Fernando Bujones (March 9, 1955 – November 10, 2005) was an American dancer.
Born in Miami, Florida to Cuban parents, Bujones is regarded as one of the finest male dancers of the 20th century and hailed as one of the greatest American male dancers of his generation.Bujones' first formal ballet classes were in Alicia Alonso's Cuban National Ballet school for about a year and a half.
In 1967 he won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet Company.
By the following year he became a soloist, and in 1974 a Principal Dancer where, at 19, he was not only one of the youngest principal dancers in the world, but the youngest principal male dancer in ABT's history.
It was during that period that Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union and joined ABT in 1974.
They worked together as dancers for six years, after which Bujones worked under Baryshnikov's artistic direction.Throughout his 30-year dancing career he performed as a guest artist in 34 countries and with more than 60 companies including such well known ones as American Ballet Theatre, 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.
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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.
In 1999, he was asked to become the artistic director of Southern Ballet Theater in Orlando, where he influenced the company's name change to Orlando Ballet and where he was employed until his death.