NEWYORKTIMEOUT: José Manuel Carreño, por Gia Kourlas (Entrevista en inglés)

The Cuban dancer Jose Manuel Carreño, a principal with American Ballet Theatre since 1995, possesses the ability to smolder: He knows, in other words, how to make a ballerina feel like a woman. It’s only apt that for his farewell performance on Thursday 30, Carreño, as Prince Siegfried, will have two swans to sweep off their wings in Swan Lake—Julie Kent (white) and Gillian Murphy (black). Long admired for his nobility and elegance, he has always had something else up his sleeve, as Alicia Alonso, the director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, pointed out in an interview last spring. “Once I told him, ‘Carreño, when a step doesn’t come out, just look at the audience and smile. You will win the audience.’ Not everybody has a nice smile. You can feel it, but not give it.” And Carreño, certainly, knows how to give it.