS in the United States (Kultur Video, 1995).

285 composer of the score, Adolph Adam, wrote very simple music to accompany the duet of the principals. A basic three-note motive for the strings is repeated throughout the scene. It is suggestive of a breathing pattern. In a dotted sixteenth note in D played sostenuto, the melody swells up, conveying the quality of a slow inhalation. A thirty- second note in F# and an eighth note in A create, in turn, a feeling of exhalation, bringing a sense of release.424 The breathing quality of the motive determines the design of the

steps; choreographer Jules Perrot established a parallel with the swelling and release by

having Giselle rise and descend on and off pointe to this musical pattern. Alonso’s

movements intently mirror the breath rhythm. As the music swells up, she rises en pointe

and reaches up with an aerial accent. As the melody lingers, she stretches the duration of

the steps. As the sound recedes into silence, her movements seem to dissolve into the

space above her, her arms and legs gradually slowing down toward the end of each

gesture. Strong pointe work and balance are necessary to surmount the technical

difficulties of the passage, but in Alonso’s interpretation the choreography seems as

natural and easy as breathing; the effortlessness of her dancing enhances the atmosphere

of simplicity and smoothness that the music evokes.

Phrasing is the key element that supports Alonso’s effort to physicalize the

music’s melody and atmosphere. Also, it is through phrasing, particularly the use of

ritardandos, that she conveys the ethereality of Giselle. These gradual delays in tempo make her movements seem light and diffuse, like a weightless creature’s. In one sequence

Giselle and Albrecht repeatedly exchange their places on stage. Four times, they pass

424 Although the specific tones change in subsequent reappearances of the musical motive, the melody maintains the overall contour of the original three notes. The author thanks Dr. Mike Masci for his help in reading the score. See “Larghetto,” rehearsal no. 34, in A. Adam, Giselle, conductor’s score (Boca Raton, FL: Edwin F. Kalmus and Co., 1993?), 147.

286 each other traveling sideways in a phrase consisting of soutenu, tombé, chassé and assemblé battu. Each time, in preparation for the pas tombé, Alonso stands en pointe in a fifth position soutenu. Sustaining this pose as long as possible, she delays the initiation of the pas tombé. The music, as played in the film, already includes a ritardando for each time that Giselle moves from the fifth position into the pas tombé. Still, Alonso manages to magnify the effect by staying en pointe even beyond the ritardando in the music.

Standing on the points of her feet, she starts tilting to the side almost imperceptibly, progressively going off balance and yet delaying the moment of giving in to gravity. She holds the position for as long as possible, while her body visibly shifts from a vertical to a tilted axis. She continues to tilt, beyond the point when her center of gravity has moved outside the minimal surface of support of her pointes, until her balance is so precarious that the tombé cannot be postponed anymore. Rushing in the tombé, she catches up with the music. With such interplay of ritardando an accelerando, she not only adds rhythmic gradation to the choreography but also conveys the notion that Giselle is not bound to the law of gravity.

Alonso also stresses the linking of individual steps into a continuous flow, an effect designated as enchaînement in the ballet terminology and equivalent to musical legato. Throughout the duet, she must hold a series of Romantic poses that punctuate the choreography. However, rather than standing still in these poses, she transitions through them without pauses. She uses the poses to segue from the culmination of the previous movement phrase to the preparation for the next one, intermingling ending and beginning. Instead of striking a pose at the precise moment when the corresponding musical measure finishes, she continues moving beyond the musical measure, making the

287 movement linger as she collects her arms and head and serenely takes air in with a deep inhalation that animates her torso. Without stopping, she subtly initiates gestures that lead her into the next phrase: her chest leans forward, her arms reach ahead with a slight undulation and her head rises in the direction of the next movement. In this subtle

progression, she engages each bodily part sequentially in a way that anticipates the

music. By the time the next measure of the score begins, her complete body is already in

motion. The overall effect of this dynamic way of rendering a pose is a delicate

reverberation that makes her Giselle appear as if floating in a gentle breeze: she gleams

quietly, never alighting.

Further adding to this effect of reverberation, Alonso discreetly manipulates her

long tutu so that the fabric is in continuous movement throughout the scene. In the middle

of a phrase, she might pinch the edge of the dress and subtly throw it upwards. The very

light fabric, in the wake of her movements, slowly rises and falls around her, surrounding

her in a soft cloud of motion that enhances the legato of the choreography.

A section of the duet in which Albrecht lifts Giselle above his head and then

brings her down to a lunging pose is another example of the continuous flow of Alonso’s

execution. The lift happens twice. It starts with Alonso balancing in an arabesque en

pointe, facing away from her partner. From this pose, she steps backward, turns toward

him, runs and leaps up as he catches her in his arms. He makes her turn in midair while

she holds a delicate pose, from which she lands into a fourth position lunge with her back

arched in a pronounced cambré, her head almost touching the floor. Both times, Alonso

performs the sequence seamlessly from beginning to end, with a smoothness that masks

the difficulty of the partnering, changes of directions and forceful transitions through low,

288 middle and high spatial levels. Essential to the flowing quality of her movement is the work of her arms, which move uninterruptedly in ample circular gestures that infuse the passage with grace and silkiness. Indeed, throughout the entire duet Alonso’s hands never stop moving.

Observations by Alonso’s colleagues and reviews of her performances underscore that flowing phrasing defined her style both musically and dramatically. In an article for

the New York Herald Tribune in 1958, Walter Terry described the ballerina’s style as

“more flowing and passionate” when he compared her interpretation of Giselle to those

of Nora Kaye, Alicia Markova and Galina Ulanova. Judging from Terry’s observation,

this feature distinguished her from other dancers.425 Choreographer Agnes de Mille, who

for many years worked with Alonso in Ballet Theatre, eloquently confirmed this view:

Other dancers go through the schooled positions and transitions with varying degrees of expertise. Alicia murmurs, sighs, seems to be talking. There are no positions, no transitions, only yieldings, bestowings, yearnings, gestures that are serenely loving and of a continuing, living breath. She moves in life. Her feet, her torso, her arms, neck, and eyes, are one continuing action, taking their dynamics from her meaning.426

There is a clear sense in this passage that, in addition to its musical qualities, Alonso’s

phrasing had a dramatic purpose: her articulation of movement conveyed psychological and physical aspects of the roles that she danced. Terry hinted at this connection between musicality and expressiveness when he juxtaposed the adjectives “flowing” and

“passionate” in describing Alonso’s Giselle. Similarly, dance critic Edwin Denby pointed to phrasing as the essential tool that allowed Alonso to express the essence of the role of

Ate in Antony Tudor’s Undertow (1945). He observed that she might have followed the

425 W. Terry, “American Ballet Theatre,” in New York Herald Tribune, Sep. 20, 1958.

426 A. de Mille, Portrait Gallery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 81.

289 obvious path of performing Tudor’s highly theatrical choreography “as a series of striking gestures” and “given the impression of an acid caricature.” Instead, she created by means of her phraising what Denby saw as a realistic portrait: “Subordinating the separate detail to a continuous fluidity of movement, she gives you the sense of a real girl’s instinctive rhythm of motion, she creates a real and living character.”427

Footage of Alonso and Jorge Esquivel in the adagio of Odette and Sigfried in

Swan Lake’s second act, taken in 1977, illustrates an aspect of Alonso’s musicality that proved somewhat controversial: her adoption of a considerably slower tempo in some of the classics.428 In this video, Alonso executes the choreography in nine minutes and fifteen seconds—much longer than performances of the same scene in films and videorecordings of other celebrated Odettes from the second half of the twentieth century. Dancing the adagio takes Maya Plisetskaya seven minutes and six seconds in a film from 1957.429 Consistently, Plisetskaya performs the same scene in seven minutes in

footage from 1973.430 Meanwhile, Margot Fonteyn completes the sequence in less than seven minutes in a videorecording from 1966.431 In the case of Natalia Makavora, the

427 E. Denby, “Ballet Theatre’s Season”, in New York Herald Tribune, May 13, 1945, reprinted in Dance Writings and Poetry (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998), 160.

428 Swan Lake, footage of A. Alonso and J. Esquivel in the adagio of Odette and Sigfried, second act, 1977, in Youtube, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=JTVCaWap-Jo&feature=PlayList&p= 19B1A396F977349D, consulted on Oct. 15, 2009.

429 Swan Lake, film of a performance by M. Plisetskaya, N. Fadeyechev and the Bolshoi Ballet (Moscow: Central Documentary Film Studio, 1957), issued in VHS (West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 1984).

430 Swan Lake, footage of M. Plisetskaya and V. Kovtun in a 1973 performance of the second act’s pas de deux, in Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuzuVsqc0ZM, consulted on Oct. 17, 2009.

431 Swan Lake, film featuring M. Fontey, R. Nureyev and the Vienna State Opera (Munich and Vienna: Unitel/Neue Thalia Film, 1966), reissued on DVD (New York: PolyGram, 1998).

290 adagio takes seven minutes and thirty-three seconds in a videorecording from

1982.432 The fact that Alonso’s performance lasts approximately two minutes longer than

those of her colleagues is a consequence of her markedly slower tempo rather than

differences in the four adaptations of Lev Ivanov’s choreography; although there are a

few choreographic discrepancies in the four ballerinas’ interpretations, they all dance

Tchaikovsky’s musical passage in its integrity, with the exception of Fonteyn, in whose

performance a small number of bars are missing at the end.

One could speculate that Alonso’s reason for dancing at a slower tempo was

related to her age or vision problems at the time—she was fifty-seven years old when the

footage was taken. However, the ballerina would not acknowledge either of these motives in her explanation of why she adopted this practice. Instead, she regarded it as a matter of

style. Alonso argued that the aim of her idiosyncratic tempo in Swan Lake was to enjoy

extra time to explore in more detail all the choreographic elements supporting the

dramatic construction: “There is so much to pack into it, so much to do, that I have to

discover all the possibilities and meanings in the role.”433 Indeed, reviews of her

performances attest to how Alonso’s slow tempos proceeded from deliberate stylistic

choices rather than physical limitations. Some critics observed that she contrasted the

very slow passages with hasty scenes that showcased intact agility and virtuoso

technique. In the New York Times, Dan McDonagh commented that in a performance of

Giselle in Montreal in 1967, “the at times excessively changed tempos were handled

432 Swan Lake, videorecording featuring Natalia Makavora, Anthony Dowell and the Royal Ballet (West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, 1982).

433 Quoted in A. Barzel, “Tres bailarinas en la historia de la danza” [Three ballerinas in dance history], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 8, no. 2 (May-Aug., 1977), 46.

291 flawlessly as Miss Alonso moved from adagio to allegro more smoothly than one

would have thought possible.”434 Similarly, in a review of the same performance in

Dance Magazine, Doris Hering took notice of Alonso’s radically opposing tempos. After

praising the ballerina’s “exquisite technical flourishing,” Hering objected to how “she

now plays too much with the tempi, contrasting excessively slow passages with sudden

accelerandos.”435 Two years later, when Alonso appeared as Giselle in Copenhagen,

Ebbe Mork, a critic for Politiken, observed that the dancer achieved a very special effect

by dramatically transitioning between very slow and violently fast tempos.436

Even if critics expressed reservations about Alonso’s unconventional tempos, they acknowledged that through them, and particularly through her slower renderings of the choreography, she was able to enhance her performances. For instance, while categorizing the ballerina’s practice as unorthodox, Barzel concluded, “In reality, she fills every fleeting second with her beautiful and meaningful dance” (Barzel 1977, 46). In the meantime, in a review of a performance of Swan Lake for the Montreal Star in 1971,

Zelda Heller commented, “Certainly many of the tempos she takes are exceptionally

slow: but they lie within a cadre of expressivity that makes the slowness itself an added

achievement.”437 In 1990, when Alonso performed an excerpt of Swan Lake at the

Metropolitan Opera House in New York, critic Jennie Schulman observed in Backstage

434 D. McDonagh, “Alicia Alonso Dances Giselle with Canadian Cast,” New York Times, June 26, 1967, 37.

435 D. Hering, “ The Unavoidable Decade,” in Dance Magazine (Aug. 1967), 36.

436 Quoted in Spanish in XLV Aniversario de Alicia Alonso en el personaje de Giselle, no page numbers.

437 Z. Heller, “Alicia Quivering in Flight: Ole! Cuban Ballet Triumphs,” in The Montreal Star, June 17, 1971, p. 54.

292 that, as a result of the ballerina’s slow tempo, her unhurried quadruple turns gave the special illusion of dissolving into the space around her.438 Also, reflecting on Alonso’s

rallentandi, the Spanish dramatist and scholar Francisco Nieva remarked that they allowed viewers to “read the choreographic design more legibly than in the case of other artists,” and that the slower phrasing served “the purpose of emphasis.”439 In conjunction

with the flowing quality of her movement, the liberties Alonso took with tempos, accelerandos and ralletandos distinguished her style as highly individual and recognizable.

Nevertheless, Alonso regarded her sense of musicality as much more than a trait of her individual style. For the ballerina, her way of responding to music was a reflection of her native Cuban culture. In fact, she did not consider her brand of musicality as exclusive to her but as something that she shared with other dancers from her country, claiming it was among the distinctive characteristics of a Cuban aesthetics in ballet.

Statements on her own musicality and the musicality of other Cuban dancers were part of her argument to make a case for the existence of a Cuban school. In 1985, when journalists asked her to explain the notion of Cubanness, she listed a number of elements that embodied what she saw “as Cubanness in ballet or as a Cuban school of ballet.”

Musicality was high in her list, which she preceded with an observation on how this and other distinctive features of Cuban dancers were an expression of their national culture:

“I have to start by pointing out that the idiosyncrasies of a people find clear expression in

438 Quoted in P. Simón, “En el cincuentenario del Ballet Theatre” [In the fiftieth anniversary of Ballet Theatre], in Cuba en el Ballet vol. 1, no. 1 (1990), 8.

439 F. Nieva, “Como nunca se había bailado” [As no one had danced before], in Cuba en el Ballet no. 93 (Jan.-Apr. 1999), 31.

293 its dancers.” She continued, “We Cuban dancers move in a peculiar way, and we use

the music in a very special way when we dance both folkloric and theatrical forms.”440

Similarly, in a discussion of how the National Ballet of Cuba gave voice to a Cuban

cultural identity, she explained that this could be noticed in the “musical execution and

choreographic adaptation of the same steps in use by other dancers, companies and

schools.”441

Commenting on the specific manifestations of the Cuban school’s brand of

musicality, Alonso moved between giving examples from her own dancing and making

generalizations about Cuban dancers as a group. In line with the critics’ observations that her phrasing emphasized flow and enchaînement, Alonso’s description of her style highlighted the sense of continuity that she strived for: “I do [Giselle] like a chain… one movement flowing into the next, one feeling or expression evolving into the next, a progression going from place to place […] Everything, every step, has a continuity.”442

She also argued that all ballet dancers from the Island articulated movement in this

characteristic manner: “A peculiar way of phrasing, of transitioning from one step to

another, distinguishes Cuban dancers.”443 Elaborating on how this set Cubans apart from

other ballet dancers, she stated, “[In the Cuban school,] movements are not disjointed but

elastic and linked to each other. In other schools, the movements are sharper […] and drier […] However, in our case I see and believe that movements are more linked and

440 A. Alonso, “…Pero el artista sí,” 282.

441 A. Alonso, “Seguiré bailando eternamente” [I will dance for eternity], interview by H. García Fernández, in Juventud Rebelde (Havana), Dec. 29, 2001, 7; reprinted in A. Alonso’s Diálogos (2004), 336.

442 Quoted in W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 82.

443 A. Alonso, “Bailar ha sido vivir,” E24.

294 more elastic.”444 (Her rhetoric, as this statement exemplifies, was not exempt from an

exceptionalist perspective, often present in nationalist discourses, that casts the features

of a culture as unique.) Alonso’s analysis of the constitutive elements of a Cuban

aesthetics also addressed her contrasting tempos. “I play with rubato. I like to change

from moving very slowly to very fast.” She rooted such preference into her cultural

background: “It’s like when you speak. It has to do with our character, with our culture,

with the way we are. We Cubans can act very slowly and, all of a sudden, get very

excited.”445

In a further attempt to describe the distinctiveness of Cuban dancers’ musicality,

Alonso advanced the notion that she and her fellow countrymen were more attuned to

melody, whereas dancers from other schools related primarily to rhythm in taking their

cues from the music:

In regard to music, our inspiration comes from the melody. It inspires us more than rhythm […] We dance and speak more to the melody than to the rhythm. I believe it comes from our folklore. It’s the Spanish and African influences. I don’t know how to explain it, but it also seems to me that it has to do with our climate and the characteristics of our ambience. There is a certain sensuality that we capture in our way of dancing, in our movements (Alonso and de Sáa 2004, 20).446

Clearly, Alonso understood this specific feature of Cubans’ musicality as an expression

of a broader national ethos that encompassed not only a cultural heritage but also a

particular climate and environment. For her, such ambience had a wide-ranging effect on

the behavior of Cubans; it determined their way of speaking and their way of moving to

444 A. Alonso and R. de Sáa, “Definir cómo bailamos,” 21.

445 Interview of Alicia Alonso conducted by D. Hering on July 21, 1979, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; catalogued as “Interview with Alicia Alonso [sound recording].”

446 Italics in the original.

295 music. However, Alonso’s proposed opposition between melody and rhythm is problematic—perhaps it was an unintended effect of her acknowledged inability to explain with precision what made a Cuban brand of musicality distinctive or sensual. It is difficult to specify how she might have reacted to these two entities separately. In the scores of ballets such as Swan Lake and Giselle, rhythm and melody do not work

independently but are seamlessly interrelated. Melodic contours are defined not only by

the tones that form a musical phrase but also by the time intervals between the notes.

Therefore, a dancer who follows a melody is, by force, following a rhythm. Still, Alonso

asserted that when she danced it was noticeable that she followed the melody rather than

the rhythm, remarking that she gained awareness of this trait of her dancing because an

acknowledged expert on the relation between music and dance perceived it and brought it

to her attention. The observer was no other than the choreographer George Balanchine:

“It was Balanchine who made me conscious of a feature of my dancing that I possessed

by instinct and of which I was unaware. One day, after seeing me dance the second act of

Swan Lake, he commented: ‘You, your arms, dance to the melody more than to the

rhythm.’”447

At the most basic level, dancers can organize the dialogue between musical and

choreographic structures by relying on rhythm, a common denominator of music and

dance. Sophisticated dancers also take into account the dynamics, phrasing, timbres,

emotional colors and, of course, melodic shapes of the music. Alonso revealed that she

447 A. Alonso, “George Balanchine: el gran músico de la danza” [George Balanchine: the great musician of dance], published in a first version as “Tema y variaciones a 40 años de su estreno” [Theme and Variations forty years after its premiere], in Cuba en el ballet vol. 6, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1987), 24-26; reworked into a second version for the program notes of a gala in tribute to George Balanchine by the National Ballet of Cuba, Havana, Oct. 20, 2000; reprinted in Alonso’s Diálogos, 136-39.

296 took cues from all of these elements. In an explanation of how she related to music, the ballerina provided details on how she nuanced her performances in relationship to different qualities:

In moving my head, arms and upper body with varying force, I picked cues from the instruments. If a violin played, the movement could be soft and legato. If it was a trombone, the gesture could be strong. You take advantage of the sounds to give different values to the movements of your body.448

This statement explicitly exemplifies the key roles of timbre and orchestration in

Alonso’s response to music. Her words shed light onto how she reacted to the different instruments’ voices, and the phrasing (legato or staccato) and dynamics (soft or strong) of such voices. Perhaps it was this type of multilayered response to music that Alonso wanted to evoke by saying that “when we [Cubans] dance, we follow the melody instead of the rhythm” (A. Alonso 2000b, 332). Rather than setting an opposition between melody and rhythm, the aim of such a formulation may have been to convey that she and other Cuban dancers were sophisticated in their response to music. After all, it is not easy to define a dancer’s musicality. Explaining how it operates and describing how it is physically evident are complicated tasks, given that words capture with difficulty the intricate subtleties of music and movement—and even more so the interplay of these two languages.

448 Alicia Alonso Coaching Excerpts from Theme and Variations, video recording (New York: The George Balanchine Foundation, 1998).

297 A Cuban Musicality Imagined or Acquired?

Alonso was not the only one who struggled to define what was specific about

Cuban dancers’ musicality. For instance, the British dance critic Arnold Haskell, who paid close attention to the phenomenon of the Cuban ballet, had to resort to metaphors and similes when explaining the Cuban musicality. Referring to the hypothetical figure of a typical Cuban ballerina, he wrote,

She is sensual and seems to caress the music. This phrase, “to caress the music,” is, believe me, expressive of what I feel […] In the classics, the tempo of the adagio is slower. I have seen a sensual and warm Latin quality, the quality of people who awake and stretch in the sun. The balance of these dancers is especially notable. They believe to have enough time to enjoy the movement in all its plenitude.449

While he identified concrete aspects of a Cuban brand of musicality, such as the slower tempo of the adagio and the prolonged rallentandos in holding precarious poses in balance, Haskell also felt the presence of intangibles. He conceded, “It is impossible to

use scientific language to describe an art as subtle as dance” (Haskell 1973, 10). Thus, the critic complemented his analysis with adjectives and metaphors of more elusive meaning,

depicting the dancer as warm, tropical, sensual, relaxed and caressing.

Haskell’s description is significant not just because it shows the difficulty of

defining the specific properties of the musicality of Cuban dancers. Also, in constructing

449 Quoted in P. Simón, “La escuela cubana de ballet,” 99. In the prologue to his book ¿Qué es el ballet?, Haskell offers a similar description as part of his recollection of performances by the Cuban ballerinas Loipa Araujo, Aurora Bosch, Josefina Méndez and Mirta Pla in the International Ballet Festivals of Varna in 1964, 1965 and 1966: “Exalted by the heat of the Cuban sun, they were magnificently sensual and feminine, and displayed perfect balance, great speed and superb elevation, but in their adagio movements they seemed to caress the music […] The light and the heat of the sun, the flexibility of the Cuban body, the natural grace of its movements, the rhythm of music heard from the earliest childhood, the innate effusion and generosity of people as anxious to share their art as they are to share everything else: all these things shape the movement in their way of dancing.” A. Haskell, ¿Qué es el ballet? [What is ballet?] (Havana: Cuadernos Populares, 1973), 9-10.

298 their musicality as specifically Latin, this critic, like Alonso, attributed its origins to the country’s climate and the sensuality of its inhabitants. Terry, another critic who followed the development of the Cuban ballet closely, espoused the same view. In his opinion, while the National Ballet of Cuba and the many ballet schools on the Island adhered to “the centuries-old danse d’école,” they brought to it a distinctive inflection, an

“unmistakably Latin” quality that distinguished the “musical and dramatic movement, accent and phrasing” of the Cuban dancers.450 Terry also described Alonso’s style metaphorically. In a review of her Giselle, he brought attention to certain “Latin warmth”

that conferred a broad palette of dramatic colors to her performance.451

The fact that Alonso and these foreign critics coincided in portraying the Cuban style in terms of sensuality and warmth—two common qualities in characterizations of

Cubans and Latin Americans—points to how the description of this musicality has taken place within narratives of cultural representation, drawing on common imagery that circulates both inside and outside the Island. Still, it is legitimate to raise the question of whether there is a real basis, apart from such narratives, for believing that Cuban dancers are particularly musical. In the context of a discussion of how their musicality has been termed “Latin,” it is pertinent to acknowledge that “Latin,” in the case of Cubans, can be construed as the racial mixture of Spanish and African ancestors. When she referred to how African and Spanish legacies, in her view, predispose Cuban dancers to be especially musical, Alonso highlighted the richness of dance traditions in such ancestral cultures:

450 W. Terry, “Dance,” in Saturday Review (New York), Nov. 24, 1979, 52.

451 W. Terry, “The Ballet Theatre,” in New York Herald Tribune, Apr. 15, 1955; reprinted in W. Terry, I Was There: Selected Dance Reviews and Articles, 1936-1976 (New York: Dekker, 1978), 295.

299 The foundations of the Cuban national profile are two vast cultural antecedents—in both of which dance constitutes an expression of great richness and strength. The exuberance of our musical and dance folklore is a product of the assimilation of the Spanish and African traditions. Such assimilation also enriched and determined the features of theatrical dance in our country, including ballet.452

What is the possibility that processes of socialization justify Alonso’s suggestion that

local culture determines the stylistic distinctiveness of Cuban dancers and, in particular,

their supposed heightened musicality? Could it be that the rich musical life of the Island

provides a nurturing environment for the socialization of Cubans into musical individuals?

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus offers a helpful tool in understanding how socialization affects bodily practices. The French sociologist developed this concept while studying the customs of peasants in Béarn, France, and Kabylie, Algeria, where he observed that family upbringing and educational experience endowed individuals with not only specific ways of perceiving themselves and being in the world but also with a repertory of bodily practices in accordance with their culture, gender, social class and region. In Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972), Bourdieu explains that the habitus

“designates a way of being, a habitual state (especially of the body) and, in particular, a

predisposition, tendency, propensity or inclination” to act, feel, think and move in certain

ways.453 Reinforcing the bodily properties of this concept, Bourdieu argues in Sociology

452 A. Alonso, “Sobre la escuela cubana de ballet,” 64.

453 P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique: Précédé de troi etudes d’ethnologie kabyle (Geneva: Droz, 1972), translated as Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 214.

300 in Question (1980) that the habitus is “durably incorporated in the body in the form of permanent dispositions.”454

Using the conceptual framework of the habitus, anthropologist Sheenagh

Pietrobruno attempts to explain why non-Caribbean salsa dancers often experience

difficulty in mastering the subtle bodily isolations that most people from the Caribbean, including Cubans, exhibit in their salsa movements. Pietrobuno espouses the view that

Caribbeans who learn salsa in a “lived context,” instead of in a studio, have a disposition to acquire with relative ease salsa’s complex technique for isolating the head, shoulders, arms, hips and legs—bodily parts that, in accordance with the West African roots of salsa, are often moved separately during the dance.455 In Cuba, salsa is not taught

formally. There are no dance studios where the locals could learn this form; instead,

Cuban children and adolescents learn salsa from family members, or from playmates and

peers who already know the form. In this process, Pietrobruno indicates, “bodily

isolations are picked up by experiencing the family dance culture,” in a similar manner to

“how we acquire everyday gestures.” In her opinion, this takes place not through

conscious imitation but through what Bourdieu calls practical mimesis, a form of

unconscious acquisition, intrinsic to socialization, by virtue of which the isolation

technique becomes deep-seated bodily knowledge (Pietrobruno 2006, 114-15). Similarly,

in a recent ethnography of salsa training in Savoy, Illinois, Joanna Bosse confirms that

the correct execution of the multiple bodily isolations typical of Cuban dance is a cultural

454 P. Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980), translated as Sociology in Question, trans. R. Nice (London: Saget, 1993), 86.

455 S. Pietrobruno, Salsa and Its Transnational Moves (New York: Lexington Books, 2006), 113- 14.

301 marker that distinguishes Caribbean dancers from non-Caribbean Latin American dancers and white North American dancers. Like Pietrobruno, Bosse believes that

Bourdieu’s theory helps to explain this phenomenon.456

Using the lens of the habitus to examine dance learning among Caribbean people

is relevant to Alonso’s conjecture that the musicality of Cuban ballet dancers is the result

of their growth within a local culture with rich musical and dance traditions. Bodily

isolations, as manifested in salsa and other Cuban dance forms, infuse dancing with a

quality of continuous flow that can be construed as sensual and warm. In son, salsa and

some varieties of rumba, the alternating opposition of knees, hips, ribcage and shoulders

gives a sense of constant spinal undulation. It is plausible that ballet dancers from the

Island share a disposition to move with a flowing quality because of a shared aesthetic

taste, acquired through their experience of local dances in which such quality is valued.

This would be consistent with Alonso’s hypothesis that the features distinguishing a

school of ballet emerge as a result of the dancers having what she calls a “national

aesthetics” or taste. In her view, the unique stamp of the school emerges because “that

taste gives nuances to the universal technique of ballet” (A. Alonso 1993b, 64-65).

It seems plausible that habitus might predispose Cuban ballet dancers to possess a

certain type of musicality. Nevertheless, this does not render the narrative analysis of

Alonso’s discourse less relevant because, in the context of the ballerina’s articulation of a

Cuban ethos in ballet, her references to musicality are part of a narrative of identity. Yet,

this brief discussion of habitus identifies a possible link between identity narratives and

456 Bosse conducted her ethnographic study from 1996 to 2002 and in 2005. J. Bosse, “Salsa Dance and the Transformation of Style: An Ethnographic Study of Movement and Meaning in a Cross- Cultural Context,” in Dance Research Journal vol. 40, no. 1 (Summer 2008), 45-64.

302 embodied practices, while acknowledging that the musicality of Cuban dancers could be examined through methodologies and theoretical lenses beyond those used in this study.

Music in the Blood: Imagining a Cuban Musicality

When the noted Cuban pianist Jesús “Chucho” Valdés states that “our music is our identity,” it is but one illustration of how the Island’s music is often posited as a synonym or metaphor of the national identity.457 This strong association of music with

cultural identity is not surprising, given that Cuban music, together with dance, is

arguably the most prominent example of the amalgamation between African and

European elements from which the national culture emerged. References to the Island’s

music and musical life inform representations of national identity in the visual arts,

literature and music, and, therefore, are part of a larger discourse on what it means to be

Cuban.

As noted in Chapter 2, in the first half of the twentieth century, Cuban artists looked for ways of expressing a national voice in the arts. Among the critical criollist

writers, Nicolás Guillén’s output is representative of poets’ adoption of the structures and

sonorities of Cuban music to signify the local culture. Guillén drew his inspiration from

the Island’s most popular musical genre, the son. Not only did he incorporate elements of

457 Quoted in R. Fernández, “The Musicalía of Twentieth-Century Cuban Popular Musicians,” in Cuba, the Elusive Nation: Interpretations of National Identity, ed. D. Fernández and M. Camara (Miami: Univ. Press of Florida, 2000), 274. Valdés has been nominated six times for the Grammy Awards and, according to the website for these awards, he has won on three occasions, with the albums Irakere (1979), Habana (1997) and Live at the Village Vanguard (2000). See http://www.grammy.com, consulted on Nov. 1, 2009.

303 son in his poetry, but also he directly referenced the genre in the titles of books of

poems such as Motivos de son (Son motifs, 1930), Cantos para soldados y sones para

turistas (Chants for soldiers and sones for tourists, 1937) and El son entero (The whole

son, 1947). In the following stanza from his poem “Sensemayá” (1934), Guillén recreated the antiphonal interplay between human voice and percussion instruments in son:

¡Mayombe—bombe—mayombé! Sensemayá, la culebra… ¡Mayombe—bombe—mayombé! Sensemayá, no se mueve… ¡Mayombe—bombe—mayombé! Sensemayá, la culebra… ¡Mayombe—bombe—mayombé! Sensemayá, se murió.458

Devoid of literal meaning, the expression “¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé!” is an

onomatopoeia that evokes the rhythmically driven sound of Afrocuban drums.459 A stanza consisting of this phrase repeated three times opens the poem and reappears in the middle of it. In the final stanza, quoted above, the verses connected by the use of italics and ellipses form the equivalent of son lyrics layered over the percussive background of the onomatopoeia. These italicized verses stand for the voice of a singer who chronicles the paralysis and death of a snake. Situated at the end of the poem, this stanza corresponds with the final section of a son, the montuno, a rhythmically intricate conclusion throughout which the singer improvises. The short truncated sentences and the ellipses at the end of these verses convey the sense of informality and expectation that

458 N. Guillén, “Sensemayá,” in West Indies Ltd (Havana: Ucar, García y Cía, 1934), reprinted in Sóngoro cosongo, Motivos de son, West Indies Ltd., España, poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1963), 68-70.

459 It is possible that these words have meaning in one of the languages that West Africans brought to Cuba. But even if this is case, the value of the group of words, in the context of a poem intended for a Spanish speaking reader, is as an onomatopoeia reminiscent of percussive sounds.

304 animate such improvisation: Sensemayá, the snake… Sensemayá, is not moving…

Sensemayá, the snake… Sensemayá, is dead.

Meanwhile, Eugenio Florit, also a critical criollist, wrote his book of poems

Trópico (Tropic, 1930) in décimas, the ten-verse stanzas that characterize Cuban peasants’ folk music.460 Similarly, playwright Virgilio Piñera resorted to the use of décimas in Electra Garrigó (1948), his adaptation of Sophocles’s Electra. As part of

Piñera’s strategy to Cubanize the drama, a choir reciting in décimas takes the prominent role of the Greek choir in the original.461 Within siboneyismo, the artistic movement that

attempted to develop a Cuban voice by idealizing the Island’s aboriginal past, Gustavo

Sánchez Galarraga’s play El último areíto (The last areíto, 1923) referenced with its title

and setting a lost musical tradition of the Island’s native inhabitants; areítos were

ceremonials that included music, dance and games.

Iconic works by the vanguardia painters, too, make use of musical references as

signifiers of a Cuban ethos. In Eduardo Abela’s El triunfo de la rumba (The triumph of

rumba, 1928) a mulatto mermaid leads a parade of drummers on a sandy beach. This

surreal scene is reminiscent of the processions of dancers and musicians in Cuban

carnivals. The mythical figures in Abela’s work dance and make music, in a spontaneous

display of self-enjoyment. In the same vein, Carlos Enríquez’s Tocadores (Players, 1935)

presents a group of dancers and musicians lost in the act of performing. Two men play

the drums and the guitar, instruments that represent as no other the African and Spanish

musical traditions. Around them two female figures dance, while a masked Afrocuban

460 E. Florit, Trópico (Havana: Revista de Avance, 1930).

461 See Chapter 2 for a more detailed analysis of Electra Garrigó. V. Piñera, Teatro completo [Complete dramas] (Havana: Ediciones R, 1960), 33-84.

305 dancer or deity overlooks the scene. Musicians populate, as well, other works by artists in the first and second generations of vanguardia painters: Víctor Manuel’s

Carnaval (Carnival, circa 1940), Lorenzo Romero Arciaga’s Taza de café (Cup of coffee,

1940), Cundo Bermúdez’s Músicos (Musicians, 1943), Amelia Peláez’s Las dos

hermanas (The two sisters, 1944), Mario Carreño’s Danza afrocubana (Afrocuban dance,

1944) and Cuarto fambá (Fambá room, 1944), Mariano Rodríguez’s Bembé (1947) and

Luis Martínez Pedro’s Músicos (Musicians, 1948).462 By placing music imagery at the

heart of these works and using it as a means to fashion individual styles that were

distinctively Cuban, these poets, playwrights and painters illustrate how local artists,

during decades of intense nationalism, embraced and reinforced the image of Cuba as a

musical nation.463

These examples allow understanding of Alonso’s views on the musicality of

Cuban ballet dancers as part of a larger nationalist discourse on music and culture. The

ballerina’s own account of her relationship with music illuminates how she adopted what this dissertation calls the trope of the musical Cuban: a popular set of images that circulates in local narratives of identity, according to which Cubans are instinctively musical or carry music in their blood. This trope is especially present in Cuban

462 For reproductions of Abela’s and Enríquez’s paintings, see J. A. Martínez, Cuban Art and National Identity: The Vanguardia Painters, 1927-1950 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1994), 88, 94. Reproductions of Carreño’s, Bermúdez’s, Martínez Pedro’s and Víctor Manuel’s works can be found in Wilfredo Lam and His Contemporaries, 1938-1952, exhibition catalogue (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1992), 65, 80, 160. Plates of Rodríguez’s and Peláez’s paintings can be seen in Orígenes y la vanguardia cubana [Orígenes and the Cuban avant-garde], exhibition catalogue (Mexico City: Museo de Arte Moderno, 2000), 68, 96. Romero Arciaga’s painting is reproduced in Two Centuries of Cuban Art: 1759-1959, exhibition catalogue (Daytona Beach, FL: Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1980), n. p.

463 This analysis could be taken beyond the work of siboneyistas, critical criollist and vanguardia painters in the first half of the twentieth century. However, that would be beyond the scope of this dissertation.

306 musicians’ narratives of self-representation. A contemporary of Alonso, Celia Cruz, popularly known as the Queen of Salsa, embodied the trope when she sang her hit “Mi vida es cantar” (Singing is my life, 1999). The song is a personal statement of her involvement with music: “It happens that I carry the song within me […] / Singing is my life. / That’s why I sing, sing, sing. / I was born a singer […] / I have to sing wherever they call me. / I was born singing and I will die singing.”464 In this self-depiction, Cruz

posited her musicality as an ineludible vital force. This idea reappears, as the metaphor of

carrying music in one’s blood, in an interview of percussionist Tata Güines in which he

recalls his beginnings in music at the age of six years old.

My father, José Alejo Vasallo, was a member of the Partagás Band. During a ball at which the band was playing, I dared to go on stage. I started playing the claves. When he noticed me, my father got me off the stage with a spanking. A few weeks later I dared to go on stage again. But this time my uncle Ángel, who played the double bass in the band, stopped my father: “Leave the kid alone! He carries the music in his blood!”465

Asked if he ever received formal musical training, the legendary drummer replied

emphatically, “Never! I was born with it.” Like Cruz and Güines, other Cuban musicians

from Alonso’s generation embraced the notion that their musicality was innate.466 The

renowned Latin jazz and salsa percussionist Mongo Santamaría related to the Washington

464 C. Cruz, “Mi vida es cantar,” in Celia Cruz and Friends: A Night of Salsa, CD (New York: RMM Records, 1999).

465 T. Güines, “El lenguaje de los cueros” [The language of the drum skins], interview by M. Alfonso in Cubahora, online news service, http://cubahora.co.cu/index.php?tpl=principal/ver-noticias/ver- not_cult.tpl.html&newsid_obj_id=1011992, released on Jun. 3, 2006, consulted on Jul. 30, 2007.

466 Alonso was born in 1920. The musicians mentioned in this analysis were born in the following years: Guillot and Santamía, 1922; Cruz, 1924; and Güines and Portuondo,1930. Biographies of Santamaría, Cruz and Portuondo are available in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, ed. Colin Larkin (London: Omnibus Press, 2007), in the database Oxford Music Online, accessed via Smith College Library on May 8, 2010. For Guillot’s birth information, see R. Rivero, “Olga Guillot, una actriz que padece sus canciones” [Olga Guillot, an actress who suffers with her songs], in El Mundo (Madrid), Nov. 24, 2007, 64. For Güines’s, see R. Denselow, “Tata Güines: Cuban ‘King of the Congas,’” in Independent (London), Obituraries, Feb. 8, 2008, 50.

307 Post that, since his childhood, it was always his ambition to play the drums. “The music… it’s in my blood,” he said and added, “I started playing [the drums] when I was 8 or 9 years old. I taught myself.”467 For Omara Portuondo, the noted female singer of the

band Buena Vista Social Club, her musicality has been viscerally connected to her Cuban

blood as well. She affirmed in conversation with the Independent that she could not think

of herself living anywhere else than in her country: “In Cuba, feelings are everything. I

couldn’t sing like I do if I wasn’t Cuban. It’s something in the blood.”468 Another Cuban

diva, Olga Guillot, on occasion of receiving a Grammy Award for her lifetime

achievements in 2007, reminisced of how her career took off when she was still a child

and successfully competed in a radio contest in Havana. “[By then] I already had it in my

blood,” Guillot told the Associated Press.469

Similar references occupy a central place in diverse accounts that Alonso offered

of her initial dance experiences, which were intertwined with a love of music.

Commenting on her early attraction to dance, she noted that a predisposition to respond

to music prompted her first dance movements:

In my most distant memories, the action of dancing was already my preference above all the games and amusements belonging to childhood. I feel that I have been dancing all my life […] As far as music goes, I could only conceive it in terms of movement. Upon hearing any music, I immediately covered my head with a shawl or a piece of fabric that simulated long hair and I started to improvise strange dances that the music suggested to my imagination […] For my mother, my penchant for dancing was a big relief. If she wanted me to leave her alone, all she had

467 D. Thomas, “Hands on Experience,” in Washington Post, Jan. 29, 1990, G3.

468 J. Cornwell, “Return of the Rhythm Queen,” in Independent (London), Apr. 7, 2000, 16.

469 I. Pacheco, “Latin Grammys to Honor Olga Guillot,” for the Associated Press, Nov. 6, 2007; accessed through LexisNexis Academic, via Smith College Library, on Nov. 6, 2009.

308 to do was to play a music record and, instantly, she cast a dancing spell on me.470

The story of her early attraction to dance reappeared several times in the ballerina’s

articles and interviews. It is revealing that in many of its retellings, she often placed her

response to music as the seminal force determining her desire to move and to become a

dancer:

I believe that [my passion for dancing] began right when I started to walk […] Since I heard the first musical notes in my childhood, I reacted to them by dancing, by moving to them. Of course, I did not know anything about dance. There was nothing except social dancing at the time, but I did not move in the fashion of social dancing; I moved according to my emotional response to the music […] I think that all my movements were à la Isadora Duncan, whom I had never seen […] Ever since, I dance whenever I listen to music.471

The motifs that reveal the trope of the musical Cuban in musicians’ statements

shape the ballerina’s narrative as well. Alonso’s assertions that she had been responding

to music and dancing all her life, since she could walk and as far back in time as her more

distant memories, tap into the image that Cubans are musical by birth. She also reasserted

the view, expressed by Güines and Santamaría, that the musicality of Cubans is natural

and not acquired through formal training. According to the ballerina, her ability to

channel music through bodily responses manifested at a time when she “did not know

470 A. Alonso, “Primeros recuerdos, primeros pasos en la danza” [First memories, first steps in dance], in T. Gutiérrez, Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: imagen de una plenitud, testimonios y recuerdos de la artista [Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta: image of plenitude; testimonies and memories of the artist] (Barcelona: Salvat, 1981), 4-15; reprinted in A. Alonso’s Diálogos, 57.

471 A. Alonso, “Plática informal,” 317. Alonso reiterated these recollections in other interviews. “As a little girl, I loved to listen to music and dance to it. I made up movements without knowing what I was doing,” she reminisced in 1981. Twenty years later, she responded to a question about where her obsession with dance came from, “I simply know that, when I heard the music, I felt the need to dance, to move. At first I had absolutely no idea about dancing ballet, no idea at all. I felt, though, that I had to move in harmony with the music.” See A. Alonso, “El latinoamericano se expresa con todo el cuerpo,” 243, and “Alicia Alonso, Living on the Tips of Her Toes,” 48.

309 anything about dance” yet. Alonso cast her musicality as a predisposition: she danced

“upon hearing any music,” to the “first musical notes.” Furthermore, she highlighted the spontaneity of her childhood dances, which she described as improvisations that stemmed from her imagination and did not conform to the social dances of the era or any other codified dance forms. Reinforcing the idea of naturalness, she even invoked the style of

Isadora Duncan, the North American artist who, in the last years of the nineteenth century

and the first decades of the twentieth century, changed the course of dance history in the

United States and Europe by advocating a natural style of dancing.

Alonso gave accounts, too, of her reaction to music as an adult, noting her

sensibility to music beyond her professional activities as a dancer. When in 1981 a

journalist asked her if she listened to music at home, she replied that she did “throughout

the whole day at work but not at home” because it prompted her to dance and kept her

from resting, both physically and mentally. “For me, listening to music means starting to

move immediately. It makes me exhausted. My brain does not stop,” she explained.472

She repeated this idea in 1996, at the age of seventy-five, when the host of a TV show

inquired if it were true that music made her tired:

I immediately start seeing movement. I see it in my mind: I see dancers entering and exiting the stage. I see them running. I even see their costumes! I see the ballerina floating, carried by the man… And it makes me tired. In classical music concerts I end up totally exhausted. In the case of popular music, I start marking the rhythm with my feet and, all of a sudden, my legs have a life of their own (A. Alonso 1996, 317).

472 A. Alonso, “Bailo, luego existo” [I dance, thus I exist], interview by L. Báez originally published in two separate parts, “Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad: 50 años bailando” [Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad: dancing for 50 years] and “Si los hombres extraordinarios se sintieran lo grande que son los mataría el peso” [If extraordinary men knew how great they were, they would succumb under their own weight], in Opina (Havana), Dec. 1981 and Jan. 1982; reprinted as a single text in A. Alonso’s Diálogos, 236.

310 These statements render a picture of hypersensibility to music. Alonso portrays her musicality as an inevitable quality acting upon her in an overpowering manner. Here lie other key elements of the trope of the musical Cuban: the representation of music as creating a spell and musicality as something beyond one’s will. Just like Celia Cruz’s sang “I have to sing wherever they call me,” an indication that there was no other choice for her but to sing, Alonso claimed that it was not within her power to suppress her spontaneous responses to music.

Couze Venn observes that the formulation of individual identities is a self- reflective process in which “we apply to ourselves historical and fictional narratives sedimented in our culture.”473 This idea goes back to Paul Ricoeur’s thesis that it is

through the act of narration that individuals make meaning of their lives and establish

their identities. In “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator” (1987), Ricoeur argues that

narrative enables a synthesis of the events, goals and circumstances that comprise a life.

Proposing a hermeneutical understanding of life narratives, the French philosopher

asserts, “Life is no more than a biological phenomenon as long as it is not interpreted.

And in the interpretation fiction plays a considerable, mediating role.”474 In his view, in

the same manner that authors of literary fiction arrange events into a meaningful configuration rather than into a mere temporal succession, in narrating their lives individuals put forward organizing plots that are more intelligible than moment-to-

473 C. Venn, “Narrative Identity, Subject Formation, and the Transfiguration of Subjects,” in Strategic Narrative, New Perspectives on the Power of Personal and Cultural Stories, ed. W. Patterson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books Patterson 2002), 37.

474 P. Ricoeur, “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,” trans. J. N. Kraay and A. J. Scholten, in Facts and Values: Philosophical Reflections from Western and Non-Western Perspectives, ed. M. C Doeser and J. N. Kraay (Dordrecht, Netherland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), reprinted in P. Ricouer, A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1991), 432.

311 moment chronologies of their lives’ events (Ricouer 1987, 427). Out of this organizing act emerges a unifying view of such discordant elements as “circumstances encountered while unsought, agents of actions and those who passively undergo them, accidental confrontations or expected ones, interactions which place the actors in

relations ranging from conflict to cooperation, means that are well-attuned to ends or less

so, and, finally, results that were not willed” (Ibid., 426, 433). Circumstances and actions

like these, Ricoeur avows, have semantic connotations because individuals attach

meaning to them, in the same way that they see meaning and intentionality in the twists

of a literary plot. It is this semantic layering of real-life affairs that shapes people’s self-

narratives into plots (Ibid., 433)

However, Ricoeur does not interpret the emplotted quality of these narratives as a

projection of literature on life. For him, the resemblance points to something deeper, what

he calls the “pre-narrative structure of experience” (Ibid., 343). In his opinion, a human

being’s experience of time and life’s occurrences creates a tension between concordance

and discordance that marks life with a pre-narrative structure: pre-narrative because the

outline of a narrative is already there before the very same act of narration (Ibid., 435-

36). In other words, it is not simply that stories are the means by which experiences are

recounted and interpreted retrospectively, but rather that life itself is defined by the same

tension that characterizes literary narratives. Subjectivity, being neither the disjointed

string of episodes in a person’s life nor some sort of durable fixed essence, “is exactly the

kind of identity which the narrative composition alone, by means of its dynamism, can

create,” Ricoeur explains (Ibid. 437).. One implication of this understanding of

subjectivity in terms of narrative identity is that, in the same way that in literature we

312 recognize recurrent plots and innovative plots—archetypical stories sedimented over time in popular myths and legends, and stories that depart from the archetypes and experiment in the narrative domain—in life “it is possible to apply the play of sedimentation and innovation […] to our understanding of ourselves” (Ibid.). Being aware of a vast repertory of plots and narrative prototypes, individuals make the choice to narrate their lives as conforming to or departing from these models; this implies, in

Ricoeur’s words, a regenerative process through which “we do not cease to re-interpret the narrative identity that constitutes us in the light of stories handed down to us by our culture” (Ibid.).

In this sense, Alonso’s assimilation of the trope of the musical Cuban can be understood as an act of self-representation in which she retells events from her life following the contours of this archetypical Cuban myth, adapting to her own circumstances the recurring story that a Cuban is born with a talent for music, grows to fulfill this innate talent in a natural manner, experiences her musicality and responsiveness to music as a force beyond her own will, and continues to express such visceral connection to music for the rest of her life. Her assimilation of this trope, however, is only one aspect of a two-way process. The intersection of a personal narrative like Alonso’s and the collective narrative that defines the nation also means that the broader picture of what constitutes the nation is fed by personal stories. As Venn proposes, the mutual feeding of biographical accounts and national narratives invests the concept of nation with “an experiential thickness that unites self-identity and national identity in the imaginary.”475 Furthermore, since Alonso cites the musicality of Cubans

475 C. Venn, “Narrative Identity, Subject Formation, and the Transfiguration of Subjects,” 37.

313 dancers when formulating the identity of the Cuban school of ballet, the trope of the musical Cuban also operates at the level of institutional discourse. This popular metaphor links the individual, institutional and national narratives of Alonso, the Cuban ballet and the Cuban nation.

However, if on the surface Alonso’s discourse on musicality appears as a rather consistent set of opinions in perfect accord with the trope of the musical Cuban, further analysis reveals incongruities and paradoxes that complicate the correspondence between her narrative and the trope. For, even as identity narratives are attempts to bring unity to the discordant aspects of existence, such discourses of self-representation cannot fully obliterate what is incongruous and fractured about identities.

Dissonant Notes: A Counter-narrative, a Genealogy, a Pedagogy

Being processes rather than fixed states, identities exhibit dynamic qualities: they are malleable, fragmentary and always evolving. By force, then, narratives of identity are not straightforward accounts or logical arguments. They reflect the fractures, contradictions and ambiguities of the processes that they encompass. They also show the agency of individuals and institutions in imagining themselves in ways that do not always conform to the normative narrative of the nation.

Although the identification of musicality as a distinguishing characteristic of

Cuban dancers conforms to the trope of the musical Cuban, Alonso introduced an unorthodox perspective when she attributed these dancers’ sense of musicality to their responsiveness to melody. Her proposition that ballet dancers from the Island are attuned

314 to melody rather than rhythm is a dissonance within a dominant discourse on Cuban music and culture that confers centrality to rhythm. Musicologist José Loyola Fernández argues that rhythm is the principal organizing element in Cuban music, crediting it for the eminently danceable character of most of the genres from the country:

The genesis of the interaction [of music and dance] goes back to the dancing character, par excellence, of the most typical Cuban music. This character is a consequence, in the first place, of the relevant role of rhythm and its superior manifestation, polyrhythm, as the basic element and foundation of the melodic-harmonic relationships in most of this music— although the role of melodic and poetic lyricism in Cuban music should not be underestimated.476

In spite of Loyola Fernández’s recognition that melodic lyricism plays an undeniable role

in Cuban music, his statement establishes a hierarchy conferring primary relevance to

rhythm and a secondary character to melody and harmony. Polyrhythm is, indeed, a

prominent element of most of the Island’s musical genres. In this, Cuban music resembles not only its West African sources, but also a Spanish musical heritage indebted to rhythmically rich Morisco and flamenco traditions. Given the centrality of music within Cuban culture and of rhythm within this music, rhythm often operates as a metaphor of a Cuban ethos. Antonio Benítez Rojo’s book The Repeating Island: The

Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (1992) is a case in point of how Cuba, and in general the Caribbean, is associated with rhythm. The book’s thesis is that rhythm is an ontological signifier of Caribbean culture:

The notion of polyrhythm (rhythms cut through by other rhythms, which are cut by still other rhythms) […] may fairly define the type of performance that characterizes the Caribbean cultural machine […] Rhythm, in the codes of the Caribbean, precedes music, including percussion itself. It is something that was already there, amid the noise;

476 J. Loyola Fernández, En ritmo de bolero: el bolero en la música bailable cubana [At bolero tempo: bolero in Cuban dancing music] (Río Piedras, P. R.: Ediciones Huracán 1996), 15.

315 something very ancient and dark to which the drummer’s hand and the drumhead connect on a given moment.477

Loyola Fernández’s and Benítez Rojo’s statements stand within a normative

narrative of Cuban music and culture by maintaining and reproducing what are already-

accepted imagery and values. However, this dominant narrative does not invalidate

Alonso’s proposition. As Wodak and her collaborators explain, discourses of national

identity are neither unified nor homogeneous. Different, often-diverging narratives of the

nation coexist (Wodak et al 1999, 4). Some narratives challenge the status quo through

transformative strategies that question a broadly accepted identity and attempt to replace

it with new definitions and representations of the national culture.478 In these narrative

acts, cultural theorist Homi Bhabha sees a manifestation of individuals’ and

communities’ agency in positing new symbols of the nation.479 By providing an

alternative to the dominant narrative of Cuban music, Alonso’s proposition on melody

stands as a transformative strategy of this sort. While it is indisputable that rhythm plays a paramount role in the Island’s music, the rhythmic-centered narrative poses the risk of casting the musicality of Cubans as limited to a set of rhythmic skills and, thus, has the potential to make Cuban musicians and dancers the target of common stereotypes that

477 Italics in the original. A. Benítez Rojo, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, second edition (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 18.

478 Wodak and her collaborators classify narratives of identity into four types: “Constructive strategies […] attempt to construct and to establish a certain national identity by promoting unification, identification and solidarity, as well as differentiation. Strategies of perpetuation attempt to maintain and to reproduce a threatened national identity, i.e. to preserve, support and protect it […] Strategies of transformation aim to transform a relatively well-established national identity and its components into another identity the contours of which the speaker has already conceptualised […] Finally, dismantling or destructive strategies aim at dismantling or disparaging parts of an existing national identity construct, but usually cannot provide any new model to replace the old one.” Wodak et al, The Discursive Construction of National Identity, 33.

479 Nation and Narration, ed. H. Bhabha (New York: Routledge, 1990), 2-3.

316 link rhythm to primitive, exotic qualities. Alonso’s suggestion that Cuban dancers are finely attuned to melody is valuable because it contributes nuance to the discourse on

Cuban musicality. Her proposition enriches the discourse and undermines its reductionistic tendencies.

Further complicating her ideas on musicality, Alonso credited non-Cuban figures,

such as her teacher Nikolai Yavorsky and the choreographer George Balanchine, with

increasing her awareness of the relationship between music and movement and thus her

own responsiveness to music. Paradoxically, she acknowledged that her work with these

Russian artists was crucial in helping her to cultivate some of the very same elements that

she identified as markers of a Cuban musicality. For instance, she traced her attention to

phrasing and melody back to her early training with Yavorsky:

He didn’t only just keep the tempo, but he was very fussy that everything should be so with the music. That’s another thing that helped me later on. That’s why I think one of my ways of dancing, particularly, is that I don’t dance with the timing of the music; I keep the timing, but the thing I use more is the phrasing, the melody (A. Alonso 1977a, 7).

According to the ballerina, Balanchine, too, was influential in reinforcing her detailed

attention to phrasing and sensibility to melody: “I got from him exquisite details of music

and movement […] When Balanchine was working, he thought not only of time, of beat,

but of melody. To this day, I think of that as being very important to us dancers: to dance

with melody, the phrased melody, the breath-phrase.”480 Alonso recognized that it was

after working with Balanchine that she began modulating her dancing in accordance with

cues from the instruments she heard in the orchestra: “He [Balanchine] would not listen

to the music as a whole, but to each instrument, particularly. I learned from him that, and

480 Quoted in W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 30.

317 many things. But one of the things that I have become very conscious about is what instrument is playing which part. Is it a cello? Is it a violin? Is it the first violin?” (A.

Alonso 1977a, 44).

It is difficult to ascertain whether Alonso was conscious of her contradictory

categorization of these musical features as both signifiers of a Cuban identity and a

pedagogical legacy from European artists. Deliberate or not, this type of contradiction is

not alien to narratives of identity. Even if these narratives are creative negotiations by

means of which individuals attempt to reconcile and interpret a number of often-

discontinuous life events and beliefs into cohesive accounts, they are bound to vary

depending on the circumstances to which the authors are reacting at the time of the

narration: authors take into consideration the specifics of shifting audiences, discussions

and social contexts. Also, in this process there is room for individuals to view past events

in a new light. New interpretations might emerge that often stand in opposition to

previous ones. As Wodak and her collaborators emphasize, narratives of identity are

characterized by this possibility of rearranging and reinterpreting past events (Wodak et

al 1999, 15). While this practice may be the expression of conscious individual agency,

Bourdieu proposes that such actions, even when serving the strategic purpose of

conveying a specific message or creating a public image, are not always the result of a

premeditated intent or the “conscious pursuit of a maximum specific profit” (Bourdieu

1980, 90). The primary issue, however, is not whether the variations of these narratives

are conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional, but rather how they shed light

on the narrators’ motivations and dilemmas.

318 Alonso’s dilemma lay in her aspiration to give continuity to a European tradition while developing a distinctively Cuban ballet. Political considerations framed this dual project. Her contradictory outlooks on the features of her musicality are reflective of her intention to cast herself as both a cosmopolitan heir to a European legacy and a postcolonial proponent of a new brand of national ballet. The ballerina’s ascription of her musical sensibility to the lessons that she learned from Yavorsky and, above all, a consecrated figure such as Balanchine is consistent with her strategic use of genealogies as a tool to represent herself as the genuine inheritor of a European legacy. As noted in

Chapter 4, by insisting on the fact that she studied and collaborated with European teachers and choreographers, the ballerina sought to not only illuminate her artistic lineage but also dispel the notion that, as a Latina, her position within the world of ballet was peripheral.481 Meanwhile, as part of a different narrative suited to the postcolonial imperatives shaping the intellectual landscape of her country, Alonso posited musicality as an expression of the national culture. She insisted that she and the Cuban ballet, far from unoriginally copying a foreign tradition, embodied a unique voice and aesthetics.

Her radically different interpretations of musicality, whether the result of an analytical slippage or a savvy gesture of self-representation, attest to what a thorny task it was for her to reconcile simultaneous affiliations to European classicism and Cuban nationalism.

Yet, these two accounts acted together toward the same goal of validating the work of

Alonso and the Cuban ballet, for if one claim sought recognition for Cuban dancers by means of highlighting their strong connections to a European tradition, the other one

481 See Chapter 4 for a detailed analysis of how, through accounts of her artistic genealogy, Alonso claimed that she was an authentic heir to ballet classicism and that the ballet movement that she led in Cuba carried on that tradition.

319 defended the maturity of the Cuban school of ballet by asserting its distinctiveness and thus situating it on a par with other established schools of longer history.

The fact that dancers develop their signature styles as a result of their specific training also raises the question of whether the musicality of the Cuban dancers that

Alonso trained was the spontaneous expression of a shared sensibility rooted in the local culture, as she proposed, or a reflection of how these dancers modeled their style upon her own musical idiosyncrasies. A point of reference for generations of dancers that followed her, Alonso played a pivotal role in shaping a Cuban aesthetics in ballet. She projected the individual characteristics of her dancing upon the collective style of the

Cuban school. “The truth is that I have served the role of a model through the different stages of the Cuban school of ballet […] Fernando’s taste developed while he watched me dance,” she acknowledged, bringing attention to the fact that Fernando Alonso took inspiration from her in identifying the “taste” informing the training method that the two of them put in place toward the education of dancers in Cuba.482 Adding to this,

generations of dancers looked up to her as the best example of a polished dancer

available to them at a time when ballet in Cuba was an incipient form. Since dance

training relies heavily on the visual processing of information, the ballerina thought that it was important that her disciples had in her a model to imitate. In reference to this role she said, “We always aim for [Cuban dancers] to develop their own personality, but they have a reference to look at, which determines the goals that they strive for. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why the Cuban school has made such fast progress and

482 Quoted in P. Simón, La escuela cubana de ballet, 96.

320 developed so quickly: having me as an example to look at.”483 By assessing her example as one of the keys to the success of the Cuban school, she was emphasizing how indebted the school’s aesthetics was to her individual style.

The testimonies of Cuban ballerinas who studied directly with Alonso confirm her special role as their model. Loipa Araújo, speaking for her and for fellow principal dancers Aurora Bosch, Josefina Méndez and Mirta Pla, commented, “For us, having such a model as Alicia was highly significant. Having a model to follow is essential to the education of an artist. She was a paradigm.”484 Meanwhile, Ramona de Sáa, who belongs to this same generation of ballerinas, indicated that the goal that they set for themselves was to emulate aspects of Alonso’s technique such as her perfect turns and prolonged balances en pointe—features that, as mentioned earlier, today are effectively deemed markers of the Cuban dancers’ style. According to de Sáa, they had in Alonso “an image and a reference” that was “fundamental for the school,” and it was out of their imitation of her dancing that the school took shape (A. Alonso and de Sáa 2004, 22, 32). To this day, judging from de Sáa’s words, Alonso’s example continues to inform the training of

Cuban dancers. In her current position as the chief supervisor of the Island’s network of ballet schools, de Sáa aims to ensure that Alonso’s style remains the source of the technical and stylistic guidelines behind the Cuban training method. According to her, when she faces situations in which the teachers under her supervision differ on the correct way of executing a step, she looks for answers in historical videos of Alonso’s

483 Ibid.

484 Araújo’s testimony appears in M. Cabrera, “Academia Nacional Alicia Alonso de Danza y Drama: Una lección de medio siglo” [Alicia Alonso National Academy of Dance and Drama: a half- century lesson], in Cuba en el Ballet no. 95 (Jan.-Apr. 2000), 46.

321 performances, striving for consistency in the training of the new generations of Cuban dancers (Ibid., 26, 31).

Yet, Alonso stressed that, in spite of providing an undeniable model for Cuban dancers, she encouraged her disciples to develop their own artistic personas: “I must clarify that this does not conspire against the individuality of these dancers. Currently [in

1973], we have four principal ballerinas [Araújo, Bosch, Méndez and Pla], none of whom dances in the same manner. When we teach them a role, we are very careful that they don’t perform it in exactly in the same way that I do.”485 In fact, Alonso thought that the

variety among these dancers was a reason for her to be proud of the National Ballet of

Cuba. “I don’t want a lot of little Alicia Alonsos running loose. I want individual stars.

And that’s what we get […] This is a pleasure to see and a major aspect of our company,”

she expressed.486 Araújo agreed that the Alonsos successfully nurtured the diverse artistic personalities of Cuban dancers: “Alicia and Fernando enriched us and helped us find our individual voices in spite of training us in a common method.”487 Nonetheless, the

cultivation of their personal voices—expected in any professional company that exhibits

an array of principal dancers and soloists—could not have happened at the expense of the

core aesthetics of the Cuban ballet, because the Cuban school’s claim to existence is

justifiable only as far as there is a consistent aesthetics among Cuban dancers.

Unsurprisingly, then, Alonso’s stylistic influence has been a frequent topic in discussions

of the school’s markers.

485 Ibid., 97.

486 Quoted in W. Terry, Alicia Alonso and Her Ballet Nacional de Cuba, 67.

487 Araújo’s testimony is reproduced in M. Cabrera, “Academia Nacional Alicia Alonso de Danza y Drama: Una lección de medio siglo,” 46.

322 In an enumeration of the features that she has passed down to her students,

Alonso listed her fast footwork, prodigious balance, controlled turns, exactness in the execution of the basic positions and expressive use of the legs and feet, as well as her mode of approaching a duet as a dialogue with her partner.488 She omitted her sense of

musicality from this list, but, since the ability to move musically is at the core of ballet

training and musicality was such an important value for her, it is hard to imagine that she

did not stress this element in her teaching. In fact, the videotape Alicia Alonso Coaching

Excerpts from Theme and Variations (1998) contributes evidence of her pedagogical

emphasis on musicality. Here she is seen taking a rehearsal of Balanchine’s ballet for

Paloma Herrera and Angel Corella, principal dancers of the American Ballet Theatre.

Alonso coaches the dancers in areas such as the work with the arms, the use of space and

the preservation of the steps in the original choreography. However, issues of musicality

stand out among her indications. Over and over, she asks Herrera and Corella to clarify

the rhythmic accents, adjust their movements to the emotional tone of specific musical

passages and phrase the steps according to the melodic and rhythmic contours of the

score. For instance, Alonso urges them to move their head and arms incisively in the

ballet’s first scene, with dry accents that capture the sharp staccato of the music. She also

clarifies that in this section they should move during the upbeat and hold their poses on

the beat. Rehearsing the second pas de deux, Alonso emphasizes that both soloists should

anchor their phrasing in breathing. She also advises Herrera, who repeatedly lands in

arabesque from a series of lifts, not to wait to hear the beat to land, but to anticipate it as

a way to touch ground precisely as the beat strikes. Halfway through this duet, the music

488 Alonso is quoted in P. Simón, La escuela cubana de ballet, 96-97.

323 shifts from a melancholic tone to a daydreaming playfulness. At this point, Alonso appeals to the dancers’ use of épaulement, asking them to move the head, shoulders and torso in a way that reproduces the new quality in sound. She gives them imagery to achieve the effect, prompting them to act “silly” as if they were jumping over puddles of water. Later in the same section, when the music moves from the intimacy of a violin

solo to a lively brass fanfare, Alonso insists that the dancers adjust their movements one

more time: “In what comes it’s like you both are being awaken from a very beautiful

movement. It becomes strong and alive.”

Many of these indications are in line with Alonso’s ideas on musicality. She plays

close attention to phrasing movement and taking cues from the musical orchestration.

These elements of her teaching lead one to believe that the brand of musicality shared by

Cuban dancers may be a pedagogical legacy, a projection of the ballerina’s way of responding and moving to music, transferred to dancers who, as pointed out above, deliberately imitated her features. Such understanding of the musicality of this group of artists challenges Alonso’s own contention that temperament and cultural background condition Cubans to move in certain musical fashion. Also, Alonso’s indications in this rehearsal give an insight into things to which she must have paid attention when she performed. It is clear how meticulous she was about achieving musical effects through dance. Such intentionality, too, stands at odds with the suggestion that her musicality was a cultural predisposition. This interpretation points to the extent to which the idiosyncrasies of influential individuals become institutionalized through pedagogical processes and inform the collective identities of groups under their sphere of influence.

324 Whether expressive of Cuban cultural influences or copied from Alonso’s style, the musicality of Cuban dancers is not less of a marker of the Cuban school of ballet. It is the sources of this musicality that are under question. The fact that its origins can be explained from either a cultural or a pedagogical perspective brings into relief how the narrative of cultural representation and the pedagogical framework of the Cuban ballet intersect and work at different levels—discourse and practice—towards the construction of identity. The Cuban ballet is not an isolated case in this regard: other national ballet traditions show the same ambivalence regarding the sources of their distinctive characteristics. For instance, aspects of the Russian, British and American ballet traditions may be represented respectively as expressions of a dramatic Slavic character, a reserved British nature and an energetic American spirit. At the same time, the choreographic and pedagogical contributions of Marius Petipa to Russian ballet,

Frederic Ashton to British ballet and George Balanchine to North American ballet are credited for the distinctiveness of these national traditions. In two of these cases it is particularly difficult to reconcile the nationalist discourses and the contributions of individuals, for how could Petipa, a Frenchman, be credited for a Russian style, and

Balanchine, a Russian, for a North American style. Judging from the example of Alonso and the Cuban school of ballet, discourses of identity do not always reconcile the cultural tropes that they engage and the actual pedagogical practices shaping the institutions to which they refer.

The opposition that Alonso created between melody and rhythm as signifiers of a

Cuban musicality, the ballerina’s attribution of her own musicality to both a Cuban ethos and lessons from Russian teachers, and her acknowledgment that she greatly influenced

325 the Cuban dancer’s collective style serve to reveal how discourses of national self- representation are open to a range of readings that go from validation to contestation of the identities that they seek to articulate. In terms of musicality, the formulation of the

Cuban ballet’s cultural identity has been subject to Alonso’s agency not only in recycling a trope that symbolizes Cuban culture, but also in departing from its normative interpretation and offering divergent explanations of this feature of the Cuban style.

In summary, the Cuban ballet’s discourse of differentiation proposes that a distinctive Cuban school of ballet is manifest in a set of aesthetic features common to local dancers and that such features are reflective of the national culture and character.

Because the Cuban ballet claims to be an authentic heir of the nineteenth-century

European repertory, it formulates its aesthetics in the classics as a composite of nuances and accents that, without departing from the traditional styles of this repertory, confer distinctiveness on local dancers’ performances. Narrative has played an essential role in the school’s process of individuation. In her interviews and writings, Alicia Alonso integrated common tropes from the larger narrative of the Cuban culture: the metaphor of this culture as a multiethnic ajíaco or stew that combines legacies from Spain and Africa,

the belief that Cubans are a highly expressive people who communicate with their whole

bodies, views on gender from a discourse of machismo that professes clearly

differentiated feminine and masculine behavior for Cuban women and men, the image of

Cubans as skillful and talented dancers, and the myth that the Island’s inhabitants carry

music in their blood and have, therefore, a natural predisposition to be musical.

Throughout her career, Alonso was repeatedly praised for dancing in an

exceptionally musical manner. Films and reviews of her performances attest to her

326 musicality as evident in flowing legato and frequent use of ritardandos and accelerandos, all of which enriched her movement phrasing. Also, her dancing often featured unconventional tempos that accentuated the contrast between very fast and very slow movement. Alonso proposed that these features of her musicality were expressive of the Cuban culture, regarding them not as unique to her but as common to all Cuban ballet dancers. Additionally, she suggested that a developed responsiveness to melody distinguished Cuban dancers. The circulation of the trope of the musical Cuban and, specifically, the possibility that Cuban ballet dancers possess a sophisticated sense of musicality invite explanations of their musicality from sociological and narrative perspectives. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which highlights the role of mimesis and socialization in establishing a common repertory of bodily practices among the individuals of a community, could account for the supposed shared musical sensibility of

Cubans. However, the fact that Alonso and dance critics relied on cultural imagery to cast the musicality of Cuban ballet dancers as sensual and tropical indicates how—beyond a sociological explanation—narratives of identity played a fundamental role in the assimilation of the trope of the musical Cuban within the Cuban ballet’s discourse.

At a discursive level, Alonso’s statements on the musicality of Cuban dancers are part of a larger, national narrative of identity centered on the trope of the musical Cuban.

Before her, local painters, poets and playwrights embraced the idea that music and musicality are constitutive factors of the nation’s cultural identity and, thus, used musical imagery to convey a national voice in their art works. The trope surfaces, as well, in

Cuban musicians’ accounts of a life-long connection to music, experienced naturally and so viscerally that it seems beyond their own will. Alonso’s testimony of her own

327 relationship with music recycled the motifs of these musicians’ narratives, reflecting a process by which individuals interpret their identity in the light of the stories and myths that circulate in their culture. The trope of the musical Cuban traverses Alonso’s individual account, the narrative of identity of the Cuban ballet and the broader narrative of the Cuban culture, bringing all three levels of discourse—personal, institutional and national—to a point of intersection.

Beyond performance, it was through written and spoken discourse that Alonso promoted ideas on the musicality of Cuban dancers, indexed its constitutive features, advanced the notion that such features set these dancers apart, and cast their musicality as a phenomenon expressive of the local culture and temperament. Moreover, in accounts of her personal relationship with music it is possible to identify her assimilation of the trope of the musical Cuban. Discourse, therefore, served an integrative function in permitting

Alonso to develop a multifaceted representation of musicality as a marker of a Cuban identity. However, this integrative role of discourse does not guarantee consistency or

logic in narratives of representation such as Alonso’s, which are fraught with

contradictory, paradoxical postulates and imagery. If her characterization of the

musicality of Cuban ballet dancers conforms in many ways to the trope of the musical

Cuban, there are aspects of her narrative and of the practice of ballet on the Island that stand in opposition to the trope. Her opinion that melody is central to these dancer’s

musicality departed from the canonical view that links the character of Cuban music to

rhythm. At the same time, Alonso’s crediting of European teachers for her sense of

musicality and the possibility that through her pedagogy she transferred this idiosyncratic

sense of musicality to her Cuban disciples contradicted the proposition, at the core of her

328 assimilation of the trope, that the musicality of this group of ballet dancers, including herself, was a natural reflection of the Cuban culture.

329

CONCLUSIONS

The career of Alicia Alonso and the development of the Cuban ballet exemplify the complex issues that arise when the internationalization of a dance form leads to its practice outside the cultures and locations where it originated. The flourishing of ballet in

Cuban in the twentieth century took place alongside a cultural debate on whether or not the assimilation of this dance form was valid and how it could be meaningful in the context of a Caribbean Island. This dissertation contributes an understanding of the questions guiding this debate, the historical context that shaped it, and the ways in which

Alonso participated in it.

Alonso’s success as a ballerina and her introduction of ballet in Cuba challenged the assumption that, because ballet had originated in Europe, only Europeans could claim ownership of this dance form. Many dance critics from that continent, regarding Cubans as cultural “others,” reacted with surprise to the fact that Alonso and other dancers from the Island had embraced the technique and repertory of ballet. Alonso’s defense of the practice of ballet by Cubans amounted to a redefinition of the notion of ownership of this dance tradition and foreshadowed today’s discussions about the legitimacy of the global propagation of many other dance forms. Alonso proposed that Cubans could not only master ballet, but also safeguard its legacy, find meaning in it, enrich it and make it a vehicle for the expression of their own culture. She contributed to transforming ballet from an art form that, until the 1930s, had been associated with the social and intellectual elites of Europe into a truly international discipline that today thrives from Paris to

330 Buenos Aires, from New York to Tokyo, and from Saint Petersburg to Havana. She also undermined the stereotypical notion of Cuba as “the other” in relationship to Europe, replacing this notion with the idea that Cuban and European cultures are integrated within a continuum.

The case of the Cuban ballet, even while embodying ballet’s internationalization, also illustrates the twentieth-century links between ballet and nationalism. Overlapping a

chapter of Cuban history in which the nation consolidated and sought to define itself, the

development of ballet on the Island was deemed viable only if it advanced the nation-

making project. Alonso, therefore, saw herself involved in a process with serious political

underpinnings. Risking accusations of succumbing to cultural colonialism for promoting

a European art form, Alonso rejected nativist and folkloricist conceptions of what the

Cuban arts should be and proposed that the practice of ballet in Cuba was justified by the

intrinsic artistic and humanistic values of ballet, the indissoluble connection between

Cuban culture and European culture, the ability of Cubans to assimilate ballet critically

and the potential that ballet offered to articulate a Cuban identity through its vocabulary

and repertory. Her philosophy carried the sign of postcolonial thought, as far as she

embraced the Cuban culture’s tradition of hybridity and cosmopolitanism. This

dissertation helps to broaden the picture of how postcolonial debates have played out in

Latin America, taking the discussion beyond the fields of literature and literary criticism,

within which the study of these issues has been commonly framed. With its international

presence, the Cuban ballet subverted the scripted historical relationship that assigns

Europe and Latin America the respective roles of exporter and importer of the so-called

high arts. Havana is today one of the most successful centers for the training of ballet

331 dancers, and Cuban artists are featured prominently in ballet ensembles all over the world.

One particular episode of Alonso’s career that stood out during the course of this research project was her restaging of Giselle for the Paris Opera in 1972. Alonso cast this event as symbolic of the Cuban ballet’s work toward the preservation of the classics. She

also saw in it a measure of the Cuban ballet’s international recognition. Additional study

of her collaboration with the Paris Opera could contribute further insight into how the

Cuban ballet redrew the boundaries between center and periphery on the map of international ballet. This episode seems to offer fertile ground to investigate the postcolonial interactions between a cultural metropolis and a former colony.

Documenting Alonso’s experience working for that institution and the reception of her production of Giselle by the dancers of the Opera and the Parisian dance critics would generate more precise knowledge of how the European and the Cuban ballet regarded each other, what assumptions about each other mediated their encounter, and how the encounter itself might have changed those perceptions.

The Cuban school of ballet stands as an example of the transformations that dance traditions may undergo when they are transferred to new locations or cultures. It also illustrates the ambivalent relationship of autonomy/interdependence that may arise between the source tradition and its embodiment in a new setting. On the one hand, the

Cuban ballet established a relationship of continuity with the European tradition. Alonso insisted that the National Ballet Cuba preserve the technique, repertory and styles of nineteenth-century ballets as faithfully as possible. On the other hand, the Cuban ballet looked to differentiate itself from the European ballet, stressing the distinctiveness of its

332 performances of the classics and the unique character of a branch of its repertory that hybridized ballet with elements of the local culture. This ambivalent relationship embodied the tension between center and periphery in the ballet world. By asserting the enmeshed bond between the Cuban ballet and the European tradition, Alonso dispelled the notion that Cuban dancers occupied the periphery within this dance form. Yet, by taking distance from Europe and insisting on the unique character of the Cuban ballet, she defended the autonomy of Cuban dancers. This quandary made her definition of a

Cuban aesthetics in ballet problematic, at least in the repertory of European classics.

Attempting to reconcile faithfulness and originality, Alonso could only articulate the

Cuban aesthetics as a series of accents that, although distinctive, did not radically depart from the European aesthetics. But even defining those accents proved difficult. For instance, she described her own sense of musicality as both an indicator of a Cuban aesthetics and an acquisition from her Russian teachers.

This study shows that artistic and cultural identities in dance are constructed performatively but also discursively. On the one hand, Alonso consolidated the dual identities of herself and the Cuban ballet as inheritors of European classicism and exponents of the Cuban national culture through processes and bodily practices: career strategies, performances, pedagogical practices, restagings or recreations of the historical repertory, and processes of choreographic hybridization. On the other hand, she formultated these identities in discourse, by means of self-portraits, genealogies, chronologies, iconography, definitions and the recycling of cultural tropes into narratives of self-representation. There is no question that both the praxis of dance and the discourse surrounding it are tools in the articulation of identities. Yet, further research into the

333 mechanisms of identity construction could help elucidate the degree of bodily and discursive integration, or the instances in which the bodily and discursive spheres may contradict each other, or if it is even fitting to think of these two spheres as separate. With this goal in mind, a follow-up study could incorporate ethnographic methods to analyze bodily practices related to the Cuban artists’ training, coaching, rehearsals and choreographic processes. The data generated in this way could be compared to the postulates in the written, oral and iconographic sources that make up the Cuban ballet’s

discourse of identity. To the extent shown by this dissertation’s analysis of Alonso’s

musicality, as captured in footage of the ballerina, her performances and discourse were in accord; however, it is unclear how they informed each other. The study proposed here may help to answer this question in relationship to current generations of Cuban dancers.

Another aspect of the construction of a Cuban identity in ballet that deserves further attention is the choreographic hybridization of European ballet vocabulary and elements of the Island’s culture. Sections of this dissertation discuss this strategy for the

assimilation of ballet in Cuba, paying particular attention to three works: Dioné, Antes del alba and El güije. Still, for the most part this dissertation focuses on the Cuban dancers’ approach to the repertory of European classics such as Giselle and The Nutcracker. A more systematic inquiry into the hybridization of ballet and Cuban culture should shed light on the creative processes of local choreographers and dancers, permitting a more comprehensive analysis of the various solutions offered to the problem of dancing ballet steps to Cuban music, or to that of creating a synthesis between ballet steps and movements from Cuban dance forms. It would be equally important to decipher what reactions these types of work have elicited inside and outside Cuba, and whether this

334 hybridized repertory has featured more or less prominently than the European classics in the performances of the National Ballet of Cuba.

In particular, this dissertation confirms the instrumental role of narratives in the formulation of identities. Many other scholars have previously directed attention to identity narratives, but the examination of Alonso’s discourse on the musicality of Cuban dancers makes a contribution to this area of inquiry by offering a detailed example of how images of representation, such as the trope of the musical Cuban, circulate and traverse different identity layers: the personal, as evident in Alonso’s own case; the institutional, as manifested in the collective aesthetics of the Cuban ballet; and the national, as seen in the larger narrative of the Cuban culture. The articulation of identities, though, is not a straightforward process of recycling tropes like this. Identity

narratives are often paradoxical, at least judging from the contradictions that underlie the

discourse on the musicality of Cuban dancers: is this musicality melodic or rhythmic,

innate or pedagogically transmitted, expressive of the national culture or acquired from

Russian teachers? These narratives reflect the malleable and fragmentary nature of

identities, as well as the agency of the narrators. Expanding this study beyond musicality

to areas such as the expressivity, dancing skills or gender notions of Cuban bodies, which

are at the heart of other Cuban cultural tropes, would generate additional information on how these images circulate across Alonso’s artistic identity, the Cuban ballet’s aesthetic

identity and the Cuban cultural identity at large.

The brief analysis in Chapter 5 of how Cuban notions of masculinity, femininity

and bodily expressivity informed the definition of the Cuban ballet’s aesthetics should be

expanded into a more complete examination. For instance, the inquiry into how the

335 Cuban ballet promoted the masculinity of male dancers provides an opportunity to study how the homophobic policies of the Cuban government in the 1960s-70s (part of the regime’s idealization of what the new revolutionary Cuban man should be) might have influenced ballet. Probing this question may allow additional insight into the relationships between identity, aesthetics, politics and gender construction in the case of

the Cuban ballet.

Out of this dissertation emerges a picture of how one individual artist, Alicia

Alonso, shaped the identity of the Cuban ballet. Previously, other authors have explained

that Alonso’s status as a pedagogue, choreographer, emblematic dancer, founder and

director of the National Ballet of Cuba granted her the ability to greatly influence the

progress of the Cuban ballet. Stressed in this study, however, is another aspect of her

multifaceted persona: the philosopher, the intellectual, the conceptualizer who justified

the practice of ballet in Cuba, defined its relationship with the European ballet and described its aesthetics. She framed her discussion of the Cuban ballet within the cultural

and political debates of her time. In doing so, she took ballet out of the ivory tower and

made it relevant to the specific historical context of Cuba during the second half of the

twentieth century. Also, she contributed a riveting example of an artist who, not content

with being herself the subject of others’ discussions, contributed her own voice to these

discussions, turning them into dialogues and controversies. The Cuban ballet became

viable, to a large extent, because Alonso helped clarified its philosophy, even if her

discourse was not always free of contradictions. The agency of Alonso in shaping the

Cuban school of ballet was apparent, too, in how she extrapolated the features of her

individual performance style into the formulation of the collective aesthetics of Cuban

336 dancers. There is room for studying other instances of Alonso’s agency, as well as of her extensive influence on her Cuban colleagues. Yet, future research on the Cuban ballet should also document the contributions of other dancers, pedagogues, choreographers and thinkers. So much of the literature focuses on Alonso that she overshadows other figures who have made ballet in Cuba a reality. Interviews of these other artists would allow their testimonies of having participated in important chapters of the Cuban ballet’s history to be collected, as well as their opinions on the contested issues that have accompanied this history be recorded. Without minimizing the significance of Alonso’s contributions, a polyvocal project of this sort would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the development of ballet in this country. Its undertaking is urgent now that, as Alonso has turned ninety years old and probably approaches the end of her tenure as artistic director of the National Ballet of Cuba, other figures may soon assume positions of leadership as ideologues of the Cuban ballet. To their tasks, they will bring their own views, aligned or not with Alonso’s. Thus, discussions of the Cuban ballet should and will, by force, incorporate a diversity of opinions.

In analyzing, within the case of Cuba, the global dissemination of ballet and the relationship between ballet and nationalism, this dissertation addresses two important aspects in the international circulation of this dance form. However, the Cuban ballet also shows, within itself, signs of transnationalism, reflecting the fact that Cubans are geographically dispersed. This dispersion is the consequence of the massive diaspora that

has taken place throughout the five decades of the Cuban Revolution. In the same way

that the analysis of the Cuban nation should take into account the millions of Cubans

living outside the Island, a discussion of the Cuban ballet should cover the phenomenon

337 of Cuban transnationalism. The international demand for Cuban ballet dancers and teachers, combined with the political, economic and family-related exodus that has driven

Cubans away from their country, is redefining the locus of the Cuban ballet. Havana continues to be its center as the home of the National Ballet of Cuba, the National School

of Ballet and the International Ballet Festival. Nonetheless, the concentration of Cuban dancers in other cities and countries now stands in counterpoint to the centrality of

Havana. Indeed, today, to watch some of the best Cuban dancers or study with some of

the best Cuban ballet teachers one would have to travel to London, New York, Boston,

San Francisco and Madrid, among other cities. Dancers, teachers and spectators have

created pockets of Cuban ballet in the United States, Spain, Mexico and other countries.

Depending on the individual circumstances of how they left Cuba, some of these exiles

return periodically to the Island and continue their connection with the Cuban ballet’s

main institutions, while others, deemed defectors, have been banned from the studios and

theatres where they once studied, taught, danced or attended performances. Migration and

transnationalism are reshaping the identity of the Cuban ballet. This raises questions

about how the Cuban ballet’s transition from being monolithic to being dispersed affects

its connection to Cuban culture and politics, as well as its interaction with the

international ballet community. In this changing context, it is unclear how the Cuban dancers on the Island and abroad influence each other in terms of repertory, aesthetics and pedagogical practices. It could be expected that the discourse of self-representation of the Cuban ballet will become more complex, reflecting the transformation of a nationalist school of ballet into a transnational entity. Would a sole narrative of identity account for this transformation, reconciling the stories of the Cuban dancers inside and

338 outside the country? Would diverging narratives emerge, officially sanctioned or not, with competing formulations of the Cuban ballet’s identity? Future research on the Cuban ballet should take this transnational situation into account, analyze its intersection with the economic, political and cultural predicaments of the Cuban diaspora, and discuss its implications for the practice of ballet both in Cuba and on the global stage.

339

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Swan Lake. 1982. Videorecording featuring N. Makavora, A. Dowell and the Royal Ballet. West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur.

Terry, W. 1955. “The Ballet Theatre.” New York Herald Tribune, Apr. 15. Reprinted in W. Terry, I Was There: Selected Dance Reviews and Articles, 1936-1976. New York: Dekker, 1978: 295.

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————. 1979. “Dance.” Saturday Review (New York), Nov. 24: 52

————. 1981. Alicia and her Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

The George Balanchine Foundation. Official website. Chronological Title List [choreographic catalogue of G. Balanchine]. http://balanchine.org/balanchine/ chrontitlelist.jsp. Accessed on Sep. 12, 2008.

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Wilfredo Lam and His Contemporaries, 1938-1952. 1992. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem.

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XLV Aniversario de Alicia Alonso en el personaje de Giselle. 1988. Havana: Ediciones Gran Teatro de la Habana.

364

APPENDIX:

ALICIA ALONSO’S REPERTORY490

1931

Sleeping Beauty (NP): Grand waltz Chor. N. Yavorsky after M. Petipa / Mus. P. I. Tchaikovsky Auditorium, Havana, Dec. 29, Pro-Arte Musical Society

1932

Sleeping Beauty (NP): Blue Bird Chor. N. Yavorsky after M. Petipa / Mus. P. I. Tchaikovsky Auditorium, Havana, Pro-Arte Musical Society

1933

El circo (WP): The dancer on the tightrope Chor. N. Yavorsky / Mus. various composers Auditorium, Havana, Nov. 4, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Ejercicios (WP) Chor. N. Yavorsky / Mus.various composers Auditorium, Havana, Nov. 4, Pro-Arte Musical Society

490 Dates in this appendix indicate Alonso’s debut in a given role or ballet. Abbreviations: Chor. (choreography by), Mus. (music by), WP (world premiere), NP (new production of pre-existing work), GR (general rehearsal with an audience). This appendix takes its data from the section “Repertorio” (repertory) in Alicia Alonso’s official website, http://www.portalatino.com/lanzamientos/AliciaAlonso/htm/alicia131. htm, consulted on Mar. 22, 2007. The dates for Alonso’s debuts with the Pro-Arte Musical Society have been crosschecked with the programs reproduced in C. Parera, Historia de la Sociedad Pro Arte Musical [History of the Pro Arte Musical Society] (New York: Senda Nueva de Ediciones, 1990), 115-33. In many cases, Alonso’s website provides information only on the work, year and company of her debuts, not always specifying the specific role, date, venue or city. Similarly, in the case of the nineteenth-century ballets, the website does not always indicate who restaged these works. The author has not attempted to complete these records. The amount of work involved in generating that detailed information would not be justified within the scope of a dissertation that does not intend to be a biography of Alonso.

365 1934

Polka coquette (WP) Chor. N. Yavorsky / Mus. J. J. Raff Auditorium, Havana, Jun. 1, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Polovtsian Dances from Príncipe Igor (NP) Chor. N. Yavorsky after M. Fokine / Mus. A. Borodin Auditorium, Havana, Jun. 1, Pro-Arte Musical Society

1935

Coppélia (NP): Swanilda Chor. N. Yavorsky after A. Saint-Leon / Mus.L. Delibes Auditorium, Havana, Mar. 20, Pro-Arte Musical Society

1936

Claro de luna (WP) Chor. N. Yavorsky / Mus. L. van Beethoven Auditorium, Havana, Jun. 22, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Ejercicio plástico (WP) Chor. N. Yavorsky / Mus. L. Grouch Auditorium, Havana, Jun. 22, Pro-Arte Musical Society

1937

Swan Lake (NP): Odette/Odile Chor. Nikolai Yavorsky after M. Petipa and L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Auditorium, Havana, May 10, Pro-Arte Musical Society

1939

Charade Chor. L. Christensen / Mus. T. Rittmann United States, Ballet Caravan

City Portrait Chor. E. Loring / Mus. H. Brant United States, Ballet Caravan

Promenade: One of Three Graces Chor. W. Dollar / Mus. M. Ravel United States, Ballet Caravan

366 Billy the Kid: Mother/Mexican Sweetheart Chor. E. Loring / Mus. A. Copland United States, Ballet Caravan

1940

Dioné (WP) Chor. G. Milenoff / Mus. E. Sánchez de Fuentes Auditorium, Havana, Mar. 4, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Swan Lake: Pas de trois, roles in the corps de ballet Chor. M. Petipa and L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Voices of Spring Chor. M. Mordkin / Mus. J. Strauss Ballet Theatre

The Great American Goof Chor. E. Loring / Mus. H. Brant Ballet Theatre

Giselle: One of Two Wilis, one of The Friends Chor. A. Dolin after J. Coralli and J. Perrot / Mus. A. Adam Ballet Theatre

Les Sylphides: corps de ballet Chor. M. Fokine / Mus. F. Chopin Ballet Theatre

Jardin aux Lilas: Caroline and one of the Friends and Relations Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. E. Chausson Ballet Theatre

Goyescas (WP): Maja Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. E. Granados. Lewisohn Stadium, New York, Aug. 1, Ballet Theatre

Peter and the Wolf: The Bird Chor. A. Bolm / Mus. S. Prokofiev Ballet Theatre

Quintet Chor. A. Dolin / Mus. R. Scott Ballet Theatre

367 Capriccioso (WP): Pas de huit Chor. A. Dolin / Mus. D. Cimarosa Civic Opera House, Chicago, Nov. 3, Ballet Theatre 1941

Swan Lake: Pas de quatre, one of Two Swans Chor. M. Petipa and L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Pas de Quatre (WP): Grisi Chor. A. Dolin / Mus. C. Pugni Majestic Theater, New York, Feb. 16, Ballet Theatre

Gala Performance: One of the coryphées Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. S. Prokofiev Ballet Theatre

El juicio de Salomón (WP) Chor. C. Martínez / Mus. I. Stravinsky Auditorium, Havana, Oct. 27, La Silva

La condesita (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. J. Nin Auditorium, Havana, Oct. 27, La Silva

Peleas y Melisanda (WP) Chor. F. Alonso / Mus. C. Debussy Auditorium, Havana, Oct. 27, La Silva

La tinaja (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. M. Ravel Auditorium, Havana, Oct. 27, La Silva

1943

Aurora’s Wedding (third act of Sleeping Beauty): Pas de deux Chor. M. Petipa / Mus. P. Tchaikovski Auditorium, Havana, May, Pro-Arte Musical Society

La hija del general (WP): La doncella Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. J. Strauss Auditorium, Havana, May 18, Pro-Arte Musical Society

368 Forma (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. J. Ardévol Auditorium, Havana, May 18, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Icarus (NP) Chor. A. Denisova after S. Lifar / Mus. H. Gramatges Auditorium, Havana, May, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Giselle: Giselle Chor. A. Dolin after J. Coralli and J. Perrot / Mus. A. Adam Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Nov. 2, Ballet Theatre

Princess Aurora (suite of excerpts from Sleeping Beauty): Lilac Fairy and pas de sept Chor. A. Dolin after M. Petipa / Mus. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Pillar of Fire: Lovers in Experience Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. A. Schönberg Ballet Theatre

Romantic Age: Elora Chor. A. Dolin / Mus. V. Bellini Ballet Theatre

Capriccio Espagnol Chor. L. Massine / Mus. N. Rimsky-Korsakov Ballet Theatre

1944

Swan Lake: Pas de deux from the second act Chor. M. Petipa and L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Les Sylphides: Solo parts and pas de deux Chor. M. Fokine / Mus. F. Chopin Ballet Theatre

Jardin aux Lilas: An Episode in His Past Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. E. Chausson Ballet Theatre

Pas de Quatre: Taglioni Chor. A. Dolin / Mus. C. Pugni Ballet Theatre

369 Princess Aurora (suite of excerpts from Sleeping Beauty): Pas de deux, Blue Bird Chor. A. Dolin after M. Petipa / Mus. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Barn Dance Chor. C. Littlefield / Mus. various composers Ballet Theatre

Bluebeard: Princess Hermilia Chor. M. Fokine, staged by A. Dolin / Mus. J. Offenbach and A. Dorati Ballet Theatre

Graduation Ball: Pas de deux Chor. D. Lichine / Mus. J. Strauss Ballet Theatre

Waltz Academy: Pas de deux Chor. G. Balanchine / Mus. V. Rieti Ballet Theatre

Don Quixote: Pas de deux Chor. A. Oboukhov after M. Petipa / Mus. L. Minkus Ballet Theatre

1945

Apollo: Terpsichore Chor. G. Balanchine / Mus. I, Stravinsky Ballet Theatre

The Nutcracker: Pas de deux Chor. L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Undertow (WP): Ate Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. W. Schuman Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Apr. 10, Ballet Theatre

Graziana (WP) Chor. J. Taras / Mus. W. A. Mozart Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Oct. 25, Ballet Theatre

Le Spectre de la Rose Chor. M. Fokine / Mus. C. M. Weber Ballet Theatre

370 Romeo and Juliet: Juliet Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. F. Delius Ballet Theatre

1946

Sombras (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. J. Sibelius Auditorium, Havana, May 27, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Concerto (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. A.Vivaldi and J. S. Bach Auditorium, Havana, May, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Swan Lake: The Black Swan Chor. M. Petipa and L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Pas de Quatre: Taglioni Chor. K. Lester and A. Dolin / Mus. Cesare Pugni Ballet Theatre

Gala performance: La Deesse de la Danse (The Italian Dancer) Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. S. Prokofiev Ballet Theatre

Pas de Deux (WP) Chor. A. Oboukhov / Mus. N. Cherepnin Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Apr. 9, Ballet Theatre

On Stage! Chor. Michael Kidd / Mus. N. Dello Joio Ballet Theatre

Aleko: Pas de trois Chor. L. Massine / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Les Patineurs: Pas de deux Chor. F. Ashton / Mus. G. Meyerbeer Ballet Theatre

371 1947

Antes del alba (WP): Chela Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. H. González Auditorium, Havana, May 27, Pro-Arte Musical Society

Princess Aurora (suite of excerpts from Sleeping Beauty): The Rose Adagio Chor. A. Dolin after M. Petipa / Mus. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

Petrouchka: Ballerina Chor. M. Fokine / Mus. I. Stravinsky

Theme and Variations (WP) Chor. G. Balanchine / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky City Center, New York, Nov. 26, Ballet Theatre

1948

Shadow of the Wind (WP): The Abandoned Woman Chor. A. Tudor / Mus. G. Mahler Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Apr. 14, Ballet Theatre

Fall River Legend (EM): Lizzie Borden Chor. A. de Mille / Mus. M. Gould Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Apr. 22, Ballet Theatre

La Valse (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. M. Ravel Auditorium, Havana, Dec. 16, Ballet Alicia Alonso

Coppélia: Swanilda Chor. L. Fokine after M. Petipa and A. Saint-Leon / Mus. L. Delibes Auditorium, Havana, Ballet Alicia Alonso

1949

The Dying Swan Chor. M. Fokine / Mus. C. Saint-Saëns Havana, Ballet Alicia Alonso

372 1950

Caprichos: No te escaparás Chor. H. Ross / Mus. B. Bartok Ballet Theatre

La Fille Mal Gardée: Lise Chor. J. Dauberval / Mus. P. Hertel Ballet Theatre

Ensayo sinfónico (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. J. Brahms Teatro Nacional, Havana, Apr. 9, Ballet Alicia Alonso

Fiesta (WP): Tango and conga Chor. E. Martínez / Mus. M. Gould Teatro Nacional, Havana, Apr. 30, Ballet Alicia Alonso

1951

Lydia (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. F. A. Nugué Auditorium, Havana, Jan. 2, Ballet Alicia Alonso

Paganini Chor. C. Pereyra / Mus. S. Rachmaninov Havana, Ballet Alicia Alonso

Concerto Chor. W. Dollar / Mus. F. Chopin Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Apr. 9, Ballet Theatre

Circo de España Chor. C. Maracci / Mus. J. Turina, M. de Falla, E. Granados and I. Albéniz Ballet Theatre

Tropical Pas de Deux (EM) Chor. E. Martínez / Mus. A. Roldán. Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Apr. 27, Ballet Theatre

Schumann Concerto (WP) Chor. B. Nijinska / Mus. R. Schumann Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Sep. 27, Ballet Theatre

373 1952

El pillete (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. J. Sibelius Auditorium, Havana, May 30, Ballet Alicia Alonso

1953

Versos y bailes (WP): La rosa blanca and La niña de Guatemala Chor. C. Martínez / Mus. F. A. Nugué Auditorium, Havana, Feb. 1, Ballet Alicia Alonso

Un concierto en blanco y negro (WP) Chor. J. Parés / Mus. J. Haydn Auditorium, Havana, Jun. 8, Ballet Alicia Alonso

Aleko: Zemphira Chor. L. Massine / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre

1954

Swan Lake (first full length production in the Americas): Odette/Odile Chor. M. Skeaping after M. Petipa and L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Havana, Ballet Alicia Alonso

1955

Sinfonía clásica (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. S. Prokofiev Cuban TV, Feb. 9, Ballet de Cuba

1956

Romeo y Julieta (WP): Julieta Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. S. Prokofiev Auditorium, Havana, May 20, Ballet de Cuba

Harlequinade (WP) Chor. B. Romanov / Mus. R. Drigo Civic Opera House, Chicago, Dec., Ballet Russe de Montecarlo

374 1957

The Nutcracker (version in two acts): Sugarplum Fairy Chor. M. Skeaping after L. Ivanov / Mus. P. Tchakovsky Ballet Russe de Montecarlo

1958

Romeo y Julieta (WP): Pas de deux Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Teatro Municipal, Caracas, Jul.

Delirium Chor. J. Parés / Mus. C. Franck

1960

Despertar (WP) Chor. E. Martínez / Mus. C. Fariñas Auditorium, Havana, Feb. 24, National Ballet of Cuba

Juana en Rouen (WP) Chor. A. Leontieva / Mus. V. Williams Auditorium, Havana, Mar. 20, National Ballet of Cuba

1963

Melodía Chor. A. Messerer / Mus. C. Gluck National Ballet of Cuba

The Three-Cornered Hat (WP) Chor. R. Rodríguez after L. Massine / Mus. M. de Falla Auditorium, Havana, Dec. 22, National Ballet of Cuba

1964

La avanzada Chor. A. Plisetski / Mus. A. Alexandrov National Ballet of Cuba

La Nueva Odisea Chor. E. Köhler-Richter / Mus. V. Brunds National Ballet of Cuba

375 1965

La carta (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. E. González Mántici Ciudad Deportiva, Havana, Oct. 2, National Ballet of Cuba

1966

Mestiza (WP) Chor. L. Monreal / Mus. E. González Mántici García Lorca Theater, Havana, Sep. 22, National Ballet of Cuba

1967

Carmen: Carmen Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. G. Bizet, R. Schedrin Havana, National Ballet of Cuba

1969

Un retablo para Romeo y Julieta (WP): Julieta Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. Collage by A. Vázquez Millares García Lorca Theater, Havana, Jan. 25, National Ballet of Cuba

1970

Un retablo para Romeo y Julieta (NP): Julieta Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. H. Berlioz, P. Henry García Lorca Theater, Havana, Mar. 20, National Ballet of Cuba

Edipo Rey (WP): Yocasta Chor. J. Lefebre / Mus. L. Vanhurenbeck Havana, National Ballet of Cuba

1971

Nos veremos ayer noche, Margarita (GR) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. H. Sauguet García Lorca Theater, Havana, Apr. 23, National Ballet of Cuba

1972

A Santiago (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. R. Sánchez Ferrer, J. Almeida Public Square, Santiago de Cuba, May 26, National Ballet of Cuba

376 1974

Mujer (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Musical collage Lázaro Peña Theater, Havana, Nov. 24, National Ballet of Cuba

1975

Salomé Chor. J. Lefebre / Mus. R. Strauss National Ballet of Cuba

Yagruma (WP) Chor. J. Lefebre / Mus. C. Fariñas García Lorca Theater, Havana, Dec. 18, National Ballet of Cuba

1976

Cecilia Valdés: Cecilia Valdés Chor. G. Herrera / Mus. G. Roig, J. R. Urbay National Ballet of Cuba

La Perí Pas de Deux (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. N. Burgmüller García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 21, National Ballet of Cuba

1977

Canción para la extraña flor (GR) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. A. Scriabin García Lorca Theater, Havana, May 28, National Ballet of Cuba

Los pinos nuevos (WP) Chor. G. Herrera / Mus. R. Egües García Lorca Theater, Havana, Dec. 18, National Ballet of Cuba

1978

Ad Libitum (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. S. Vitier García Lorca Theater, Havana, Apr. 28, National Ballet of Cuba

In the night Chor. J. Robbins / Mus. F. Chopin National Ballet of Cuba

377 Remembranza (WP) Chor. B. Macdonald / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky, A. Arensky García Lorca Theater, Havana, Oct. 28, National Ballet of Cuba

Spartacus Pas de Deux (WP): Chor. A. Plisetski / Mus. A. Khachaturian García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 19, National Ballet of Cuba

1979

La muerte de Cleopatra Chor. V. Biagi / Mus. H. Berlioz National Ballet of Cuba

Danza con la guitarra (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. L. Brouwer, F. Sor, M. Ponce García Lorca Theater, Havana, May 13, National Ballet of Cuba

1980

Roberto el diablo (Robert le diable, WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. G. Meyerbeer Juárez Theater, Guanajuato, Mexico, May 16, National Ballet of Cuba

La corona sangrienta (WP) Chor. I. Tenorio / Mus. G. Barboteu Gaillard Auditorium, Charleston, May 31, National Ballet of Cuba

Misión Korad (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Music collage by C. Alvarez García Lorca Theater, Havana, Oct. 28, National Ballet of Cuba

Canon (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. J. Pachelbel, E. Lafuente García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 5, National Ballet of Cuba

1981

Lucrecia Borgia (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. B. Bartok García Lorca Theater, Havana, Apr. 23, National Ballet of Cuba

378 1982

La diva (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. F. Guerrero after various opera composers García Lorca Theater, Havana, Oct. 29, National Ballet of Cuba

Cumbres borrascosas (Withered Heights, WP) Chor. A. Alonso / Mus. C. Alvarez García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 2, National Ballet of Cuba

Medea Chor. J. Nemecek / Mus. J. Benda, L. Simon García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 4, National Ballet of Cuba

1983

Tributo a José White (WP) Chor. A. Alonso / Mus. J. White García Lorca Theater, Havana, Dec. 9, National Ballet of Cuba

1984

La saeta dorada (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. various composers García Lorca Theater, Havana, Oct. 28, National Ballet of Cuba

Fedra (WP) Chor. I. Tenorio / Mus. J. M. Blanco García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 9, National Ballet of Cuba

1985

Devaneo Chor. R. Magalhaes / Mus. F. Chopin, arranged by F. Guerrero García Lorca Theater, Havana, Jan. 1, National Ballet of Cuba

1986

Diario perdido (WP) Chor. Alberto Alonso / Mus. B. Tedeschi García Lorca Theater, Havana, Nov. 4, National Ballet of Cuba

La viuda alegre (The Merry Widow, WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. F. Léhar. Grand Theater of Havana, Nov. 7, National Ballet of Cuba

379 1988

Jardín (WP) Chor. H. Riveros / Musical collage by H. Riveros Grand Theater of Havana, Oct. 29, National Ballet of Cuba

Dido abandonada (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. G. Angiolini Grand Theater of Havana, Nov. 8, National Ballet of Cuba 1989

Amaris (WP) Chor. L. Lambrou / Mus. M. Christodoulides Grand Theater of Havana, Jan. 1, National Ballet of Cuba

1990

Azor (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. T. Vitali Grand Theater of Havana, Mar. 22, National Ballet of Cuba

Poema del amor y del mar (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. E. Chausson Misericordia Palace, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Jul. 31, National Ballet of Cuba

Sinfonía de Gottschalk (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. L. M. Gottschalk Grand Theater of Havana, Oct. 31, National Ballet of Cuba

Retrato de un vals (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. E. Lecuona, A. García Caturla. Grand Theater of Havana, Nov. 11, National Ballet of Cuba

1992

Lances (WP) Chor. I. Monreal / Mus. L. Boccherini Grand Theater of Havana, Oct. 28, National Ballet of Cuba

1993

Las cuatro estaciones (The Four Seasons, WP) Chor. I. Tenorio, G. Herrera, I. Monreal, A. Méndez and Alicia Alonso / Mus. A. Vivaldi Congresses Palace, Madrid, Mar. 31, National Ballet of Cuba

380 Juana, razón y amor (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. J. Piñera Albéniz Theater, Madrid, Aug. 20, National Ballet of Cuba

1994

Cleopatra eterna (WP) Chor. I. Monreal / Mus. E. Korngold, R. Gliere and R. Strauss Albéniz Theater, Madrid, Aug. 24, National Ballet of Cuba

1995

In the Middle of the Sunset (WP) Chor. A. Méndez / Mus. E. Lecuona War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, May 11, National Ballet of Cuba

Farfalla (WP) Chor. Alicia Alonso / Mus. P. Tchaikovsky Grand Theater of Havana, Jul. 6, National Ballet of Cuba