Havana, June 16 (EFE).- The National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) will perform a season of six performances between July 5 and 14 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the collaboration received from the British Friends group.
The BNC reported this Sunday in a statement that it will present the ballets ‘Celeste’ and ‘Lucile’ at the National Theater in Havana, produced with the competition of the British Friends, and highlights the “profitable relationship” that has led to the incorporation of works of world-famous choreographers to its repertoire.
He states that ‘Lucile’ will be a premiere that was conceived especially for the BNC by the Danish dancer and choreographer Johan Kobborg, in response to a request from the general director of the Cuban company, the dancer Viengsay Valdés.
Kobborg is a dancer who has been a leading figure of the Royal Ballet of Denmark and the Royal Ballet of the United Kingdom, who among other international stages has performed at the ballet festivals held on the island.
Resulting from the cooperation of the British Friends with the National Ballet of Cuba, the choreographies ‘Oscurio’, ‘Próspera’ and ‘La hora novena’, premiered by the BNC between 2016 and 2022, also appear.
The BNC distinguished the British Friends collective with the ‘Alicia Alonso Centenary’ Medal, in 2022, for the value of its contributions to the development of the company.
Valdés, who assumed the direction of the BNC in 2020, then highlighted the support of this British group for more than a decade, both with resources to improve the conditions of the artists, and with the growth of the choreographic catalog.
Valdés declared in an interview with EFE his interest in the collaboration of renowned international choreographers who “could give us that capacity for diversity in our repertoire, which has always existed, but which I always wanted to update in recent years.”
The National Ballet of Cuba is the most important classical dance company on the island, founded in 1948 under the name of Alicia Alonso (1920-2019), its director, main founder and leading figure, and which has stood out internationally for its rigor. artistic-technical of its dancers and a line with a predominance of the romantic and classical tradition.
In 2018 it was declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation for being “the highest expression of the Cuban ballet school”, a condition extended to the company’s repertoire, its image archive, objects and documents related to the institution. EFE
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