Esperanza Cruz Hidalgo

She left school in 1956 without graduating due to her many important artistic commitments that would lead her to travel regularly to the US, Europe, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Venezuela, and Panama, among other places.

While she was in college, she had the opportunity to study with renowned artists from Argentina, Ecuador, the United States, and Mexico, including: Aida Mastrazzi, María Ruanova, Robert Joffrey, Joseph Balanchine, Igor Youskevitch, Grace Moore, Kitty Sakilarides, Ileana Leonidoff, and Nelsy Dambré.

[4] In 1966, she traveled to the US at the invitation of the program Council Leads and Specialist, where she studied writing workshops in dance, stagecraft, and stage makeup.

Now in Ecuador, she appeared as a solo dancer of the Golden Age of ballet, she joined the Guayaquil Ballet Group of the Ecuadorian House of Culture (Guayaquil branch), gave classes at colleges, cultural centers, offered classes, gave recitals, brought dance to television, she filmed Sílfides y Bodas by Aurora.

In December 2010, she received the Ecuadorian National Prize in Art "Premio Eugenio Espejo"[5] awarded by President Rafael Correa, thanks in part to a request by the Institute of International Education (USA) and the support of more than 2,000 signatures on Facebook by friends, former students, and fans.