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Alicia Alosno May 24, 2012 in Havana, Cuba. ADALBERTO ROQUE / AFP

Cuba is in mourning and this Saturday, October 19, a popular tribute to the Grand Theater of Havana to Alicia Alonso, dancer and choreographer, legend of ballet, died Oct. 17 at 98 years.

Alicia Alonso was a beloved figure in Cuba, and a legend in the world of dance. Only Latin-American sacred "prima ballerina assoluta", this little girl of Spaniards was born to dance.

She began her career in 1938 on Broadway, at just 18 years old. The musicals allow her to begin but the classical ballet Giselle that will make it into history.

Almost blind

" If Alicia Alonso is born, it's so that Giselle never dies ," said the Cubans. The long-necked, disciplined but strong-tempered dancer also played Carmen , Sleeping Beauty or Coppelia . At 40, she was still able to perform the 32 whipped Lake Swan .

A feat all the more incredible that Alicia Alonso had become almost blind at the age of twenty. She who could distinguish only the shadows, danced while orienting herself with luminous markers arranged on the stage.

If she only hung up the slippers at 74, she continued to teach her art until her death, still in Cuba, her island she had never wanted to give up. She had created a school apart, the Cuban school, mixing rhythms and origins, technicality and sensuality.

► See also: Cuba: dancing freedom