Cuba's National Ballet

Training with Carlos Acosta by Jon Anders

Ballet National de Cuba was founded in 1948, by the famous Cuban dancer Alicia Alonso, still director of the Ballet. Read the fascinating story of Alicia Alonsos life . The ballet performs at the Teatro Garcia Lorca in Havana, and is often performing outside Cuba. In January 1998 it performed for the first time in 19 years in USA and had a lot of success in both San Francisco and New York. The repertory offers the standard classics, folklore- based works like Giselle and Cinderella together with modern pieces, and it has been very successful with its Carmen.The young dancers are technical brilliant and have won several medals in international competitions.

Several of the dancers are now performing outside Cuba, but often returns to train the young dancers in the National ballet

One of the most successful is Carlos Acosta, who is Principal dancer at the Houston ballet.

I had the opportunity during my last days in Cuba to attend a training session Carlos Acosta had with some of the young talents, and the pictures are from that training. As a ballet lover it was a tremendous experience, to see the engagement the young dancers had, and how eager they were to learn form this Cuban star dancer. Not to forget the pride they have being chosen to work for this famous company.

(Click on the pictures to get them enlarged )

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.............Pas des deux................................................................................Exhausted but happy........................

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...........Carmen ....................Discussion.....................................Instruction................

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............................................................... .......A coming star.....................................................................................

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