By VICTORIA BURNETT
HAVANA - Hoping to bridge politics and reconnect with Cuban ballet lovers, the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theater performed in the 22nd International Ballet Festival across Havana this month.
Their performances were the latest in a growing number of cultural visits allowed under President Obama, despite the lack of progress in American-Cuban relations.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra took part in a weeklong residency in Havana in October, and Cuban musicians such as Silvio Rodriguez and Chucho Valdes have toured the United States this year after a long absence. Ballet is enormously popular in Cuba, where dancers are well-known stars, and where Alicia Alonso, the grande dame of Cuban ballet, who turns 90 this year, enjoys a stature second only to Fidel and Raul Castro.
Ballet tickets can cost the equivalent of as little as 25 cents, affordable even in a poor country where $20 a month is a typical salary. At the festival, ballet fans crowded around Jose Manuel Carreno, a Cuban dancer with the American Ballet Theater, begging for autographs and photographs.
The audience, which included Ms. Alonso and a sprinkling of Cuban pop stars, ranged from young men in jeans and Tshirts to elderly women with coiffed hair . “They’re a hugely educated audience,” said Tyler Angle, who helped organize the City Ballet visit. Silvia Robinson, 70-year-old Cuban widow, said she had little hope that the goodwill created by the ballet would herald a thaw in relations between the two old foes.
“I don’t really believe it goes beyond ballet,” she said. “But never mind. It was wonderful to see them dance. ” For American Ballet Theater, the visit was a homecoming of sorts. Ms. Alonso found fame with the New York company in the 1940s and brought several members to Havana to set up what is now the National Ballet of Cuba. Mr. Carreno and another Cuban dancer, Xiomara Reyes, also of Ballet Theater, are alumni of Ms. Alonso’s rigorous method.
“It’s a homecoming that’s both personal and artistic,” said Rachel S. Moore, executive director of American Ballet Theater, which last visited Cuba as a company in 1960. “Alicia was in our founding company, and there’s a sense of her being part of our family.” Cuban balletomanes relished the festival’s distinctly American flavor.
An audience of 1,500 rose to its feet as City Ballet’s Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette finished a rousing performance of Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes.” During the first half of the 20th century, ballet was one area of the arts enriched by the busy traffic between Cuba and the United States. Ms. Alonso and her former husband, Fernando, joined Ballet Theater soon after its creation in 1940 .
Kevin McKenzie, American Ballet Theater’s artistic director, said that it was “difficult to say what political impact” the company’s visit would have. “It is not our purpose here to do anything but speak of our cultural sameness,” he said. “I think it is that dialogue that will expand to brighter and more positive horizons in the future.”
