Photos: Kolman Rosenberg (2021)
HAVANA TO CLE Cuban dance legend Laura Alonso returned to Cleveland in August for a week-long residency, reuniting with the Verb Ballets dancers. The daughter of world-famous ballerina Alicia Alonso, Laura is an award-winning teacher and coach. Ms. Alonso performed for 25 years with Ballet Nacional de Cuba, and now travels the world teaching and staging classical ballets. She is also the director of ProDanza in Havana, Cuba, which is part of the Cleveland Havana Ballet Project, an ongoing international partnership with Verb Ballets. During her week-long residency, Laura taught Verb’s company class in the Cuban method of ballet. She is the “crème de la crème” when it comes to training dancers in classical ballet technique and over the past several years has instilled a technique and performance quality in Verb’s dancers that is timeless. Having the Verb Ballets and ProDanza dancers perform together in Cuba has added an additional dimension to both company’s performance versatility. During her time at the Verb studio she also staged and coached the romantic pas de deux from Act 2 of Swan Lake. The Cleveland Havana Ballet Project is made possible through past support of the Cleveland Foundation.
verbiculture | October 2021
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