Noralma Vera Arrata
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Noralma Vera Arrata (born 28 August 1936) is a former Ecuadorian Prima ballerina and choreographer.
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[edit] Early life
Vera Arrata was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador where she grew up as the only daughter among three sons of the distinguished politician Alfredo Vera Vera and his wife, Baltita Arrata Macias. As the only girl in the family, her parents and grandmother tended to spoil her among their possibilities. Nevertheless, she grew up as one of the boys at home and surrounded by lots of cousins.
Although middle class, she comes from a prominent intellectual family in the country. Her brother, Alfredo Vera Arrata, is a former Education minister and current National Anticorruption Secretary of Ecuador and her uncle the writer Pedro Jorge Vera. It is said that her father invented the name Noralma for her. Today many women in the country are named Noralma after her.
[edit] Education and career
She began to dance in 1945 in Guayaquil. At the age of 20, she traveled alone to London due to a scholarship to perfectionate her dancing at The Royal Ballet from 21 Februar 1957 to 1960. By then, Vera was already a prominent figure in her home country and her departure was well publicitied in the media. Afterwards, she danced in Paris and Cuba, where she worked with Alicia Alonso. In 1968 she presented Affirmation, a Modern dance Ballet with music by Carlos Cháves. Her interest for Modern dance taked her to introduce in 1971 the Graham Technic for Contemporary dance in Ecuador, which she had learned in New York. The Ecuadorian National Ballet Company was created on 7 Juni 1976 in Quito and Noralma Vera, by then Director of the National Dance Institute, was elected as part of the Directors Board. Later, she founded her own ballet company and academy in her home city. After retiring from active dancing, Vera worked as a diplomat at Ecuador's Embassies in Mexico and Cuba. She is considered a legend in her home country, where she has been hounored, among others, with the Award Distinción al Mérito Artístico on 9 October 1956.
[edit] Marriage and family
Noralma Vera met her future husband Patricio Cueva Jaramillo in Ecuador and got married in her natal city, Guayaquil in order to departure with him to Cuba where they had two daughters before returning to Quito in 1967. Later she gave birth to a son in Quito but the marriage didn't last and the couple divorced in 1975.
