The first time Miguel Angel Quintana attended a ballet performance was he felt he was flying. Since then, he has painted in ecstasy landscapes of ballerinas and dancers that cause insomnia. A living legend inspired the first frames, the shock of seeing Alicia Alonso greet the audience that night from a balcony and the Grand Theater of Havana surrendered at her feet corroborated the seductive power of the stars.
When the lights aimed at the mystical and the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) danced Giselle, the young man finally believed in other worlds. The dancers, the costumes, the music, the drama, the scenery, everything attracted him. “Ballet is a complete art form where aesthetics predominates and that motivates me,” he confessed.
The first solo exhibition in 2012 showed glimpses of his fascination with dance. The works returned to the scene with the most important female figure of the Cuban ballet, imagined Alicia Alonso in Giselle and Carmen. According to the 29 year old painter, Alicia took him out of a big bump and conveyed him the knowledge that he may never leave art.
The disciples of the Cuban prima ballerina came quickly to the canvas. Loipa Araújo , Viengsay Valdes, Anette Delgado, Yanela Piñera and Sadaise Arencibia began to populate the mind of Miguel Angel with icons , gestures , emotions, while he enjoyed the photo placed in his hands , video and live performance.
Ballet fans usually admire a dancer for certain abilities and qualities that are considered unique to be admired, while rejecting others for their shortcomings or dramatic techniques. For a visual artist as Quintana, enjoyment comes with the diversity of possibilities that each person on stage is able to offer, including the integration of the characters with lights, sets, costumes. Deficiencies are transformed into paths and different personalities in landscapes of unique galaxies.
From the perspective of the painter, every dancer deserves the applause for the sake of transporting us to site and time. In his upcoming exhibition entitled “Subliming memories and realities,” Quintana provide colors to the dancing figures mentioned above and more fresh as Grettel Morejon, Camilo Ramos, José Carlos Lozada , Dani Hernandez, Monica Gomez , Victor Estevez and some dancers of the body dance of the company .
He prefers to work with a plot that requires the dancer’s interpretation and justify technical deeds.
“I cannot separate the movement and expression of the personality of the dancer, for the personality prints better movement and expression,” the young self-taught painter said, engaged in trapping seconds of supreme aesthetic pleasure to dancers and audiences.
He will also have on display works alluding to two essential masters of Cuban ballet school, Fernando Alonso- co-founder of BNC and creator of its academic methodology and Ramona de Saa , director of the National Ballet School , because of the debt we will always have with these teachers . “My presentation was not complete without them because it is just homage to the roots,” he said.
One particular photo of teacher Sáa, better known as Cheri throughout the world, prompted him to work almost 20 hours straight. “If I had stopped, I was afraid the idea would escape,” he said .
The L Gallery, located within the Faculty of Economics at the University of Havana, will host on December 6, 5:00 pm, more than 25 Quintana photos in tribute to the 65th anniversary of the founding of the BNC, the most recognized artistic company of the country, and the 70th anniversary of the debut of Alicia Alonso in Giselle.
With a curious mosaic style, the creator raises his admiration for the dancers and partly trying to share with them the sensitivities that they transmit him. Pictures of Nancy Reyes and Gabriel Davalos have been a vital support.
Humility and desire for knowledge will bring Quintana closer every day to dance, as it has been proposed to explore all styles and dancers from its formation to the professional pinnacle. That attention to detail and his ability to observe and listen to others will likely help fulfill the dream of creating sets for new choreographic works or classics.
If someone put in his hands the opportunity to recreate Giselle, the feeling of walking in the clouds return, like the time in which his godfather Pedro Antonio led him to discover the ballet theater.
In early 2013, Havana shined in Quintana 15 photos appealing to the symbiosis between the Cuban and universal, confluent in the architecture and lifestyles of the capital of this island.
The gallery Cities of the world welcomed this second exhibition where to see the Havana cathedral the way you do, you needed to take a mirror and turn your back to the photo. The artist decided to end the year with another sample of universality and Cuban, appreciated in dancers performing and dreaming. In the new paintings of Miguel Angel Quintana, some moments of illusions will impose on the ephemeral and help to prolong the pleasure.
