The current director of the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC), Viengsay Valdesreturned to the stage this Wednesday interpreting the classic Giselleas part of the program of the Alicia Alonso International Ballet Festival of Havana, which celebrates the company’s 75th anniversary to be fulfilled in 2023.
In this function, the fifth and last of a cycle dedicated to Giselle at the festival, Viengsay assumed the main role of the emblematic work, after an absence of more than two years, and in front of an audience that included the Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel.
In the Avellaneda Hall of the capital National theatermain venue for the 27th edition of the festival which will end on November 13, the renowned dancer once again embodied the romantic character of the village girl-willi Giselle, in which she had premiered 25 years ago, accompanied by the Italian dancer Jacopo Tissi, from the Teatro La Scala in Milan, as Prince Albrecht.
“It has been a long process, but one of complete dedication as this career has led, full of sacrifice to maintain excellence on the scene,” Valdés said about her stage reappearance after an absence due to her motherhood, according to the agency. EFE.
The director of the main Cuban ballet company highlighted the “alchemy” achieved with her partner Tissi, after a single rehearsal in which both assumed their respective roles, as well as the changes and suggestions to their interpretive version.
Viengsay recalled that this season of the piece Giselle It has also been performed in tribute to the iconic character of the legendary Cuban dancer’s career. Alicia Alonso – who died in 2019 – who performed it for the first time on a day like yesterday, but in 1943, with the American Ballet Theater (ABT), at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
Viengsay Valdés: «I have to maintain the legacy of Alicia Alonso, but also update the company»
This jewel of dance romanticism tells a love story, inspired by the novel De l’Allemagne, by Heinrich Heine, and in the legend of Slavic origin of the Willis. The young peasant girl falls in love with Albrecht and dies when she discovers that he is actually a prince already betrothed to the noble Bathilde.
In the previous performances, the leading couples of dancers made up of Yolanda Correa (Cuba) and Semyon Chudin (Russia), the Spaniard Joaquín de Luz and the Russian María Kochetkova, the Cuban Anette Delgado and the Spaniard Ricardo Castellanos, and the Italian Sussana Salvi and the Cuban Dani Hernández.
The Havana festival is considered among those with the most tradition and prestige of dance at an international level and its organizer, the BNC, declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation in 2018, it is listed as the base of the prestigious Cuban School of Ballet.
Since its first edition in 1960, the event has been held every two years and has not been competitive. The event, whose main inspiration was Alicia Alonso (1920-2019), has received great international artists throughout its history, representatives of the most diverse schools and styles of dance, and this year it has once again had the participation of important figures.
EFE / OnCuba
