The Theater of the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) witnessed the admiration shown in her homeland to Valdes, who is also the director general of Cuba’s National Ballet Company (BNC), an institution she presents to the world with equal feeling and stage virtuosity.

In the words of poet and ethnologist Miguel Barnet, a top figure in Cuban culture, Viengsay “is not only a product of a school that is iconic worldwide, she is also the epitome of a personal talent that had no equal or equivalent in her generation.”

Amidst gratifications and certainties, he remembered her dazzling career and leading roles, which have led her to “awaken at the ineffable center of dance (…) soaring like the lightest and most fleeting bird, to the heights of her personal universe.”

Barnet wrote, “Today I exalt her as a metaphor for the attainable divine, because she defies all possible definition, all comparable parameters. She is Viengsay Valdes, a leading figure in Latin American dance, a metaphor for the impossible made real.”

The prima ballerina also received honors from the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), the National Union of Cultural Workers (SNTC), the Teatro Nacional de Cuba, and the Faculty of Dancing Art at the University of the Arts (ISA).

jdt/iff/oda/amr