by In Memoriam | Feb 3, 2023 | News, Profiles
John White Jr., a former soloist with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and co-founder and director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet (PAB), passed away on December 28, 2022. Through his love and lifelong commitment to the art and technique of classical ballet, he had...
by Dance Magazine | Oct 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
Alicia has died. I walked around my apartment feeling her spirit, but knowing something had changed utterly. My father, the late conductor Benjamin Steinberg, was the first music director of the Ballet de Cuba, as it was called then. I grew up in Vedado on la Calle...
by Marina Harss For Dance Magazine | Oct 17, 2019 | Career, Profiles
For decades the name Alicia Alonso has been virtually synonymous with Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the company she co-founded in Havana in 1948. Alonso died on October 17, just shy of what would have been her 99th birthday. In recent years, she had stepped back from...
by Julia Guiheen | Apr 3, 2019 | Profiles, TBT
The Diana and Actaeon pas de deux, from the ballet La Esmeralda, is a bravura tableaux ideal for festivals and galas. In this clip, we see Viengsay Valdés and her frequent partner Romel Frometa perform the piece at Japan’s 2006 World Ballet Festival. Valdés,...
by Jennifer Stahl For Dance Magazine | Jan 21, 2019 | News
Alicia Alonso’s famed ballet company in Cuba has a new leader: the beloved hometown prima ballerina Viengsay Valdés. Ballet Nacional of Cuba just named Valdés deputy artistic director, which means she will immediately assume the daily...
by Amy Brandt | Dec 23, 2018 | Profiles
During the Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s tour to Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center earlier this year, the company brought longtime artistic director Alicia Alonso’s Giselle. And while the production was admittedly well-worn and the style of dancing...
by Toba Singer | Nov 15, 2018 | News, Profiles
Anyone attending the National Ballet of Cuba’s biennial Havana International Ballet Festival can expect an adventure that is equal parts treasure hunt and lottery, amidst a cornucopia of choices. This year’s festival, the 26th, was no exception, offering...
by Suzannah Friscia | Jun 20, 2018 | Career, Profiles
This time last year, Catherine Conley was already living a ballet dancer’s dream. After an exchange between her home ballet school in Chicago and the Cuban National Ballet School in Havana, she’d been invited to train in Cuba full-time. It was the...