Fernando Bujones

At the age of six, Bujones began to learn ballet in Havana at the school of a famous ballerina, Alicia Alonso, which is where his mother took him before they moved permanently to Miami.

He studied there for about five years; his teachers were some of the world’s premier ballet instructors, such as Stanley Williams, André Eglevsky, and Zeida Cecilia Mendez, his private coach.

In 1974, Bujones became the first American male dancer [5] to win the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, where he was also cited for "highest technical achievement".

He partnered many of the 20th century's celebrated ballerinas such as Dame Margot Fonteyn, Natalia Makarova, Carla Fracci, Cynthia Gregory, Marcia Haydée, Gelsey Kirkland, and Marianna Tcherkassky.

[1] Bujones became the artistic director, for a brief time, of Ballet Mississippi in 1993 and remained until the company folded due to a lack of funding.