Alicia Alonso is the founder of the Cuban ballet style. Born in Havana in 1920, she later emigrated to the United States. She was the first Hispanic American dancer to join what is now the New York City Ballet. She collaborated with the most significant choreographers of the 20th century. She danced and created leading roles in major works and performed with the American Ballet Theatre as well as the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. After 1948, she danced with her own company, the Ballet Alicia Alonso. In 1951, she founded the Academia de Ballet Alicia Alonso, which was affiliated with the Escuela Nacional de Arte (ENA) ten years later. Today, the ENA is one of the most prestigious dance schools in the world. Most of the dancers in BALLET REVOLUCIÓN were trained there.
Ramiro Guerra Suárez is the father of modern dance in Cuba. After training in ballet in Havana in the 1940s, he joined the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. During a guest performance in New York in 1946, Guerra came into contact with the avant-garde of modern dance at the time, represented by artists such as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and José Limón. Back in Cuba, he began blending modern dance with Latin American dance traditions around 1950. He founded Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, which remains the most important Cuban company for modern and contemporary dance and the birthplace of the distinctive Cuban style.
Carlos Acosta, one of the great dancers of our time, was born in Havana as one of eleven children of a truck driver. He dreamed of a career as a professional soccer player. His father, however, sent him to the Escuela Nacional de Ballet (ENB) at the age of nine — part of the renowned ENA arts academy, which produced many dancers from BALLET REVOLUCIÓN. That marked the beginning of a unique dance career: a gold medal at the 1990 Prix de Lausanne, and roles as a principal dancer with the Cuban National Ballet, the Houston Ballet, and the Royal Ballet in London. Carlos Acosta has danced nearly every male lead role in virtually every classical ballet.
