Alicia Alonso Takes the Stage

by Rebel Girls

  But Alicia still dreamed of becoming a professional ballerina. Would it ever happen? Had she and Fernando made a mistake by coming to America?

  Be patient, she told herself.

  And then came her big ballet break.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In 1939, Alicia auditioned to study at the School of American Ballet. SAB was the school that Fernando had mentioned to her back in Havana, the one cofounded by the famous Russian dancer and choreographer George Balanchine.

  When the letter came in the mail saying that she’d been accepted and that she would receive a scholarship to pay for her tuition, she danced around her and Fernando’s tiny living room.

  “Yes! I’m going to become a professional ballerina!” she shouted. She didn’t care if the neighbors complained. This was the moment she’d been waiting for!

  Alicia said goodbye to her brief musical theater career and happily turned her focus back to ballet. At SAB, she worked hard to perfect her ballet technique and soon she was invited to join a new dance company called Ballet Caravan. Her career was finally taking off!

  Then, in the spring of 1940, Alicia learned that another new dance company, Ballet Theatre, was holding auditions. Alicia decided to try out. To her delight, she was offered a position in the corps de ballet, the big group of “background” dancers in dance companies.

  After that, Alicia’s career grew quickly. Her life in dance was a whirlwind. At Ballet Theatre, she was given many different roles—first in the corps and then in small ensembles. When she performed in a ballet called Pas de Quatre at the Majestic Theater, she and the other three dancers received seventeen curtain calls. Seventeen! Alicia could hardly believe it.

  Eventually she was asked to dance a solo role in Peter and the Wolf when another ballerina had to drop out at the last minute. Alicia knew this was a huge opportunity for her, and she put everything she had into the part. After that performance, the New York Times dance critic John Martin wrote that Alicia “showed herself to be a promising young artist with an easy technique, a fine sense of line and a great deal of youthful charm.” Other critics were full of praise for her, too. Alicia wanted to frame those reviews!

  The Ballet Theatre choreographers liked to cast Alicia in their dances because she was a gifted actor as well as a skilled ballerina. She was endlessly curious, always seeking the hidden meanings beneath the steps so that she could express those emotions onstage. What was the young swan feeling in Swan Lake? What was the bird’s motivation in those scenes from Peter and the Wolf? What was the spirit’s relationship with the other spirits in Les Sylphides? Alicia was a true artist, and the choreographers—and the audience—adored her.

  When a journalist compared Alicia to a young Anna Pavlova, Alicia thought she would faint from happiness. The future she’d dreamed of was happening right here, right now! Like Pavlova, she’d worked hard to achieve her ambitions. She felt unstoppable!

  * * *

  “Look out!”

  Alicia heard the warning shout, but it was too late; she bumped into a tall set piece and stumbled backward on the stage. A pair of hands caught her at the last minute before she fell onto the wood floor.

  “Thank you,” Alicia mumbled, dazed. Sarah, a fellow dancer, was the one who’d grabbed her. Others had stopped dancing, too, and were gathering around her with concerned expressions.

  Joanna, the Ballet Theatre stage manager, rushed over.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I-I’m fine. Really. Just a little slip.”

  “Do you want to take a break?”

  “No. I’m okay. We need to keep rehearsing.”

  Alicia and the other dancers took their places again. Joanna nodded to the pianist, who resumed playing the music.

  But a few bars into the score, in the middle of a pas de bourrée, Alicia collided with another dancer named Dmitri. She hadn’t seen him to the left of her.

  “I’m so sorry!” Alicia apologized.

  Joanna touched Alicia’s arm. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she whispered.

  “I thought I was. Perhaps I should take a break.”

  “Why don’t you go home and have a proper rest? We can resume in the morning.”

  Alicia nodded. She grabbed a towel to wipe her face and headed backstage. Behind her, she could hear the other dancers calling out to her: “Feel better soon!” and “Be well!”

  Off the stage and alone, Alicia stopped and blinked once, twice. As she did, little spots floated lazily across her field of vision.

  What is happening to me?

  The little spots had started a couple of weeks ago. They were like tiny black threads that danced side to side, up and down, always in slow motion. Did they exist on her eyeballs? Whenever she looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes appeared perfectly normal. Were they under her eyeballs, then?

  In the past few days, she’d noticed them worsening, showing up more frequently. She’d noticed, too, that the spots were sometimes accompanied by pops of flashing light. And while she could see straight ahead, she had trouble seeing to the right or left, which was why she kept running into things and people. Her balance was suffering, too, which made spins and turns difficult.

  She planned to simply power though the strange sensation to keep dancing, but others disagreed.

  “You have to see a doctor,” Fernando told her that night.

  “I know,” Alicia said. “Maybe next week. I’m very busy with rehearsals.”

  “You should go tomorrow. You’re a ballerina. You can’t dance if your vision isn’t working properly.”

  Alicia started to protest, then stopped. Fernando was right. She needed healthy eyes in order to dance.

  “Fine. I’ll try to go tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry, mi amor. Everything will be fine,” Fernando reassured her.

  Alicia sighed and nodded. “Okay. But then I’m going right back to rehearsals. And I mean right back.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Unfortunately, everything wasn’t fine, and Alicia wasn’t able to go right back to rehearsals. Her doctor had bad news.

  “You’re suffering from a detached retina in your right eye,” he informed her.

  “A what?”

  “The retina is a layer of nerve cells at the back of your eye. The retina in your right eye has become separated from the eye itself. You need an operation to reattach it, or you risk becoming permanently blind.”

  Permanently blind?

  Fernando put his arm around Alicia. “You must have this operation right away. Otherwise…”

  “I know,” Alicia said, fighting back tears.

  Fernando didn’t have to spell it out for her. Being blind would surely end Alicia’s dance career forever.

  Alicia couldn’t stand the idea of being in a hospital instead of on the stage. On the other hand, if she didn’t have the operation, she might never return to the stage again. She could not accept that possibility. Alicia had no other choice. She had to agree to the operation.

  Alicia took a brief leave of absence from Ballet Theatre and checked into the hospital. The procedure went well, but it didn’t end there. Afterward, she had to stay at the hospital to recover. She lay in the small, cramped bed without moving. The doctors believed that her retina couldn’t heal unless she remained completely motionless.

  Alicia was desperate to get back to dancing, to her life. And so she mostly obeyed the doctor’s instructions to remain perfectly still in her bed. Mostly. At times, she would wiggle her feet under the scratchy wool blanket, pointing and stretching. She wanted to keep them in good shape for when she returned to Ballet Theatre.

  She eventually did return, but only briefly. Her old symptoms soon came back—the floating spots, the flashing lights, the difficulties with side vision and balance—which sent her back to the hospital for another operation on her eyes.

  But the second surgery still didn’t solve the problem with her sight. In fact, both her retinas required treatment at this point. Al
icia’s doctor suggested that she return to Havana for another operation. That way, her family and Fernando’s family could help out with her recovery, which was likely to last much longer than before.

  With a heavy heart, Alicia obeyed.

  * * *

  “Dance with me, Mamá!”

  Alicia woke up to her daughter’s sweet voice. In the background, there was music playing on the record player—the score from Giselle, which was one of Alicia’s favorite ballets.

  Alicia started to open her eyes, but there was only darkness. For a moment she’d forgotten that her eyes were still covered with thick bandages from her most recent operation at the hospital in Havana.

  “Watch me plié, Mamá!”

  “Wonderful, Laurita!” Alicia called out, trying to sound cheerful.

  Laura loved to dance, just like her parents. But she was only three, and she didn’t understand why her mother couldn’t twirl and jump with her.

  Alicia’s doctors in Havana had ordered her to remain completely motionless for a year. A year. She was ordered not to move or cry or even laugh during that time. Otherwise, doctors worried both retinas might detach again. For a while, weights were even placed on either side of her head so it couldn’t shift while she slept.

  It was a nightmare. Alicia had become a dancer who couldn’t use her body.

  Even worse, the doctors told her that after her year in bed was up, she wouldn’t be able to return to dance. They said she’d lost too much of her eyesight. They’d declared that her ballet career was over.

  Alicia was still so young. How was that possible?

  Despair washed over her. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t allowed to do even that.

  I’ll never dance again, she thought, her chest tightening with anguish. She was like the dying swan in the famous ballet, desperate and broken. Not being able to dance ever again seemed like death to her. Maybe even worse than death…

  The bedroom door creaked open.

  “Laurita, Abuela has a special treat for you!” It was Fernando.

  “A special treat? Yaaay!”

  With a patter of excited footsteps, Laurita was gone. Alicia a felt weight press down on the edge of the bed as Fernando sat down. He squeezed her hand.

  “How are you feeling, mi amor?”

  “I feel like dancing.”

  “I know you do. I’m sorry.”

  “Will you rehearse with me?”

  Fernando hesitated for only a second.

  “Yes, of course. Which scene would you like to rehearse today?”

  Despite what the doctors had told her, she hadn’t stopped dancing, not really. She danced in her head. She also danced with her fingers on top of the bed, which she imagined as a stage. Sometimes, Fernando would observe the movements of her fingers and correct her “choreography.”

  The Giselle score was still playing on the record player. Alicia listened carefully.

  “This scene,” she said after a moment. “The act two pas de deux between the ghost of Giselle and Count Albrecht.”

  “Which part would you like?” Fernando joked. Alicia had always dreamed of dancing the role of Giselle.

  “Very funny,” she said, cracking a small smile. “Tell me if I get anything wrong, okay? Here we go.”

  Alicia hummed along with the music for several bars, to orient herself. Her cue was coming up soon. As she hummed, she imagined that she was no longer Alicia Alonso, but the ghost of the peasant girl Giselle. Her lover, Count Albrecht, was kneeling at her grave. He wept as he clasped a bouquet of wilting flowers to his chest. He was full of regret because he had broken her heart, and she had died as a result.

  Pain—Giselle’s pain—coursed through Alicia’s motionless body. Also sadness and anger. She began moving her fingertips across the bed. Slowly, slowly. Arabesque en pointe…turn…fifth position…

  “To the right,” Fernando prompted her in a whisper.

  Alicia’s fingers pivoted to the right, away from her betrayer, Count Albrecht. They lifted and twirled, twirled and lifted. They felt as real as her actual legs and feet.

  The music played on, and Alicia’s fingers danced. Once in a while, Fernando would correct her, and she would adjust the choreography accordingly. The delicious smell of stew wafted from the kitchen, but Alicia wasn’t hungry. She didn’t want to stop dancing. She never wanted to stop dancing.

  Plié…jeté…pirouette…fouetté…

  The music came to a close. “Let’s run through it one more time,” Alicia told Fernando. “I need to practice for when I dance this role someday.”

  Fernando didn’t correct her or remind her of her diagnosis. He knew her too well. “Yes, of course.”

  He got up to cue the music. In the darkness behind her bandages, Alicia’s mind began dancing again.

  She wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When the long year of recovery was finally over, Alicia expected her vision to be much improved when the bandages came off. But instead, things were almost as bad as before the operations and the many, many months of rest.

  Sitting up in bed one morning, she fixed her gaze on her toes peeking out from under the covers. She closed her right eye; her vision out of her left eye was fuzzy but tolerable. She then closed the left eye and opened the right. She could barely see; it was as though she were peering out of glasses with broken, scratched-up lenses.

  Keeping her gaze on her toes, she tried to side-eye the right half of the room. Nothing—just a murky darkness. She tried to the left. A little better, but not by much. Why wasn’t her peripheral vision back to normal? Her up-and-down vision wasn’t very good, either. It was as though she were seeing everything through a narrow tunnel that stretched ahead of her.

  “Be patient,” Fernando kept telling her. But it was difficult to be patient when she wanted to be back to 100 percent now.

  Standing and walking after a year of bed rest was challenging, too. At first, Fernando and Blanca had to help her. They held her arms on either side and moved slowly with her. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. It was a frustrating and difficult process, but Alicia pushed through it. She worked as hard at these simple, basic movements as she had at the most advanced ballet technique with her New York City teachers.

  Finally, when she was able to walk by herself, she spoke to her doctor in Havana.

  “I’m fine now, right? Not my eyesight, but the rest of me?”

  “Well, you’re not ‘fine,’ exactly. You still need to be very careful. You must limit your activities to short walks around the neighborhood. And you must not make any sudden movements. You don’t want to risk reinjury to your eyes.”

  “Of course,” Alicia promised.

  She had no intention of keeping her promise, though. I’ve listened to my doctors long enough, she thought.

  She began taking longer and longer walks every day, sometimes with her Great Dane, Liota. She became used to her bad eyes, and learned to make do—by turning her head when she needed to see sideways and by going out only in the morning and afternoon, when the light was best.

  One day, Alicia walked as far as Pro Arte Musical, her old dance school. Wandering through the building, she marveled at how little the place had changed since she and Fernando had moved to New York City. And yet things had changed; she knew her brother-in-law, Alberto, had returned from abroad and was running the ballet program there now. He had over a hundred students.

  Alicia thought about the early days, when it had been just her and a dozen other girls dancing in street clothes and sneakers. Ballet was finally taking hold in Cuba!

  The hallways were empty, although she could hear the sounds of a class upstairs. A female voice was calling out “Plié! Relevé!” over and over again, just like Señor Yavorsky used to do. Wandering around, Alicia found a small unoccupied room with a ballet barre. She went inside and closed the door.

  I’ve missed this so much, she thought wistfully.

  Grasping the ba
r with her right hand, she raised her left leg in the air. Almost immediately, a sharp pain shot through her left thigh as a muscle cramped up.

  “Ow!”

  Slumping against the barre, she quickly lowered her leg and massaged the spot. I need to take it slowly. I’m completely out of shape after a year of not dancing…of not moving at all.

  After that day, Alicia started coming to Pro Arte Musical more and more.

  Gradually, she regained her strength, balance, and physical skill, although her eyesight was still a problem. She had to compensate constantly. Alberto invited her to teach at Pro Arte Musical and to perform there, too. Alicia liked being part of the growing ballet scene in Cuba, and so did Fernando; in fact, they’d been talking about opening a ballet school of their own in Havana someday.

  But for now, Alicia longed to return to New York City, to Ballet Theatre.

  Was she ready? With her limited sight, would she ever be able to dance at her old level again?

  * * *

  “Markova is sick. Do you think you can dance Giselle in her place?”

  Alicia was back at the Ballet Theatre in New York. She blinked at Mr. Dolin, one of the choreographers and principal dancers. She couldn’t believe he was asking her to take on the part of Giselle—her dream role!

  “You’re the only one who knows the part besides Rosella and Nora, and they said they can’t get up to speed in so little—”

  “Yes! Thank you! I’d love to dance Giselle!” Alicia practically shouted. She couldn’t possibly turn down such an extraordinary opportunity.

  Mr. Dolin nodded. “Good. You can start rehearsals right away. We only have five days before the performance.”