The life of Menia Martínez (1938) is full of events. The very first classical and neoclassical dancer, choreographer, maitre d’, translator and singer has touched heaven and glory several times with her own hands and at over eighty years of age she continues to teach everything she has learned in so many years dedicated to ballet, which feels like a commitment to all your teachers.
For a decade Menia has been the Artistic Director of the Brussels Dance Conservatory, a site that is enormously relevant to her.
“Imagine, it was the first room that I used as a dancer in Brussels and when they told me about this place, I felt proud to be the director of the center that was so significant at the time”, she tells us.
ballet and music
“Since I was very little I sang, I didn’t know what it was to be a classical dancer and my parents took me to the Municipal Conservatory of Havana, but my voice had not developed,” recalls the artist.
“At that moment, a classical and Spanish dance teacher noticed my conditions for ballet: flexibility, good feet and, above all, a lot of desire. According to them, she developed me with great freedom as a professional without being one. But since I had a good voice, my goal was to do musical comedy, only in Cuba at that time there was no school for it. Then they took me to the Alicia Alonso Ballet. There Fernando and Alicia gave me the tests and awarded me the first scholarship. Together with them I made trips to South America and in a short time I was a professional in the dance group. I was also able to take part in some shows outside of Cuba”, she says.
Thanks to the guidance of the National Poet Nicolás Guillén, whom she considers her spiritual mentor, Menia obtains a scholarship to continue her ballet studies. She was accepted into the world-renowned Vaganova Academy in Saint Petersburg, a workshop where the great world stars of Russian ballet were trained.
A very little disclosed fact about the life of this well-known woman is her relationship with music, another of her greatest passions.
“For a youth festival in Poland, they invited me on a boat trip where I sang and they even gave me a Portuguese visa,” he laughs.
“Studying in the former Leningrad, the students asked me to sing, they knew about my taste and the desire to sing. Then an orchestra took an interest in me and although the school director refused, I was able to perform in some shows. In Moscow I asked Nicolás Guillén for some Cuban music to incorporate into my performances. I have always been and will always be an admirer of Celia Cruz and Guillén helped me get some songs sung by her. I was very successful, to the point that they asked us to make a recording with Spanish and Cuban songs. It was a very important stage in my life.”
“All ballets are difficult”
As a world ballet star, Menia Martínez performed with various companies such as the Kirov Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet and the 20th Century Ballet directed by another of the great figures of world dance: Maurice Béjart. Menia is also remembered for her roles in Don Quixote and giselleamong others.
“All ballets are difficult, everything you dance has to take time and work it out. But the ballet that was requested the most was Swan Lake. With that I had more success. As a choreographer, according to Fernando and Alicia, I had conditions, and from an early age I began to do choreographies and in Cuba I staged my first ballet entitled ‘Las imágenes’ with Loipa Araújo, María Elena Llorente and Mirtha García. Later I did some choreography for the Camagüey Ballet until I continued as a teacher and dancer”, she points out.
United in marriage with the Santiago native, choreographer and artistic director Jorge Lefebre, both gave a successful turnaround to the Royal Ballet of Wallonie sponsored by Queen Fabiola of Belgium. They were able to bring all of Lefebre’s works to the big stages in Europe and other parts of the world.
“I feel very attached to Cuba and I have always contributed everything I could to the dance of my country. Cuba is everything to me”, thus concludes this eternal sweetheart of Cuban ballet.
