Ah, she may be blind, but she ain't dead! Remember, Alonso is a Force of Nature, and I really don't believe that she has to see very much at all to head the Cuban School. I do think that her ways have the potential to outlast her mortal life, but we can't be sure until we see what happens.

I personally think Alica Alonso does an amazing job leading the Ballet Nacional de Cuba nowadays considering her blindness and sheer age, though even at this advanced age she leads and inspires one of the truly great ballet troupes in the world. The day she passes away will truly be a huge loss for the world of ballet, that's to be sure.

But getting back on topic, I'm surprised there aren't big corporate or individual benefactors to really make ABT a truly great ballet troupe that it deserves to be. Somebody should talk to ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, or even Chevron, companies that have plentiful cash on hand and could make a major PR coup by offering a major sponsorship deal to help the ABT.

I don't think your choice of those three big oil companies could lead to anything productive. I doubt that they even would believe or be interested in any possible "value" of supporting any arts activity. Remember that when Chevron purchased Texaco they quickly dropped the decades old sponsorship of the Met
Saturday afternoon broadcasts. Texaco obviously saw some value to this support but Chevron didn't.

Given how much mileage (pun intended!) Mobil got out of sponsoring PBS' Masterpiece Theatre for many years, ExxonMobil doing a major sponsorship deal with ABT would give this troupe the funding it finally needs to turn it in the type of company that can rival POB, Kirov/Mariinsky and Bohshoi troupes. And frankly, given the profits of ExxonMobil lately, they are one of the few corporations with money to spare for a major sponsorship.

I had to giggle at this -- when the company brought their Giselle to Seattle, several years ago, the image on the front of the program was a medium-sized photo of the current Giselle and Albrecht, superimposed on a page-sized half-tone of Alonso in the role. AA really is everywhere.

And there are many companies in the US that hire a significant number of dancers with green cards. At PNB, four of the twelve principals were trained outside the US.

And if I'm not mistaken, a significant percentage of baseball players in the 'big leagues' come from outside the US too.

In this case, the Delgado sisters, even being Cubans, are not a product of the "Cuban School"-(they might not even ever visited the island)-whereas others, like Guerra, got it due to their physical involvement with the training plus their national heritage. It's important to note that there is a fact that CNB and its School/Method/Style has been historically,and currently, represented only by nationals, but not due to any "exclusivity" policy at all. Same with everything else-(sports, musicians etc). Big, empowered nations, like US, will always present their delegations permeated by a wide variety of "made by choice" nationalized citizens, in which ABT fits.