Alicia Alonso

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Alicia Alonso (1955)
Alicia Alonso (2007)

Alicia Alonso (born December 21, 1920 in Havana as Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martínez del Hoyo ; † October 17, 2019 ibid) was a Cuban prima ballerina , ballet director and choreographer . She was one of the leading international dancers in the 1940s and 1950s.

Life

dancer

In 1937, at the age of 16, the ballet student Alicia Martínez married her partner Fernando Alonso (1914–2013), who she had met through ballet, and went with him to New York . She began her professional career in 1938 with engagements on Broadway there . In 1940 she was accepted as the first Hispanic American dancer in the American Ballet Theater (ABT), founded in 1939 .

In 1941 she was diagnosed with retinal detachment for the first time , which subsequently increasingly restricted her ability to see. She had to take a break until 1943, but in the meantime she learned to continue dancing at the highest level despite her gradual blindness.

Shortly after her return to the ABT she had to represent the injured regular prima ballerina and in November 1943 got her first leading role as Giselle , which brought her the breakthrough as an internationally celebrated star. In 1946 she rose to the ABT's prima ballerina. Between 1940 and 1948 she danced a total of 58 roles in this ballet company .

Ballet director

In 1948 she and her husband founded the originally private ballet Alicia Alonso in Havana , which she directed from the Cuban Revolution of 1959 with government support under the name Ballet Nacional de Cuba (Cuban National Ballet ).

In April 2003, Alonso was among a group of prominent Cuban cultural worker, the one in the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party , Granma criticizing the published open signed letter, which was addressed to friends of Cuba throughout the world and international human rights policies of the Cuban government as anti-Cuba smear campaign rejected: In the previous weeks, President Fidel Castro had sentenced 75 critical journalists and civil rights activists to long prison terms in a wave of arrests known as the " Black Spring " and had three young black Cubans executed after the bloodlessly unsuccessful attempt to hijack a ship.

literature

  • Pedro Simón: Alicia Alonso: Orbita de una leyenda. Iberauthor Promociones Culturales, 1996 (Spanish)
  • Isis Wirth: La Ballerine & el Comandante. L'histoire secrète du Ballet de Cuba. François Bourin 2013, ISBN 978-2849413791 (French)

Movie

The Swiss documentary Horizontes shows the life of Alicia Alonso.

Web links

Commons : Alicia Alonso  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roger Salas: Muere Alicia Alonso, gran leyenda del ballet clásico, a los 98 años. In: El País . October 17, 2019, accessed October 17, 2019 (Spanish).
  2. ↑ a b ABT salutes Alicia Alonso's 90th birthday at Met . In: Daily News of May 25, 2010, accessed September 18, 2013
  3. ^ S. Pinto-Duschinsky: Alicia Alonso: Profile in Courage. ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 50yearsindance.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: 50 Years in Dance from February 26, 2012, accessed on September 18, 2013
  4. ↑ Message from Havana for our friends far away ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 7 kB) from: Friendship Society BRD - Kuba eV , accessed on June 27, 2011, Spanish version here @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fgbrdkuba.de
  5. ↑ Amnesty International : Annual Report Cuba 2004 ( Memento of August 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (reporting period January 1 to December 31, 2003) accessed on September 20, 2011
  6. ↑ International Legal Commission : Attacks on Justice 2005 - Cuba  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated July 11, 2008, accessed October 19, 2011@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / old.icj.org  
  7. ^ Website for the film
personal data
SURNAME Alonso, Alicia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Martínez del Hoyo, Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban prima ballerina, ballet director and choreographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 2019
Place of death Havana