Miami Proud: Miami City Ballet’s artistic director Lourdes Lopez is a Latina trailblazer

MIAMI – As we have fun Hispanic Heritage month, we meet with the Miami City Ballet’s artistic director, Lourdes Lopez. 

Now in her eleventh season as artistic director, Lopez leads the Miami City Ballet with the skilled approach you’d anticipate from a prima ballerina. 

Her storied profession consists of roles as soloist and principal dancer with New York City Ballet, led by two legends George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. 

She is additionally a pioneer.    

“I continue being the only and the first Latina principal dancer in the history of New York City ballet,” she stated.  

Lopez is Cuban American, her household got here to Miami fleeing the Castro regime in 1960. 

Surprisingly, her introduction to bounce was on the recommendation of a physician. 

At age 5, she was recognized with weak legs and urged to get train past what was provided at school. And that is when her journey to prima ballerina started.

She progressed to personal classes after which leaped on the probability of a lifetime.

“At 14, I was given a full scholarship to study at the School of American Ballet in New York. That is what’s surprising when I think back on my life – that my parents (when I was 14) said ‘go’!”

She turned a soloist and principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. 

She had been taught by Balanchine – who lovingly signed a portray of them that hangs in her workplace right now. 

She broke boundaries in a world-class dance firm though there have been a number of Latin dancers she idolized as a baby. 

She recalled being taken to the ballet on the Dade County Auditorium and seeing Cuban ballet dancer Lidia Diaz Cruz.

She says she all the time wore her heritage proudly.

“I always embraced it; I never hid it. In fact, on my ballet bag, there was a Cuban flag. It was stitched on. My mother would say, ‘Remember that you’re Cuban and you got to hold that country high!'”

Her heritage has formed who she is and the way she works right now.

“Diversity is incredibly important because the more people you have from different places the richer you are,” Lopez stated.

“It’s the excitement when they come together,” she explains about main the present firm of dancers in her cost. 

“The fact that they’re from different places … I think makes Miami City Ballet so unusual.”

Among her many accomplishments, Lopez co-founded the Cuban Artists Fund, which helps Cuban and Cuban American artists. And she acquired an award from the American Immigration Law Foundation. 

She is additionally the proud mom of two daughters.

The Miami City Ballet season kicks off on October 21 with “Romeo and Juliet.”

Lopez says they’re so excited to lastly launch a full season after two years of the pandemic. 

For extra information on ticket particulars, click on here.