With a Cuban Accent: Blogamole Sits Down with Ballerinas Lorena and Lorna Feijoo

By Vanessa Beatriz Soto

Cuban ballet dancers are setting the dance world on fire. How did they pick up their passion for dance? How can that passion be shared with people who are new to the art form? We sat down with ballet royalty Lorena and Lorna Feijoo for a chat.

Blogamole: Your mother was a dancer, your father was an actor. How did you start dancing?

Lorena: My mother took me to the theater, my father took me to the studio... I was always listening to classical music, watching the girls in costume when I was little. In the Ballet Nacional De Cuba, all the dancers brought their kids. You didn't need to ask anybody, 'can you take care of my child?' All the kids watched the dance classes and saw their parents rehearsing, and after a while my interest grew and grew.

Lorna: My sister was watching ballet from the womb! By the time my mother had me, she had stopped dancing, and was a teacher at the National Ballet School, which is the most important ballet school in Cuba. I had never really thought of being a dancer - I wanted to do everything! But one day, I just auditioned, and I passed the test. I went to my mother and I told her: 'I passed the test. I want to study ballet.' My father said, you know, maybe it's better if you are a contemporary dancer, to avoid comparisons with your sister? (By the time I got started, my sister had already been in the school for three years. She had won international prizes.) My mother would say, you're not as disciplined with your diet, you like candy and chocolate, you have to sacrifice a lot, get up early. It's a very hard career. My parents thought I wasn't going to have the discipline for it! But I did it. I wanted it.

B: In the US, Ballet is a passion for a small minority of people. What's the best way to enlarge that audience and get people interested?

Lorena: In recent years, dance has become a real presence in media. Theaters are a medium for a small group of people, whether its for the symphony or opera, for people who already appreciate the performing arts. In the US, television is the best way to reach people. Programs like So You Think You Can Dance, and Dancing with the Stars, bring dance to the people. Dancing with the Stars has a bit of classical dance as part of its program. When people see that classical dance and music is accessible, that it isn't so foreign, they can start understand, to become interested and get a taste and appreciation. We need more arts channels, where we can show the variety and breadth of the performing arts.

Lorna: Dance has always been with us, but, unlike sports, it doesn't have that huge, passionate audience. In Cuba, people live to see the ballet. It's not like that here. So for us, something like (our appearance) on Dancing with the Stars was a huge thing! Truly, when the called us and gave us the news, it was a beautiful thing... Black Swan is another example. It got people going to the movies and looking at people dancing ballet. I'd love to see more movies - not documentaries, although I love them - but movies about ballet. Also, I think community outreach programs are key. At the Boston Ballet, we do lots of performances for schools, and no matter how tired we are from the night before, we are always excited for those matinees. The kids love it! We say to each other in the company, those kids are our very best audience.

So what about you? Are you a ballet fan? Would you hit the theater to check out a new movie with a ballet theme? Tell us in the comments!

Tags Arts and Culture, Black Swan, blogger: Vanessa Beatriz Soto, Boston Ballet, Cuba, Cuban Ballet, Dance, Dancing With The Stars, Hispanic Heritage Month, Lorena Feijoo, Lorna Feijoo, San Francisco Ballet, So You Think You Can Dance