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Fernando Bujones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fernando Bujones (March 9, 1955 – November 10, 2005) was a Cuban-American ballet dancer.
Born in Miami, Florida to Cuban parents, Bujones is regarded as one of the finest male dancers of the 20th century and hailed as the greatest American male dancer of his generation.[1]
Bujones' first formal ballet classes were in Alicia Alonso's Cuban National Ballet school for about a year and a half. In 1967 he won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet Company. He studied there for about five years; his teachers were some of the world’s premier ballet instructors, such as Stanley Williams, André Eglevsky, and José Imendez, his private coach.
He joined the American Ballet Theatre, one of the world's preeminent dance companies, in 1972. By the following year he became a soloist, and in 1974 a Principal Dancer where, at 19, he was not only one of the youngest principal dancers in the world, but the youngest principal male dancer in ABT's history. It was during that period that Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union and joined ABT in 1974. They worked together as dancers for six years, after which Bujones worked under Baryshnikov's artistic direction.[2]
Throughout his 30 year dancing career he performed as a guest artist in 34 countries and with more than 60 companies including such luminary ones like American Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, the Paris Opera, the Royal Danish Ballet, La Scala of Milano, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Australian Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, Boston Ballet and others. He has partnered many of the 20th century's celebrated ballerinas such as Dame Margot Fonteyn, Natalia Makarova, Carla Fracci, Cynthia Gregory, Marcia Haydee, Gelsey Kirkland, and Marianna Tcherkassky. [3]
In 1980 Bujones married Márcia Kubitschek (1942–2000), daughter of former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek. (Márcia Kubitschek was elected to the National Congress of Brazil in 1987 and served as lieutenant governor of the Brazilian Federal District from 1991 to 1994.) They had one daughter, Alejandra, who was Bujones' only child. He later married Maria Arnillas and became the Artistic Director of the Orlando Ballet in Orlando, Florida. He died of melanoma on November 10, 2005 in Miami, Florida.