Program showcases past and present of Cuban ballet

When Ariel Serrano was just 11 – growing up in Santiago de Cuba and not much interested in the classical ballet training the Cuban government had selected him for the year before – he saw a ballet called “Muñecos,”a legendary work in the Cuban repertoire created for the former Ballet Nacional de Cuba (BNC) prima ballerina, Caridad Martinez.

“Muñecos” (“Dolls”) tells the story of a romance between a tin soldier and a rag doll who comes to life when hit by a beam of moonlight through an open window; the soldier struggles to keep the doll alive as the night and the moonlight fade. The choreography, by Alberto Mendéz, is spirited and contemporary, the movement drawn from folklore and Cuba’s African roots; the score, by Rembert Egües, is full of the trademark rhythms and instruments of the Cuban musical canon.

“I wasn’t in love with ballet, I’d only been studying a year,” recalls Serrano, co-director (with his wife Wilmian Hernandez) of the Sarasota Cuban Ballet School (SCBS) since 2011. “But this was so passionate, so Cuban. That gave me such a punch. It was ‘Muñecos,’ more than anything, that turned me on to ballet.”

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So it’s little wonder Serrano chose to include “Muñecos” in the “Cuban Choreography Showcase” that will be performed by his school’s Gulfcoast Studio Company and guest artists from The Washington Ballet in two performances April 22 at the Sarasota Opera House. Bringing together both the old and the new in Cuban ballet, the program will also include Mendéz’s “Tarde en la Siesta,” with music by the renowned Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Lecuona; “Majísimo,” by choreographer Jorge García (also a product of the BNC), set to the music of Jules Massenet; and two new works by SCBS master teacher and resident choreographer, Tania Vergara.

The idea for the program was to “put three excellent examples of Cuban choreographers into one performance,” says Serrano, who defected to the U.S. in 1993 and founded SCBS after dancing with The Sarasota Ballet. “The pieces from the past are classics of the Cuban repertoire, made for the primas. And I put it together with a classically trained contemporary choreographer who moves the dancers with the characteristics of the Cuban school.”

Distinctive training

Those characteristics are distinctive. The Cuban ballet training system was developed by Fernando Alonso (husband of the late and longtime BNC director and ballerina, Alicia Alonso) by culling the best from Russian, British, Italian and French traditions. Among the aspects of the technique that have come to define Cuban dancers now performing all over the world: extreme turns, balances and positions of the leg; a dynamic attack, velocity and elevation on jumps; and a spicy sensuality and interplay between men and women inherent in Latin cultures.

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This is the same training system Serrano and his staff are now imparting to students – from Mexico, Puerto Rico and South America as well as the U.S. – in the school’s pre-professional program. The success of the methodology is evident in the careers of more than two dozen SCBS graduates now dancing professionally in companies from Miami to Minnesota and Boston to California. The Serranos’ own son, Francisco, one of the school’s first graduates, is a member of The Royal Ballet in London.

“We are all different in body, shapes, culture, ethnicity and yet we all have the same necessity of expressing ourselves in dance, which for me comes from the time we were there (in Cuba),” Serrano says. “Somehow we have these kids not even born in Cuba, and we put that in them. Whether classical or contemporary, it’s an expression of the culture.”

“Tarde en la Siesta,” is a neo-classical work that has been described as “four women, four personalities many emotions.” It premiered in 1973 as a tribute to Lecuona, whose works have become standards of the Latin and jazz repertoires. Garcia’s “Majísimo,” which draws from traditional Spanish dance, premiered in 1964 and is an internationally celebrated work, perhaps performed more often than any other work by a Cuban choreographer. Serrano saw it at the BNC as a young student and performed in it when he was 19.

Vergara, who had a successful company in Cuba before immigrating to the U.S in 2014, has known Serrano and Hernandez since they all worked together in Camaguey decades ago. Her “Triptico,” features three sections, the first set to Brazilian folk music, the second to Bach (which will be played by a cellist live on stage) and the last to the jazz music of Chucho Valdés, a heralded Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger. Her “Pulses,” another contemporary work performed on pointe, is choreographed to the minimalist music of Steve Reich.

“We are showing to the community why this school teaches the way we teach,” Serrano says. “We are no longer in Cuba, but we have the possibility of doing it here.”

And that is significant because Cuban ballet is not flourishing under the current political regime of the island nation. Many of its greatest dancers have chosen to leave their homeland for better financial and artistic opportunities elsewhere, endangering the preservation of the Cuban ballet’s unique traditions and historical legacy.

“We have to show our true colors, our history, what made for the golden days that made the Cuban ballet what it was,” says Serrano. “How the political environment in Cuba will be is how the environment for everything will be. What will happen with Cuban ballet depends on what will happen with Cuba.”

Cuban Choreography Showcase

Presented by the Sarasota Cuban Ballet School. 2 and 7:30 p.m. April 22, Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. $35-$50. 941-328-1300; sarasotaopera.org

Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Cuban Ballet School program explores past and future of dance