CAMAGÜEY.- You already know that José Antonio Chávez is officially the National Dance Award. But you don't know what he has recounted about the jury and life exclusively for the newspaper Adelante, like the great walls to overcome since his father kicked him out of the house because he wanted to be a dancer.
On the International Dance Day, the performance at the Principal Theater began with an ovation from colleagues and disciples, from the public, in short from the family that Chávez has found here since 1969 when he arrived with the illusion of dancing in the Ballet of Camagüey. He became one of his choreographers, a teacher without whom the history of the company cannot be told.
“For me it has been a great joy. Aurora (Bosch) called me to tell me. Getting excited is nothing shameful, and the excitement made me cry. I didn't believe it. I have been nominated several times. There were a lot of people ahead who obviously deserved the award before me. The news surprised me,” he declared.
─We could see the award as the result of the taste of a group, but I would like to see it in another way...
─Santiago Alfonso was on the jury. He was my teacher in the year 1962. He was very young. He had just done Suite Yoruba. I was a little younger and I was beginning to try to make my way in Havana without having family or friends, to give my ballet classes above all else. Aurora was on the jury, we've known each other for a long time. She was at the premiere of my version of Gisselle in Spain, a very important moment in my career, because not everyone can do a version of Gisselle. There was Ismael Albelo who knows about my career here. Coincidentally all those people met and the result was unanimous. That is pretty.
─I insist on looking at the award from another perspective, because of the connotation of what has been awarded. I see it as the vindication of that passionate, stubborn and heartbreaking battle, a fight very much his for dance.
─I think so. I go back to the early years. I situate myself and tell you: my father kicked me out of the house. I was practically a teenager and I didn't have the tools to say: well, it doesn't matter. A child from home, from a private school, from going to church, from making his first communion... suddenly finding himself in the capital without parents or relatives, without a safe roof, without a plate of food waiting for you, in an armchair in a funeral home or in a seat in the terminal to spend the night…
─But today you are our National Dance Award.
─If it is necessary to recognize that this award is due to something, it is due to that, to all those moments of anguish, anxiety, hunger. I never forget that one of those nights Santiago gave me a quarter to buy a stuffed potato. At that time, one quarter gave me enough to buy two. If there has to be a reason beyond the jurors they know or don't know, the reason is there and it is in the passion that endured for that to happen. I did not take a bus and return because of passion, because my commitment was that my fulfillment in life had to be dancing and thanks to the Lord I was able to achieve it.
The jury of the National Dance Award identifies him in a generation of choreographers, where Francisco Lam and Lázaro Martínez joined, who contributed to the permanence of the company, that is, to the Ballet of Camagüey, for their own and stable repertoire. He helped found the Holguín Chamber Ballet and the Ballet of Santiago. He collaborated with companies such as Codanza, Danza Libre, Babul, Fragmentada, among others.
─You already have 53 years of artistic life, you have retired status but you are still moving, which project are you working on?
─Next week I will start a ballet to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of Ignacio Agramonte, on May 11. I hope to do a work up to the occasion.
With this epic motif, Chávez has a comparison in himself: Oda, premiered in 1987, premiered by Jorge Esquivel and Aida Villoch, with the collaboration of the Camagüey’s Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jorge Luis Betancourt. The work celebrated the sesquicentennial of the birth of Máximo Gómez.
Chávez made his debut as a dancer on March 9, 1970, in the first staging of Giselle by the Ballet of Camagüey. He was born in Holguín and after a journey in Havana to manage his dance training, he arrived in Camagüey, he got to know the company and found a rehearsal space after the working day in the Lenin machine shops until he became part of the cast. Mama Simone, from La Fille mal Gardée, is the character part who has marked him the most.
From his choreographic repertoire, Ofelia (1980) and Alfonsina (2019) also stand out, the latter considered his first proposal already in retirement, although he remains active as a Ballet teacher of Camagüey.
Interviewed by Adelante, on another occasion, when asked if he wrote a book, what it would be about, he replied:
“I have dreamed of writing the story of my life that if I outline it in broad strokes, it could perfectly be a novel. Undoubtedly, the central theme would be love. I couldn't write about anything else." Indeed, only love heals the most stinging wounds. Congratulations on the National Dance Award for José Antonio Chávez.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez