AMERICAN BALLET THEATER

After half a century of absence, the major American ballet company returns to Cuba to present a full program in the Twenty-second International Ballet Festival of Havana.

The American Ballet Theatre comes with most of his cast, led by some of their key players, as is the case of Paloma Herrera, Julie Kent, Michele Wiles, Herman termites, Marcelo Gomez, David Hallberg, Ethan Stiefel, and Cuban Xiomara Reyes and Jose Manuel Carreño.

Directed by Kevin McKenzie, who as a stage dancer appeared as a guest star of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the company will take the stage at the Carlos Marx Theater 3 and 4 November.

The American Ballet Theatre had the legendary Alicia Alonso among their principal dancers.

Half a century after its last appearance on the Island, when, in addition, the company reached its 70-year-old and Alicia Alonso turns 90, the presence in Cuba of American Ballet Theatre takes great reputation.

To keep up as many matches, the group comes to the Festival Ballet with a program where we can find its most important creative lines.

Of the great classical tradition comes with two famous pas de deux, Le Corsaire and Diana and Actaeon, which adds one of the more recent works from its repertoire: Seven Sonatas, Alexey Ratmansky.

The great performances will be Fancy Free, by Jerome Robbins, and Theme and Variations by George Balanchine. Created in 1947 for Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch, Theme and Variations is registered in the anecdotes of dance.

Theme and Variations established a singular emulation among the choreographer, George Balanchine, and the very young ballerina, Alicia Alonso.

Balanchine challenged Alicia steps and sequences with increasingly complex and she assumed with relative ease, which speaks of the highest technical level of the Cuban dancer in the founding years of the American Ballet Theatre.

Fancy Free, perhaps the most popular ballet choreographed by Jerome Robbins, especially because of the symbiosis between academia and other trends in the forties, when it was created, and influenced many American works.

Theme and Variations and Fancy Free are in the program the American Ballet Theatre brings to the Festival.

Stars from Important Companies to Ballet Festival

The International Ballet Festival of Havana will turn 50 years old in 2010 in the company of stars from the most important international companies, and with Prima Ballerina Assoluta Alicia Alonso at the center of tributes.

Sources from the organizing committee said top figures from the Royal Ballet of London, the English National Ballet, the Scala de Milan, the Colon Theater of Argentina, and others will perform on the island from October 28 to November 7.

Also attending will be figures from the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater, where Alonso improved her training and became established as an internationally renowned figure, along with making artistic contributions.

The 22nd edition of the festival coincides with the Year of Alicia Alonso, established by the Cuban Culture Ministry to mark the 90th birthday of the director of the National Ballet of Cuba.

Apart from its main headquarters at Havana's Gran Teatro, the festival's venues include the Karl Marx, Lazaro Pena, and Mella theatres.

Soon Chinese Culture Festival in our City

The 10th edition of the Chinese Culture Festival will take place on July 17 and 18 at the Culture Hall of Havana’s ExpoCuba Pavilion.

Chen Wei, director of the folk music group of the Aihua Traditional Orchestra from Shenzhen, announced that, as an introduction to the event, these artists will perform on Wednesday at the Culture Hall of ExpoCuba, and on July 1st, at the Cuban capital’s Teatro Nacional.

The group has musical instruments dating back to two thousand years, like the Zheng, a kind of harp of 21 strings, which is placed horizontally and played with several picks held with the fingers of the right hand.

The program of the two-day event includes presentations by the Cuban School of Wushu, a fashion show with traditional costumes of the most representative Chinese ethnic groups, photographic exhibitions, and the presentation of the books El caballo de Shuan Zu, by specialist Olivia Chong, and Antiguos relatos vueltos a contar, by writer Mercedes Crespo.

ExpoCuba’s Central Hall will offer a presentation of martial arts, among them of Choi Lee Fut, Kung Fu and Wing Tzu, and there will be sales of handicrafts and exhibitions of works awarded in the fine arts and literature contest Admiring China. Alfredo Ruiz, director for International Relations of the Culture Ministry, and Gong Jiajia, cultural counselor of the Chinese Embassy to Havana offered all information.