José Manuel Carreño, one of the best-known Cuban ballet dancers in world, has risen to the top of another U.S. ballet company: he is now the director of the Ballet San Jose in California.
Local newspapers reported this event as a completely natural thing, given that his onstage brilliance as a star of the famous American Ballet Theatre (ABT) has been reflected in the media innumerable times. Along with his 18-year career with the top U.S. ballet company, Carreño has performed in festivals and other events and has taught at various national and international academies.
While his name is included among the greatest stars of the late 20th and early 21st century, in his family, Cuba’s most illustrious ballet dynasty, Carreño is one of many. The glorious history of Cuba’s top ballet company, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, features his uncle Lázaro, his brother Joel, and his cousin Alihaydée, all of them former stars of the BNC. And his uncle Álvaro was a soloist in the company for decades.
José Manuel is one of a handful of dancers who have been rewarded with the possibility of having an international career without losing their ties to the Cuban school of ballet. The first time he came to the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Carreño was three months old, carried in the arms of his Uncle Lázaro. People there still call him by his nickname, “Totó.”
“I would spend my time there running about, guiding myself on the bars, watching the rehearsals, imitating what my elders did, and trying to jump,” he recalled a few months ago during one of his regular visits to Cuba.
The restless and disciplined young man—and student of Loipa Araújo and Laura Alonso—won a diploma of honor at the Varna International Ballet Competition and a gold medal ay the New York International Ballet Competition in 1989. However, his triumph a year later at the Grand Prix in Jackson, Mississippi, opened the doors of various companies to him. In addition to his career with the ABT, he has performed with the English National Ballet, the Royal Ballet of London, the Tokyo Ballet, the Mariinski, Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, Milan’s La Scala Theatre Ballet and the Colon Theater Ballet of Buenos Aires, to name a few.
However, he attributes his onstage nobility, virility, elegance, and virtuosity to his education. “Coming out of a school like Cuba’s is a very good foundation. After my graduation I was with the company for four years, and I performed practically all of the classical roles. I had the opportunity of working with Alicia, and with Josefina, Loipa, Aurora, and Mirta (“the Four Jewels”), and with almost all of the greats of the Cuban ballet; with my Uncle Lázaro, with Jorge Esquivel…that is an experience that is here,” he said, laying his hand over his heart.
“It is an incredible foundation, and after having accumulated that knowledge, being with companies that were new to me has allowed me to see the world from different places, and that gives you a different perspective in any type of role or choreography. I’ve done Giselle with various choreographers; it’s very interesting. And also, working with different ballerinas is an extraordinary sensation,” he added.
In February, Carreño agreed to dance as a guest artist with the Ballet San Jose in its production of the classic Don Quixote. According to the president of that company’s board of trustees, in seeing him dance with the company’s members and watching how they responded to him, it was evident that he was the right person for the job of artistic director. “It was a natural process,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.
With his new job, Carreño is continuing a tradition that is shared by every member of his family: devotion to teaching, as a normal channel in his still-young career.
