
He is one of the masters in the approach to African themes in companies such as the National Ballet of Cuba and the National Folkloric Ensemble.

Cuban literature, music, visual arts and dance have had the need to record African descent in his work. The last of the aforementioned manifestations is perhaps the one that has received and expressed the most of folklore.
Contrary to what many might think the BalletFor example, it was the terrain where choreographers such as Alberto Méndez watered the company's repertoire with their talent. In it he projected his visions of the orishas and the folkloric themes of Cuba, through an authentic language.

“In 1959 I threw myself into the void before Ramiro Guerra's project to found the Modern Dance Ensemble, since I had no training or references to imitate. At first he prepared us for three months. I only had the physical part in advance because I liked sports, on the other hand I was missing the concept of modern dance that I was learning over a year with him ", says Méndez about his beginnings.
“The first function that was presented to the public was Mulato, a kind of Cecilia Valdés. In the play I played a “little gentleman” and for me he was terrifying because he had nothing that could support me,” as she recalls.
With his comprehensive vision of culture, he understood Ramiro's thinking like few others: “The artist takes and interprets the folkloric tradition in a very personal way, manipulates it and recreates it to offer it to the public. You can take all the freedoms you want, but without misrepresenting the roots ”[1].
Throughout the years Alberto Méndez follows the thematic line of syncretism within his repertoire. Mix the technique of Ballet with nuances and elements of the African culture transplanted in Cuba more than five centuries ago. It revalues that aesthetic within the field of academic dance.

“In 1961 I went to the National Ballet of Cuba. Things went very well for me in the artistic order, not so in certain personal relationships. That year the company began an international tour of China and other socialist countries. It lasted seven months and I can say that I learned to dance in that time ”,
“From my beginnings in the Modern Dance Ensemble I had concerns in creating choreographies, but I was very intuitive at that time. More than ten years later, in 1970, he made the first work in the ballt ”, he counts.
“The group participated in international competitions like the one in Varna, Bulgaria, which always asked for newly created choreographies. That time Alicia Alonso asked me to see what I was doing. It was the piece Plasmasis which has a lot of influence from my origins in Modern Dance ”.

A milestone came to his life in 1973, when he premiered The river and the forest a legend of ochun y Oggun of great acceptance and success in the Cuban and international public. "This work was awarded as the best modern choreography at the Varna International Ballet Competition in 1974. The music is a sound design by Féliz Guerrero and the voice of the soprano María Remolá", recalls the artist.
And it is that “Méndez endows the choreographies with a spirituality and a mastery of the poetry of African myths that add beauty and stylization to that universe. He does it in an elaborate way. Darkness gives space to colors, mysteries to light and ritual to the power of the Afro-Cuban ”, considers the researcher Hortensia Montero in the book Poetics, Shango and life.
The African theme continued its presence and acceptance within the National Ballet of Cuba with the emergence of pieces such as Nationals y Cecilia Valdes scored by Gustavo Herrera. They also did Cimarron y Rhythmicby Iván Tenorio; Little hand on the ground, by Alberto Alonso, and Waveby Gustavo Herrera and Alberto Méndez.

The latter, performed in 1979 the choreography Cuban lines, with music by Jesús Ortega where he uses Yoruba songs. According to the press of the time, “in a leading moment during the premiere of the creation, the black dancers Caridad Martínez and Andrés Williams appear who exploited the plasticity of their bodies to the maximum, giving the author the possibility of breaking the myth about the impossibility of the black dancer to face with exceptionality and virtuosity both the technique and the language of classical ballet ”.
However, few know that the African culture influenced the National Ballet of Cuba, since the 40s, when it was called the Alicia Alonso Ballet. This is demonstrated by the staging of Black party, by the choreographer Enrique Martínez; Touch, by Ramiro Guerra, in 1952, and Songoro cosongo, by Cuca Martínez, in 1953.

And after 1959 they appear The güije, by Alberto Alonso, in 1967; Oshosi and white deerby Díaz Reyes; Mixed race, by Lorenzo Monreal, in 1966, and La rumba, by Alberto Alonso, in 1968, synthesized by Mercedes Borges in her publication Influences of African Folklore in Cuban dance.
[1] War, Ramiro. Dramatization of Folklore, Editorial Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2009