The Red Queen

When Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba in 1959, who would have guessed that one of the items high on his agenda would be launching a national ballet company? Yet the idea fit right in with his revolutionary goal of bringing art to the masses. Castro asked Cuba's prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, and her dancer husband Fernando how much they would need to make it happen. They said $100,000. Castro gave them $200,000. The investment has been paying off ever since.

The Alonsos created a company steeped in the classical disciplines of French, Italian and especially Russian ballet. To fill its ranks, they started a tuition-free school with satellite academies in every province of the country. They scoured local schools and sports camps for young talent, regardless of the student's background. Graduates who didn't become performers became teachers. The result, as Alonso says, is "a Cuban school of ballet that is appreciated all over the world."

After the Alonsos divorced and Fernando went off on his own, Alicia rededicated herself to the company, dancing in its productions into her 70s and running the operation with an exacting, imperious style. With unapologetic inconsistency, she has sometimes condoned, sometimes condemned the departures of leading dancers for the U.S. and Europe. It is, she says, "a personal decision in accordance with each one's ethics."

Now 85 and nearly blind, Alonso has no thought of retiring. "I will live for 200 years," she says. Nobody in the dance world would put it past her.