Portrait of the Cuban School of Ballet, by Rebecca Bowman

Description

With some 3,000 students, the Cuban National Ballet School in Havana is the biggest ballet school in the world, and one of the most prestigious. The School was established in 1962 in a collective effort financed by the revolutionary government to revive Cuba’s languishing cultural programs. Founders, A50.00licia and Fernando Alonso devised and codified a methodology based in the traditions of the European schools and adapted to express a Latin sensibility and aesthetic.

In 1965, Ramona de Saá, a founding member of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba became the school’s director and ballet mistress. Since then, De Saá has continued to train world-class dancers in the Cuban method and is today regarded as one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in dance teaching.

Some of the world’s greatest dancers have trained at the School, with graduates dancing at The Royal Ballet of London, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and many other important companies.

In 2012, Rebekah Bowman traveled to Cuba for the first time to photograph the daily ritual around ballet practice at the National Ballet School; to study the characteristics that distinguish the Cuban style and explore why Cubans have come to identify and express themselves with such success through classical ballet.

Rebekah Bowman is a Mexican-American photographer living in Berkeley, CA. Having grown up in the US, Bowman studied and worked in Europe and Mexico from 1982—2007, traveling extensively while honing her craft as a photographer before returning to the US in 2008. Photographic assignments have included editorial work and documenting NGO projects in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique.

Beautifully printed in duotone, with English and Spanish language texts throughout, Portrait of the Cuban School of Ballet presents 46 of Bowman’s most beautiful and poignant photographs of the School, its teachers, and its students, providing an important and most timely record.”