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• Arts and Culture
• Caribbean
• culture an traditions
• Dance
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• Havana
• history
• international
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• 10 / 13 / 2008

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This Festival, founded under the initiative of the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, held its first ceremony in 1960, and is currently being celebrated every other year. It has become the oldest one in its genre on a world scale.

During his development, it has brought together in different scenarios of the Cuban capital, as well as in other cities of the country, great dance stars, companies, personalities from the history of ballet, as well as critics, journalists and business people.

With a non-competitive character, its aim is to propitiate a friendly encounter of artists and other specialists from the perspective of art, affection and peace.

An inspiration of the art of ballet for legions of artists and admirers, Alicia Alonso, ballet dancer, choreographer and director of the Cuban National Ballet is the organizer of this festivity, which has greeted in a little more than four and a half decades around fifty foreign companies and close to a thousand guests from 57 countries from the five continents.

To this number, we will have to add the contribution given to creation by Cuban and foreign choreographers, representatives of the most different tendencies of contemporary dance art, which is to be demonstrated by having propitiated the premiere of 847 plays, 217 of them on a world scale and 630 premieres for Cuba.

Its many collateral options, among which are included photo and visual arts exhibitions, conferences, movie cycles, philatelic and poster emissions, and specialized book editions, have contributed to offer the guests a stimulating environment of creation and fraternity.

The 21st edition of this dance party, will take place from October 28 to November 6, 2008 and it will be dedicated to praise the 60th Anniversary of the foundation of the Cuban National Ballet, an emblematic dance group considered to be a faithful example of Cuban art and culture inside and outside of the country.

Among the greatest attractions of this XXI edition there is the revival of the version of Sleeping Beauty, on October 29 in the García Lorca room from the Gran Teatro de La Habana.

With choreography by Alicia Alonso, on the original by Marius Petipa, music by Piotr Ilich Chaicovski, stage design by Ricardo Reymena, and wardrobe by the French designer Philippe Binot, the staging is the return of this choreography to the Cuban stages after 22 years without being presented.

One of the main charms of the show, according to what sources from the dance group informed to AIN, will be the designs and the many decorations that will make up the staging.

 (AIN)