★★★✰✰ Ultimately, the best thing about Alonso’s Giselle is that it’s danced by Cubans, and that’s good enough for me.
Tag - Grettel Morejon
This time, I made 15 trips to the theatres – there were performances at 5pm and 9pm each day - and saw 82 different full-length ballets or extracts in the eight days I was in Havana.
Alonso trained the first generation of Cuban dancers, among who there were many standouts, but the most well-known in Cuba were the “Four Jewels” of Cuban ballet: Josefina Méndez, Mirta Pla, Aurora Bosch, and Loipa Araújo (now Associate Artistic Director of English National Ballet)
The festival was as intensive as ever, with three performances running on seven days, four on one day, some concurrently. The range and quality of dance overall was impressive.