Alfonso Cata

Alfonso Catá (3 October 1937 – 15 September 1990) was a Cuban ballet dancer, choreographer, teacher, and company director.

During his career as a dancer, Catá performed with several major ballet companies in Europe and America. In 1956, he joined Roland Petit’s Ballets de Paris. Catá danced minor roles in many works in the company repertory, appearing on stage with Zizi Jeanmaire in Petit’s Carmen and with Violette Verdy in Le Loup. After a time with this company, he left to join the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, also based in Paris, where he appeared in the company’s famous 1960 production of The Sleeping Beauty, staged by Bronislava Nijinska and Robert Helpmann and starring Nina Vyrubova and Serge Golovine. In, 1961, Catá joined the Stuttgart Ballet.

Upon returning to New York, Catá resumed his studies at the School of American Ballet and at the Joffrey School, where he improved his technical mastery. He then joined the corps of New York City Ballet, then resident at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. Although happy to be dancing the Balanchine repertory, he decided, at age 30, to retire from the stage. In 1967, he left New York City Ballet and opened a boutique, called Yasny (“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet”), on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where he sold dresses he had designed and Latin American pottery and jewelry. 

In 1969, Balanchine nominated Catá to become artistic director of the moribund ballet company of the Grand Théâtre de Genève. During the four years of his tenure (1969-1973), he introduced many of Balanchine’s best works to appreciative Swiss audiences. 

Over the next two decades, Catá worked as artistic director of three major dance companies: the Frankfurt Ballet in Germany (1973-1977), the Baltimore Ballet in the United States (1980-1981), and the Ballet du Nord in France (1983-1990). In the intervals between these jobs, he taught at various schools in New York City and elsewhere. As founder of the Ballet du Nord in Roubaix, France, close to the Belgian border, he remained active in the post of company director, chief choreographer, and teacher until his death in 1990. He built the company repertory on fourteen Balanchine ballets and such works as Concerto, set to music of Keith Emerson by Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, Les Nuits d’Été, set to music of Hector Berlioz by Jean-Paul Comelin, and a number of works of his own devising. The company eventually evolved into the Centre Chorégraphique National Roubaix–Nord-Pas-de-Calais (CNN), specializing in experimental contemporary dance.