The National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) will premiere next Friday, June 10, a program dedicated to the British choreographer Ben Stevenson. That moment also celebrates 120 years of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Island.
Stevenson, who is in Havana with his team to stage four of his pieces with the BNC, told reporters on Monday that he chose the Cuban company’s dancers because “they have the talent and training” required for this Program.
“Working with people who have good training and inspiration is very good for me,” said the choreographer after supervising a rehearsal at the BNC headquarters together with its general director, Viengsay Valdés, and the British ambassador in Havana, George Hollingbery. .
The new season of the BNC, the most important Cuban classical ballet company, includes the work The queen’s steedscreated especially by the current artistic director of the Texas Ballet Theater to celebrate Elizabeth II’s 70th anniversary on the British throne.
Stevenson, appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999 and an outstanding dance personality in recent decades, has said that when creating that piece he thought of the sovereign’s love for horses, “so the ballet is, in a way, a tribute to her and her passion for animals”.
The British ambassador stressed that the anniversary of relations between his country and Cuba and the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II “could not be celebrated in a better way than with these galas of the new BNC season.”
For her part, the director of the BNC, the dancer Viengsay Valdés highlighted the “altruistic” collaboration and the “great learning” that the presence of Stevenson has meant, a dance personality whose works are in the best companies in the world.
Valdés stressed that having works and choreographers of quality and international recognition is “part of the objectives of the BNC because I think it is important to help dancers attract to Cuba the work that is being done today in the world to update what is danced. ”.
Performances in tribute to Stevenson also include his version of the pas de deux EmeraldY three preludes -recognized with the gold medal at the Varna Festival in 1969- and premiered in Cuba at the Havana International Ballet Festival in 1988.
To complete, your piece mozart requiemchoreography that the BNC will be the first foreign company to perform, and in which the choir of the Island’s National Lyric Theater stands out.
Traveling with the choreographer were the guest dancers Valentín Batista and Henry Winn, both from the Texas Ballet Theater, the associate director of the school attached to that entity, Kathryn Warakomsky-Li, and the assistant artistic director Li Anlin.
National Ballet of Cuba will interpret works by the British Ben Stevenson
The BNC, founded in 1948 by the late dancer Alicia Alonso together with Fernando and Alberto Alonso, was declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation in 2018 for being “the maximum expression of the Cuban school of ballet.”
That cultural institution returned to Cuban stages in December 2021, after the two-year break imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Efe/OnCuba.
