Fernando Bujones

Fernando Bujones (March 9, 1955 – November 10, 2005) was an American

Born in

Bujones was born to Cuban natives Fernando Bujones Sr. and Mary Calleriro, who divorced when Bujones was just five years old. At the age of six, Bujones began to learn ballet in Havana at the school of a famous ballerina, Alicia Alonso, which is where his mother took him before they moved permanently to Miami.^[2] His mother, who was a former dancer, enrolled him in these dance classes due to his poor constitution as a child.

In 1980, Bujones married Márcia Kubitschek (1943–2000), daughter of

Just before his death, Bujones completed his autobiography, which was released in 2009 by his long-time coach Zeida Cecilia Mendez. Fernando Bujones: An Autobiography^[3] has been described by Dance Europe as "a great read"; "Fernando's story reads as a movie script on the theme of the American Dream!"

Bujones died of malignant

In 1974, Bujones became the first American male dancer [5] to win the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, where he was also cited for "highest technical achievement".

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.^[6]

Throughout his 30-year dancing career he performed as a guest artist in 34 countries and with more than 60 companies including such well known ones as

Bujones became the artistic director, for a brief time, of Ballet Mississippi in 1993 and remained until the company folded due to a lack of funding. In 1999, he was asked to become the artistic director of Southern Ballet Theater in Orlando, where he influenced the company's name change to Orlando Ballet and where he was employed until his death.[7]

See also

• List of Cubans

References