Carmen and creator still strong. (News).

Luck has indeed been a lady--albeit a rather spicy one--for Alberto Alonso. His ballet Carmen, depicting the protagonist in the hottest colors, brought the Cuban choreographer international acclaim after its premiere at the Bolshoi in 1967. Now he and his wife, dancer Sonia Calero, have set his Carmen on Florida's Sarasota Ballet. The company will perform the ballet at Sarasota's Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall November 15-17. Alonso's work marks not only a contribution to dance but also the fortunate outcome of a personal crisis.

In January 2002, 85-year-old Alonso had three quarters of a lung removed due to cancer. "It's a good thing I was a dancer," comments Alonso, who performed with Ballets Russes de Colonel de Basil, American Ballet Theatre, and in 1948 founded, with his brother Fernando and then sister-in-law Alicia Alonso, what eventually became Ballet Nacional de Cuba. "That made my legs strong [enough] to cross Niagara on a bicycle," he says, wryly translating a Spanish phrase meaning to pull through a tough situation.

The disease threatened the peacefully creative life he and Calero have made for themselves as faculty at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida, since 1993. "The fruits of his labor are felt every day here," says Alora Haynes, the dance department colleague who brought Alonso to the college. "He is walking history, with many great stories to tell." She points to the popularity of his partnering class, which draws male students from all over the region.

A few weeks after his operation, Alonso was back in the studio preparing the college dancers for Santa Fe's June show. This proved therapeutic for the artist, who continues to pass on what he calls "the Cuban style of dance ... our cultural ajiaco," or tasty stew, that mixes "everything we can get our hands on." For example, in Carmen, explains the choreographer, "I used many popular Cuban steps." The work of Jerome Robbins inspired him to bring the vernacular into ballet. "For me, [he's] the greatest," Alonso declares.

That tropical seasoning seduced Maya Plisetskaya as she watched a touring, Cuban-themed musical by Alonso melt a Moscow winter night thirty-six years ago. "From the dancers' first movement," writes the Bolshoi prima ballerina in her autobiography, "I felt as if a snake had bitten me." She thought Alonso perfect to choreograph her dream Carmen and recalls how "the ballet was made in a frenzied rush" to Rodion Shchedrin's suite based on the Bizet opera. Though Soviet authorities balked at the work's eroticism, Plisetskaya stamped the lead with unassailable star power.

"She was great," says Alonso. "She has lived ... loved ... suffered," giving dimension to a role that, for the choreographer, symbolizes freedom.

"The choreographic language created by Alberto is enthralling, with good dramatic possibilities for our dancers," says Robert de Warren, Sarasota Ballet's artistic director. He expects Carmen to please his audience and enrich the repertoire with a fine example of "a complete bodily form of expression."

After so many years, this ballet is, as Alonso enthuses, "still going strong." The same can be said for its creator.