Alicia Ernestina arrived late to her first ballet class. From the bars, the other girls saw her running across the floor, tiny like a doll with big eyes and very black, vivacious hair like a small animal escaped from the woods. Tardiness cost her light spanking from her first ballet teacher. Since she had no shoes, she took those first classes wearing tennis.
Ballet lessons in Pro Arte society were ideal for insufflate wit to the daughters of wealthy families , stretched them their silhouettes , made small bourgeois to move like princesses . But Alicia, that hour went beyond physical postures to look in classrooms, for her ballet was the magical degree of dancing, what she liked to do since she was born. She fought hard. Going to class was a gift.
The first time Alicia danced on stage, the fan she had to use to do some changes in the set of girls got stuck. But with such grace she resolved the setback that, at the exit, a musician of the orchestra approached her to sign her program: “When you grow up you will be a great artist,” he told her.
Her enthusiasm caught the attention. Some mothers of the other students did not understand that that girl, daughter of a seamstress and an army vet, worked that hard, reaching up both legs during lectures and school presentations. Respectable ladies complained, scolded and surrounded her by behaving in a manner so little decent. The girl came to the house humiliated. The mother knew of her sentence and the next day appeared before the ballet master. He made her clear that in the art of dancing legs were up all that you could, who could, the physical conditions were exploited to the full.
“You heard him, the mother turned to her daughter … In ballet you raise your legs a little, like the other girls. But if the day of the performance you don’t go up all that you can, then you have problems with me. “And Alicia fulfilled her part of the deal. Respectable ladies continued commenting. They said the girl was skinny from consumption; it was better that the other students didn’t approach her.
The first shoes came as brought into the case of a classic fairy. None of the students in the class could wear them. Alicia asked trying them, and the slippers were adjusted to her feet perfectly. As a reward, they were hers. She tells between laughs that she never took them off. Through her house she standing on the toes. So Fernando Alonso remembered: when going to visit what was his historical girlfriend, she received him standing on her tips.
Married to Fernando, Alicia traveled to the United States. In this context, she assumed the surname of her husband, and got one of the most famous names in music and our culture: Alicia Alonso.
After participating in variety shows on Broadway, to impress with her expertise in Spanish dances mythical Leonide Massine, she was in shaping one of the most important companies in North America, the Ballet Theatre. Thus, she found herself located at the convergence of several historic trails of dance. Refinements of French Romantic ballet, great ballet classic ways of the czars, mingled with all the modernity drawn from the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev, to Monte Carlo, to the British theatricality. She knew how to drink from all fountains, and her stage personality, her technical prowess, grew, refined …She had a world to conquer ahead through the passionate art. It was then that she began to go blind.
After a delicate eye operation, doctors warned her that she could not dance ever if she wanted to maintain vision. Ahead was a year of complete rest. In Cuba, lying on a bed, unable to move, her mind did not rest. Revising known ballets, danced the starring roles in stunning scenery, created new ballets.
With her fingers on the sheet, she marked the steps danced in her imagination. Never being able to dance was something to consider. After a while, without anyone knowing, she ran away from home and went to train in a familiar room. Gradually the muscles became strong again. When she felt well again, she wanted to return to the scene. She had just done it when, in the United States, she was presented with one of the greatest opportunities of her life.
Alicia Markova, prima ballerina of international renown, was dancing the ballet Giselle, but was ill and could not take it. The ticket office was sold and the directors of the company were in urgent search of a dancer who would substitute the Markova. Frightened by the challenge of replacing the English diva, for the little time left to prepare for the work, all appealed said no.
Alicia Alonso said yes. She remembers that when she came on the scene and did not think it compromised her situation, she just wanted to dance her best and enjoy it. After the function, the effort faded in the clubhouse, she saw a known art collector approaching her. He removed her from the slippers. The feet were full of blood. The man picked up the shoes and took them. “For History,” he said.
Years later, already turned into a dancer on the rise, employers wanted to change her name to a Russian one, fashionable at the time. She defended her home: being Latino was no discredit in dance; Latinos had much to contribute to the ballet. Any other idea was mediocre. So, Alicia Alonso, Cuban ballerina, Latin American, led the cast of Ballet Theatre. And so she danced around the world.
Her international success did not make her forget her country. Returning to Cuba again and again she never stopped dancing on the island. More than that, with Fernando founded the first professional ballet company. She acted for the aristocracy in theaters and classrooms, but also free for the people, in stadiums and squares. So, Alicia Alonso became a popular name. “The best dancer in the world,” the proud Cubans called her.
She didn’t falter when the Batista dictatorship economically blackmailed her into supporting his bloody rule. Without state support, she received the moral defense of Cuba who joined her in protest in her favor. In an apology organized in the university stadium in Havana, Alicia Alonso said farewell to Cuban stages. She danced The Dying Swan and thousands of people gave her a standing ovation. The dancer was crying greetings, while the stage was filled with flowers.
When after 59, the company was reorganized and with it a national system of teaching ballet, Alicia Alonso had to choose whether to remain one of the best paid artists in international dance or create the dance culture in her country that was being blocked. The glory of the canopies was relegated. What could personal benefits matter against the possibility of developing large art for everyone. From that time her name is never disassociate the National Ballet of Cuba. A shared glory.
The list of achievements and awards throughout the world is enormous. Her tenacity made steel dance beyond years, beyond the lack of vision. When her eyes were off, dance became more concentrated, precise gesture in an emotional flight she reached that was unprecedented. In this secret miracle of art, the ballerina danced for years.
“All my life I was told I could not dance, but I danced,” she said in an interview. She has fought all her life against any denial, against impossibility. Nothing has stopped her, any dropouts or losses. The diseases have failed to make a dent on her and she has been resistant to all kinds of attack. Has anyone seen surrender? Someone has not seen her face each day with good humor, always ready to laugh, to laugh with her?
Dreams are won over any obstacle. Sitting in the living room of her home, surrounded by friends, Alicia Alonso continues to set the pace of the music with broad strokes of her arms, the precise expression of her large hands. “One doesn’t dismiss as long as it has something to offer.” And the dancer becomes eternal. Big dreams are shared to the end.
Sometimes an impossible wish assails her: to sit on the sea wall and watch the sea.
Author
Lester Vila Pereira
