Alfonso Catá (3 October 1937 – 15 September 1990) was a Cuban ballet dancer, choreographer, teacher, and company director, active in the United States, Switzerland, Germany, and France.
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.
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.
Among them were Sérénade (music, Tchaikovsky), Symphonie en Ut (Bizet), Apollon Musagète (Stravinsky), Les Quatre Tempéraments (Hindemith), Concerto Barocco (Bach), Divertimento No.
[9] These masterworks were supplemented by choreographies of his own, including La Nuit de Mai (music, Leoncavallo), Les Saisons (Glazunov), Sonatine pour Violon et Percussion (Pierre Métral), Pierre et le Loup (Prokofiev), Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saěns), Nuit Transfigurée (Schoenberg), and Concerto pour Percussion, Piano, et Orchestre à Cordes (Tomás Swoboda).
The success of this work, set to a commissioned electronic score by Eric Gaudibert and performed by Ruth Weber and Chris Jensen, launched Spoerli's career as the foremost Swiss choreographer of the twentieth century.
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.
Among them were ballets to two evocative orchestral compositions: Nuits dans les Jardins d'Espagne by Manuel de Falla and La Mer by Claude Debussy.