CAMAGÜEY.- The third gala of the Camagua International Folk Dance Festival gave the moment to the solemn public event to present the 2023 National Dance Award in this city to the dancer, teacher and choreographer José Antonio Chávez Guetton.
“I have given it everything I could out of immense love. I gave myself completely to dance and I really didn't care at all,” declared last night at the Teatro Principal, who at a very young age was expelled by his father from his house in Holguín for wanting to be a dancer.
Santiago Alfonso, 2006 National Dance Prize and member of the jury, read the April 2023 ruling when the court met, chaired by Aurora Bosch, Cuban Jewel of Dance, and also made up of dancers, teachers and directors Johannes García and Isabel Bustos and the critic Ismael Albelo.
“Our sincere love for his work, dear friend, companion and teacher,” said Santiago Alfonso at the end of the text where they place him in the generation that underpinned the choreography of the Ballet of Camagüey , and highlight Ofelia, Fatum, Vivaldiana and Baroque Concert as beautiful pieces of high artistic flight, in addition to the contribution to the development of other Cuban groups.
“Santiago was my teacher and taught me to love and sacrifice everything I had to sacrifice for dance,” emphasized Chávez, who always remembers the tutelage in Havana in the early sixties when he went to manage his training to forge a professional career that today exceeds half a century.
“To the extent that I gave to the dance, the dance reciprocated me. When it comes to the balance between what is received and what is given, I believe that I received much more because I received the pleasure of delivering my work to you, because it is for you that I work,” he insisted.
He received the National Award from Fernando Rojas, Vice Minister of Culture; Lillitsi Hernández, president of the National Council of the Performing Arts, and Francisco González, president of the performing artists branch of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, Uneac.
The award was accompanied by a work by the plastic artist Martha Jiménez, also a native of Holguín and like him based in Camagüey. Kenny Ortigas, president of the Provincial Council of the Performing Arts, with words of praise related his greatest concern to the lack of interest in knowledge, and identified the image of ethics as the primary condition of a 78-year-old artist.
“In this marriage of dance and me, life becomes wonderful. I would like to live many more years for the expressiveness, the talent, the beauty of the dance that we do for you. Thank you,” concluded the honoree.
It was a rainy night, without the presence of his neighbors from the remote neighborhood where he lives; without the majority of colleagues and students, not even the main cast of his company because theBallet of Camagüey is on tour in Spain, but at least José Antonio Chávez, on the stage of his beloved coliseum, dressed like a prince, finally received the National Dance Award 2023.
In the audience were personalities of Cuban culture and foreign participants of the fourth edition of the Camagua Folk Dance Festival, which ended on Sunday and has received more than 300 guests, including Johannes García, 2020 National Dance Prize.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez