Fernando Alonso - Telegraph The teenage Alicia was a striking but still unfinished ballet dancer, and her husband coached her constantly, applying everything he observed from the international dancers alongside whom he and his brother were performing. In 1941, aged 20, she was hired by the major classical company, Ballet Theater, only to find her nascent career threatened by the detached retinas. Within two years, however, Fernando had coached her back to full fitness and she was called upon by the company to replace its sick superstar, Alicia Markova, in her greatest role, Giselle. The company arranged for very strong lights, invisible to the audience, to guide the Cuban ballerina. Her male partners were also taught by Fernando to murmur directional instructions to her as they danced. In 1948, due to disruptions within Ballet Theater, Fernando, Alicia and Alberto returned to Cuba to establish the Ballet Alicia Alonso, formed to support the ballerina's world tours. The brothers set about training native dancers for the company, and Fernando developed a dance syllabus based on his observations of all the major world ballet schools as well as the insights he had learned from working with his almost-blind wife. One ballerina recalled how her class was taught to balance on pointe with their eyes closed, so as to master an inner sense of equilibrium. Another of his ideas was to set children spinning on rockers torn off old rocking chairs so that they learned to understand the forces involved in fast turning. To this day Cubans are particularly noted for their combination of old-world Russian stylishness and vigorous technical virtuosity. During the 1950s the Alonso brothers joined the Communist Party in opposition to General Batista, and after Castro's 1959 coup they persuaded him to fund a Cuban National Ballet and a national schooling system under their direction. Under Fernando Alonso's remarkable curriculum, Havana became internationally renowned for its ballet training, despite material deprivations. In the early 1960s Cuba's young ballerinas were regularly winning gold medals in Soviet competitions, and the Bolshoi Ballet, impressed, started exchanges of dancers and teachers. However, as Alicia became more autocratic as head of the Cuban National Ballet, relations with her husband and daughter broke down. In 1975, after they divorced, Fernando set up a ballet school and company in Camagüey, which is now Cuba's second ballet company, though not permitted by the government to tour abroad. Cuba's 11 million-strong population continues to support some half dozen professional companies, and Cuban ballet teachers now hold major positions worldwide. Fernando Alonso taught into his nineties, and was awarded Cuba's National Dance Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2000. He also won the international Benois de la Danse Lifetime Achievement award in 2008. Fernando Alonso is survived by his former wife, who at 92 still runs the Cuban National Ballet, and by their daughter, also a ballet teacher. Alberto Alonso died in 2007, aged 93. Fernando Alonso, born December 27 1914, died July 27 2013