Cuban Ballet lured me into a 4-hour drive
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO

Like fugitives on the run, my best friend and I wriggled out of Sunday family obligations with half-truths, dressed up in evening black, and drove at high speeds for almost four hours to Daytona Beach for a sole purpose.

We wanted to see the legendary Cuban National Ballet, and Sunday night's Don Quixote at Daytona's Peabody Auditorium was the closest the troupe would come to Miami in its current U.S. tour.

It was a night for our history books as we watched, with a mixture of national pride and exile sadness, the young prodigies of a first-class ballet dance at a level of technical excellence -- and with a spirit, un alma, I've only seen in another legend of the Cuban ballet, Rosario ''Charín'' Suárez, now exiled in Miami.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Ballet Nacional de Cuba is among the best in the world. That alone makes watching its dancers take flight on stage a thrill for any lover of the arts. But for us, Cuban exiles from Miami of different generations in emigration and age, this evening was more than a performance. It was an act of rebellion against a 44-year-standoff, my entire lifetime, and of faith that not all is lost.

CHAINS OF EXILE

The irony of our long trip to catch a show was ever-present: It would have taken us less than an hour to get to Havana from Miami. But as exiles, we cannot freely travel to our own country and the ballet won't come to South Florida for political reasons on both sides of the straits.

Neither the totalitarian Cuban government nor the most militant sectors of the Cuban exile would allow it to happen as it did in Daytona, as simply a fine arts performance attended by busloads of elderly and school kids, and ballet lovers from all walks of life, with not a word on politics exchanged throughout the night.

Just dance.

Still, for us, it was not an easy decision to drop everything without explaining our absence, to enlist co-conspirators -- ''Don't tell the abuelos,'' I begged my daughters. ''They wouldn't understand'' -- and make the trip feeling like traitors, or at best, outcasts.

Like all institutions in Cuba, the ballet is state-sponsored, and many Cuban exiles feel patronizing it implies an acquiescence to the government. To make it all the more difficult to embrace, Alicia Alonso, founder and general director of the company, was one of 23 Cuban intellectuals who earlier this year signed a letter in support of the 20-plus-year prison sentences for 75 Cuban dissidents and the execution of three men for trying to steal a ferry to flee to the United States.

Now in her eighties, and according to Cuban cultural insiders, something of an odious woman -- not only for her dictator-loving politics but because of an untamed ego and jealous streak that has derailed careers -- Alonso was not in Daytona. But she is in New York this week. The current tour marks the company's 55th anniversary with performances in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and more modest venues in college towns and small cities. In Florida, they also performed in Gainesville, Jacksonville and Tampa.

But Alonso's presence or lack of it was irrelevant. For me, not watching the Cuban National Ballet because of the despotic matriarch's role is like altogether giving up on Cuba because there is a Fidel Castro. No way. As a group of dissidents eloquently stated in a document, ``la patria es de todos'' -- the homeland belongs to us all. And so does the ballet, which existed for 11 years before Castro came to power. What he did was embroil it in politics like everything else on the island.

MAGIC ON STAGE

But at least for the duration of the three-act show Sunday night, we feasted on nothing but artistic talent and reveled in the magical way the brilliant young dancers brought Cervantes' romantic and humorous tale to the stage under the auspices of the Daytona Beach Symphony Society.

Most notable was Romel Frómeta, who in the starring role of Basil, the town barber, effortlessly glided across the stage as if he could fly. Our only lament was that the music was prerecorded, albeit a rousing interpretation by the Orquesta Sinfónica del Gran Teatro de La Habana.

And our hearts soared when the two ballerinas in title roles -- Bárbara García as Kitri, the beautiful, and Liuva Horta as Mercedes, the bullfighter's lover -- danced their hearts out in solos, with their partners and in perfect synchronicity with the dance corps, earning bravos, standing ovations, and wild cheers from the youth in the audience.

As we left the theater and drove back to Miami -- a long, dark ride filled with the dangers of speeding trucks zooming by us and too many confessions to pass the time -- we had but one hope: In a fitting end to the quixotic tale on stage, to catch the next anniversary of the Ballet Nacional in a democratic Cuba and the launch of its U.S. tour from what should be its most natural second home, Miami.

Fuente: The Miami Herald
Diciembre - 2003