The Cuban dancer Alicia Alonso and the psychoanalyst and London dweller Luis Rodríguez de la Sierra spoke publicly the past Friday April 9th at the Henry Thomas Room at London Metropolitan University.

From almost seven o'clock in the afternoon, the nonagenarian Director of the National Ballet of Cuba, encouraged by the questions of the renowned psychoanalyst, travelled through some moments of her career.

A video recreated moments of her famous performances of Giselle and Carmen, and Alicia Alonso revealed in English the secrets of the art of dancing to an enthusiastic audience.

"If people think that you can dance without thinking, they are wrong. You have to work hard and consciously" clarified the almost blind dancer and choreographer, who, despite her vision limitations can sense when a dancer is dancing badly. She said that ballet is not only a physical theatre art, but rather that the public "also see your face, including the expression of the eyes, and although I can't see, I can get there, and people feels it."

Alicia Alonso is a vivacious woman who expresses herself in good English, but with the funny and inevitable syllabic hardware of Spanish speakers.

Prompted by the public’s questions, Alicia Alonso remembered the English choreographer Anthony Tudor: "He was a case. Sometimes he’d said: 'Today I' m not inspired, let's go home.' He would take any natural movement and make it ballet." She also told us about how Tudor once observed some children make fun of their own sadness by representing the act of shedding tears and eating them with their hands and made Alicia Alonso include these gestures in her depiction of a woman who had been abandoned. "He wrote me the most beautiful letter I ever received, thanking me for dancing for him. My husband got jealous and took it away from me... to the Museum of Art."

When asked about what had allowed her have such a fruitful life, Alicia Alonso replied: "I'll tell you: I like life." The audience applauded with the vivacity that Alicia Alonso gifts and deserves.