Fernando Bujones

Fernando Bujones, born March 9, 1955, in Miami, Florida, to Cuban parents Fernando Bujones Sr. and Mary Calleriro, was an American dancer whose Broadway appearances included Ballet Theatre and Makarova and Company between 1975 and 1980. He died on November 10, 2005, of melanoma at age 50 and was buried at Caballero Rivero Woodlawn North Park Cemetery and Mausoleum in Miami.

His parents divorced when Bujones was five years old. His mother, a former dancer, took him to Havana at age six to study at the school of ballerina Alicia Alonso, enrolling him in ballet classes partly in response to his poor health as a child. After approximately a year and a half of training at Alonso's Cuban National Ballet school, Bujones and his mother relocated permanently to Miami. In 1967, he received a scholarship to the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet Company, where he trained for roughly five years under instructors including Stanley Williams, André Eglevsky, and his private coach Zeida Cecilia Mendez.

Bujones joined American Ballet Theatre in 1972, became a soloist the following year, and was named a Principal Dancer in 1974 at age 19, making him the youngest principal male dancer in ABT's history at that time. That same year, he became the first American male dancer to win the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, where he was also recognized for highest technical achievement. Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union and joined ABT in 1974 as well, and the two dancers worked together for six years before Bujones later performed under Baryshnikov's artistic direction.

Over a thirty-year career, Bujones performed as a guest artist in 34 countries with more than 60 companies, among them the Royal Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, the Paris Opera, the Royal Danish Ballet, La Scala of Milan, the Vienna State Opera Ballet, the Australian Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, and Boston Ballet. He partnered ballerinas including Dame Margot Fonteyn, Natalia Makarova, Carla Fracci, Cynthia Gregory, Marcia Haydée, Gelsey Kirkland, and Marianna Tcherkassky.

In 1993, Bujones became artistic director of Ballet Mississippi, a position he held until the company folded due to lack of funding. In 1999, he was appointed artistic director of Southern Ballet Theater in Orlando, where he influenced the organization's renaming to Orlando Ballet and remained in that role until his death. In 1980, Bujones married Márcia Kubitschek, daughter of Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, who served as president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. Márcia Kubitschek died in 2000. Shortly before his own death, Bujones completed his autobiography, which Zeida Cecilia Mendez released posthumously in 2009 under the title Fernando Bujones: An Autobiography.