Dancing defectors made choice on the spot

CUBAN DANCERS
Dancing defectors made choice on the spot
Three principal dancers in Cuba's National Ballet say their decision to
defect was spontaneous and driven by a desire for greater artistic
expression.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 20, 2007
BY JORDAN LEVIN
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com

It was close to midnight in Hamilton, Ontario, and Magaly Suarez was in
her hotel room packing her bags to go home to Miami when she was
surprised by a knock at the hotel room door from her son, Taras Dimitro,
and two of his fellow dancers in the National Ballet of Cuba. They
wanted to defect. Would she help them?

''I was very impressed,'' Suarez said Wednesday from her ballet studio
in Pompano Beach. 'My reaction was, `OK, I think it's great, I'll help
you guys.' ''

The three Cuban dancers said they had been thinking about leaving for
years, but they all said they made the decision in hours, shortly after
a 2 p.m. matinee performance of The Nutcracker by the National Ballet of
Cuba on Sunday in Hamilton, a city near Toronto.

Each came to the decision alone, they said.

''I'd been turning the idea over in my head for three years, and I made
the decision in three hours,'' said Miguel Angel Blanco, 24. 'We were
leaving for Cuba at 6 a.m. I went back to my room, packed my suitcase
like I was going to Cuba, sat down and thought, `Why not take the
chance?' ''

''I decided the same night we left,'' said Dimitro, 21. His mother, a
former teacher with the National Ballet of Cuba who left nine years ago,
had traveled to Canada to see her son for the first time in five years.

'I thought, `Now I have the opportunity, and I'm going to do it,' '' he
said.

All three were principal dancers who danced leading roles in classics
like Swan Lake, Don Quixote and Giselle. But all were longing for more.

''I'd like to open myself up, open my artistic horizons, work with new
choreographers, experiment with something new, develop myself much
more,'' said Hayna Gutierrez, at 26 the oldest of the three. ``In my
case, I've already danced the classics so many times. And it's not that
it bores me, but you feel the need to dance other things because this is
part of a dancer's, an artist's, career: to have freedom of movement, to
do something different for the world to know you by.''

THE STORMY NIGHT

The three dancers drove with Suarez, her husband and a friend through a
predawn snowstorm to the border at Buffalo, N.Y., a trip of about two hours.

They were nervous but exhilarated.

''The drive was crazy. It was very very cold. There was a bad storm in
Canada that night,'' said Suarez. ``But everybody was doing what they
wanted to do. We were talking, we were happy. They were not afraid at all.''

Despite worries because they did not have their passports, which ballet
company officials took as soon as the troupe arrived in Canada, the
three young Cubans were processed quickly by U.S. immigration
authorities. ''They treated us very well, they were very nice,'' said
Blanco.

Suarez, 45, who left Cuba after 19 years of training dancers for the
National Ballet of Cuba, said she was frustrated with economic hardships
and lack of recognition, with riding a bicycle and bottling up her
complaints. But she said she was somewhat surprised that her son and his
friends broke with the troupe.

''This young generation . . . they never understand until they get a
little older why they have to leave,'' she said.

``They just think about ballet, they don't get involved with anything
else, they don't understand anything else, they just think ballet,
ballet, ballet.''

But it is precisely to do even more ballet that the young dancers left.
''I'd like to dance, to do things,'' says Gutierrez.''

''My dream is the same that it was in Cuba,'' says Blanco. ``To dance a
lot, above all.''

''I want to dance here in the U.S., dance for everyone,'' says Dimitro.
``The greatest opportunity for dancers is here.''

RECEPTION IN MIAMI

After their arrival in South Florida on Monday night, they were met by a
minor media maelstrom, starting with photographers and TV cameras at
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Wednesday morning, they were being filmed by NBC, and the same afternoon
there was a press conference at Versailles Restaurant in Little Havana,
the center of exile Miami.

''It's been a great crossing,'' says Gutierrez. ``I didn't expect all
this.''

The trio will give their first performances in Miami on Feb. 23-24 at
the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater, in a production
of Swan Lake presented by the Cuban Classical Ballet, a company
co-directed by Suarez and Pedro Pablo Peña.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/351158.html