Alicia Alonso (1920–2019) was the greatest Cuban dancer of the 20th century — a ballerina of international stature who danced nearly blind for most of her career and founded the institution that made Cuba a world power in classical ballet.
Born Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martínez Hoyo in Havana in 1920, she began dancing as a child and trained in Havana, New York, and London. She joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York in the 1940s, becoming one of the company's principal dancers and a celebrated interpreter of Giselle — a role she would perform over a thousand times across her career.
From her early twenties, Alonso suffered from severe eye problems that eventually left her almost completely blind. She continued to perform by memorising the exact positions of lights on stage and relying on partners to guide her. Her performances of Giselle and Carmen became legendary precisely because of — not despite — the precision and conviction she brought to the roles.
In 1948, Alonso founded the Ballet Alicia Alonso in Havana, which became the Ballet Nacional de Cuba after the Revolution. Under her direction for over 70 years, it developed a distinctive Cuban style — technically rigorous, emotionally expressive, and shaped by the particular physical qualities of Cuban dancers.
The company trained generations of world-class dancers and became one of the pre-eminent ballet companies in the world, producing dancers who performed with major companies globally.
Alicia Alonso was not a popular dance figure — her world was classical ballet, not son or timba"> timba. But she is the most significant Cuban dancer of the 20th century, and the institution she built shaped how Cuba thinks about the body, about training, and about dance as a serious art form. The rigour and physical intelligence she demanded of classical dancers runs parallel to the rigour that great popular dance also demands — and many Cuban popular dance performers trained in contexts shaped by her influence.
She received the title Heroína del Trabajo (Hero of Labour) from the Cuban state, the highest civilian honour.