The director of the Cuban National Ballet, the prima ballerina assoluta, Alicia Alonso regretted last week the death of the French choreographer Maurice Bejart, whose marks will last forever in the art of dance, she said.

In a text given to Prensa Latina, she highlighted the wonderful imagination of someone who she qualified as "a great creator, a philosopher of the art, who, beside his innovative aesthetic, had the intelligence and sensibility to love and comprehend the classic tradition.

This Thursday, when recalling her relationships with the diseased choreographer in Lausanne, Switzerland, she remembers his words about the ballet Giselle, a paradigm of the romanticism. According to a unanimous opinion of the specialized critic, Alonso has always been one of the great dancers of this ballet.

In 1970, she added, he wrote to me: A have seen the ballet Giselle many times, but only in very rare occasions I have experimented the emotion of finding a "Giselle" a truly character had been imposed over the reality.

Later on he referred to me - added Alonso - how he dreamed with the great mythical figures of the past, who he would have loved to see dance. It is notable that an avant-garde, how he was had such a sensibility, such a culture.

With nostalgia and sadness, she affirmed that in Bejart she had an admirer and a very dear friend and the Cuban National Ballet an enthusiastic defender.

He visited us and gave to our company some of his ballets, we were never out of his encouraging words, she remembered.
(Cubarte)