CubaPLUS Magazine

Cubans are charming people who are also fascinated by dance, the most complete expression of this art, a discipline as universal as it is diverse and at the same time speaks a single language to all people on the planet, without distinction of religious beliefs, culture and politics.

That is why every April 29 we join with great enjoyment and responsibility the celebration of International Dance Day, instituted in homage to the dancer and choreographer Jean Georges Noverre by UNESCO since 1982, commemorating the day and month of his birth.

With a secular tradition in the practice of dance movements, Cuban artists began to establish a chair and notoriety in the discipline from the founding of the Alicia Alonso Ballet, created by the extraordinary dancer in 1948, together with her husband Fernando Alonso and his brother, Alberto. Before, she had shown her great worth as a star of the New York Ballet Theatre.

Over the years, her exceptional talent and his unlimited dedication and fidelity to their native country turned Fernando’s first creation into the great National Ballet of Cuba, which endowed the nation with a highly renowned style and worldwide school for teaching dance, known under the name of the Cuban school.

Multiple great figures or jewels were formed in that time of forge and the beauty of art was always in bloom and each time becoming more mature and sparkling. Josefina Méndez, Loipa  Araujo, Aurora Bosh, Marta García, María Elena Llorente, Amparo Brito, Rosario Suárez, were brilliant as they are today Viengsay Valdés, current general director of the company, and first ballerina Annette Delgado, despite their brief time in the relationship.

Dazzling dancer Carlos Acosta was trained by that formidable school and the current dance troupe is full of valuable and also promising male figures such as Dany Hernández. They are the heirs of great figures such as Orlando Salgado, Jorge Lefebre, Jorge Esquivel, and others with an excellent track record not only in Cuba but internationally. The innovative and avant-garde art forms of contemporary dance have prominent expressions in Contemporary Dance of Cuba, the Mal Paso Company, Retazos, Lizt Alfonso Dance, the National Folkloric Ensemble, Acosta Danza... and many more that have dressed our stages in high art, expressive of the best of our culture and the spirit of universal dance.

Not only at the level of professionals and edges already trained in our commendable schools. The very process of teaching movement in collusion with music also reaches everywhere in Cuba, through various schools that go from the elementary level to the highest in the provincial capitals or the capital.

Both in the green and ripe ones they have worked and only temporarily ceased due to the sanitary imperatives of the pandemic. It is something that Cubans cannot ever give up It has to do with their daily life, with the joy of living, with their idiosyncrasy:. That is why International Dance Day is a big party in this nation.