Eight Cuban Ballet Dancers Abandon Troupe in PR, Travel to Miami
HAVANA TIMES — When famed ballerina Alicia Alonso takes the National Ballet of Cuba on tours abroad the risk of losing dancers is always present.
This time the desertion took place in Puerto Rico and eight dancers decided to abandon their troupe on US territory, where Cubans get special assistance and fast track to residency and work permits.
“The desertion by the dancers” from the National Ballet of Cuba this weekend shows the “absolute discontent” of the artists with the Cuban regime, reported El Nuevo Día from San Juan.
Once on their own, the eight Cubans quickly made their way to Miami where some have family.
The troupe led by Alonso, 92, had successfully performed “La magía de la danza” (The magic of dance) on Friday to a full house at the Luis A. Ferré Fine Arts Center in Santurce.
The dancers had been scheduled to return to Cuba on Sunday at 6:00 p.m with Alicia Alonso and her husband Pedro Simón Martínez, noted El Nuevo Dia.
It is often said that Alicia Alonso is the richest woman in Cuba. I always wondered how that has come about. Your comment does not surprise me and begins to explain all the unspoken money-making schemes these scoundrels engage in all the while holding themselves out as pillars of the revolution.
I know many Cuban ballet dancers defectors and one thing that most people dont know is that if those who leave in “good terms” and want to come back to dance with The Ballet Nacional they must pay a monthly “tax” to either Alicia and or the Castros! A number of $500/month came up! Heard it from the horses mouth!
HAVANA TIMES: Cuban Ballet Dancers Circulate Grievance – By Ivette Leyva Martinez
Members of Cuba’s National Ballet Company (BNC) – currently on tour in Spain – have approached director Alicia Alonso with an urgent petition alling for improvements in work conditions and denouncing favoritism and irregularities in the handling of the company’s budget.
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=100261
Hasta la libertad siempre!
Jaja
For those that do not know this, dancers who travel with Alicia Alonso and the BNC are the best of the best. This means that if there are new ballet shoes to be given out, they get them. If there is a three-day free stay at a luxury hotel in Varadero, they are the ones sitting poolside. These dancers are the recipients of whatever benefits Castro’s Cuba can offer. Yet, despite this privileged perch, they would rather take their chances in the US flipping burgers. Only an idiot can’t see that things must be pretty bad to “escape” Cuba when you are among the privileged few.
hasta la victoria siempre.