Alberto Alonso (1917-2007).

Havana-born dancer, choreographer, and teacher Alberto Alonso died December 31. He was the first foreigner during the Soviet era to choreograph for the Bolshoi when his Carmen Suite premiered there in 1967, with Maya Plisetskaya in the lead. Fittingly the final stretch of a long career found Alonso back in Moscow enjoying ovations for his best-known work, staged to celebrate Plisetkaya's 80th birthday in 2005.

As a teenager, Alonso trained with emigre Russians in his native city. In 1935 he went off to tour with Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes, where he specialized in character roles and met his first wife Alexandra Denisova. After five years, the couple left for Havana to direct a dance school. In 1943, Alonso returned to the stage with Ballet Theatre (later ABT), a two-year stint that exposed him to Robbins, Tudor, and de Mille. Alonso took on his greatest endeavor in 1948, founding the forerunner to Ballet Nacional de Cuba alongside his brother, Fernando and then-sister-in-law, Alicia Alonso.

There the choreographer infused classicism with tropical vigor, especially to dramatize folk themes in works such as Rapsodia Negra (1953) and El Guije (1967). That stylistic stamp remains in the heritage of Cuban dancers around the world. In 1993, Alonso sought political asylum in the United States and--beyond setting Carmen on companies from Tokyo to Buenos Aires--settled into academic life as master-artist-in-residence at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, FL.

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"We were stealing treasure," says Alora Haynes, director of the college's dance department. "Students learned from him the deepest love of art, to connect with history. He offered them their biggest challenge: to reach for the quality and integrity he brought to dance."