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Vinicio Leira is one of the first male ballet dancers from Venezuela. He was born in 1936 in Caracas and started his dance career as a teenager in the Retablo Maravilla troupe, from the Fermin Toro School. Then he danced in the Ballet del Teatro de la Opera in the Municipal Theatre of Caracas. Finally he danced in Danzas Venezuela. He also performed contemporary dance and folkloric dance, both in theaters and in venezuelan TV productions, like El Show de Renny.

He traveled for internacional performances all over the Americas. This now retired dancer is the father of 4 children and lives with his wife in Denver, Colorado.

In this audio story, he gives advice to young male dancers about the challenges of this art.
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Transcript in English 

Vinicio Leira Altunez

Well, for me dancing was second nature.   My mom was musically… how can I say it… was like a little bird… she sang all day long,  always happy and she danced very well…. My mom was a very good dancer… 

I remember she taught me… when I was like 16… to dance Tango

The major challenge, as I told you, was to defy Venezuelan society… the machismo was pervasive back in the day … families only though that their kids had to go to college and study a career and in some cases, they wanted them to go to the military academy to graduate in the army.


After that,  people called me… not in the ballet, but my friends… Alain de…. Do you know who is Alain Delon? … they called me Catia’s Alain Delon    

(Note: Catia is a populous neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela)


The totality of a man’s education is not dancing… a young man has to prepare himself both physically and intellectually….  You have to read a lot… and this is important to… a dancer has to have musical knowledge, musical theory and play a musical instrument. 

Is what I call a complete dancer, that knows about art, poetry, literature…  everything that concern to the development of his intellect…

It is sad but I saw cases like that… fellow dancers that where afraid of people asking them questions because they didn't know what to answer.  They where all the time like hiding… not literately hiding but… like hiding from themselves….

One of the things I learned in the ballet was to confront the  public… The public always goes… mostly dancers go to the ballet, and when we see fails we are harsh critics…  Did you notice that he couldn't do the double cut?  Did you see that he wasn't capable of performing a grand jete?  etcetera…. So that is what we have to overcome… 

 When I was on the scenario, every time I ended a variation I said, here I am… not saying it out loud to the public… but in my mind I challenged them… Here I am! I am the best dancer in the whole world! The one who can do this without you judging him! And I faced them… and that gave me strength. 
 

I cannot conceive my world without dancing.



Vinicio Leira. Venezuelan classic ballet dancer

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