As a sort of official, permanent record, the repertoire of prima ballerina Alicia Alonso, one of Cuba's national treasures, has been duly committed to film. Because she's performing for the camera, and for posterity, she performs to the hilt, and she is afforded a variety of backdrops on the sumptuously indulgent scale of an old MGM musical. This is meant to be the Definitive Alonso. There's an evident difference between the Alonso who dances Carmen (in 1976, in full color, and in approximately her fifty-seventh year), the Alonso who dances Giselle (in an actual stage performance, in some indeterminate youthful year), and the Alonso who dances the rest of the repertoire (in 1967); but there's no attempt at elucidating her artistic evolution. Exactly how, for example, did her failing eyesight alter her technique? The interviews with the star are unconvincing (what are probably intended as pithy aphorisms sound more like flip quips), and the biographical fill-in, especially a giddy montage on the subject of Alicia and La Revolucion, is unilluminating. (1977) — Duncan Shepherd
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