Alicia Alonso 40 x 50 ½ Acuarela en Cambas Alicia Alonso Alonso was born in Havana, Cuba. She was the one of two daughters of an army officer and his wife. The family was financially comfortable and lived in a fashionable section of the then-vibrant capital. Alonso indicated at a very early age, produced an affinity for music and dance - her mother could occupy her happily for long periods with just a phonograph, a scarf, and some records. She started dancing at the age of seven and at the age of eight, she studied ballet at Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical in Havana with Sophie Fedorova. A year later she performed publicly for the first time in Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. Alonso danced in Cuba under the name of Alicia Martínez. The dancer's rapid progress in her lessons came to an abrupt halt in 1937, when the 15-year-old fell in love with a fellow ballet student, Fernando Alonso, whom she married. After her marriage, she changed her last name to Alonso. The new couple moved to New York City, hoping to begin their professional careers. There they found a home with relatives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near Riverside Drive. Alonso soon gave birth to a daughter, Laura, but managed to continue her training at the School of American Ballet and took private classes with Michel Fokine, Alexandra Fedorova, Enrico Zanfretta and Anatole Vilzak. She then arranged a travel to London to study with the renowned Vera Volkova. Meanwhile, her husband had joined the new Mordkin Ballet Company in New York. Nearly mad with impatience and still partially blind, Alonso traveled back to New York in 1943 to begin rebuilding her skills. However, before she had barely settled, out of the blue she was asked to dance Giselle to replace the ballet Theater's injured prima ballerina. Alonso accepted and gave such a performance that the critics immediately declared her a star. She was promoted to principal dancer of the company in 1946 and danced the role of Giselle until 1948, also performing in Swan Lake, Anthony Tudor's Undertow (1943), Balanchine's Theme and Variations (1947), and in such world premieres as deMille's dramatic ballet Fall River Legend (1948), in which she starred as the Accused. By this time in her career, she had developed a reputation as an intensely dramatic dancer, as well as an ultra-pure technician and a supremely skilled interpreter of classical and romantic repertories.

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