From ‘Bravo!’ to ‘outtasight!’

By Aurelio Pedroso

There’s lots to say about the singular presence of the London Royal Ballet in Havana, such as repeating “home-made” about Nicholas Georgiadis’ magnificent costumes displayed in the five performances, not to mention other, much more important considerations to which specialized critics have given well-deserved space, even in the Communist Party daily.

The ballet has caught on to such an extent that some rabid machistas are wondering whether our young men will put away the footballs and start doing effeminate pirhouettes in street corners. What an ancestral machismo we carry in our blood! Despite that, about 30 men are awaiting — with state support and blessing — to enter the operating room and allow a skilled scalpel to turn them from Juan Ramón into Rosa Leticia.

While the event has received the designation of “historic,” it’s not because of today’s habit of tacking that adjective to any happening, no matter how insignificant and meaningless it may be. On the island, everything is “historic.” So much so, that a good piece of tail from our youth is remembered at gatherings of 50-year-olds as a “historic” broad.

Cuban-born Carlos Acosta, 36, the leading dancer since 2003 of that almost-octogenarian troupe whose cast comes from about 20 countries, has been most responsible for the success. Gossips say (mostly Alicia Alonso’s detractors) that the little mulatto, because he was a mulatto and a good dancer, did not enjoy Alonso’s support and had to leave the country to build himself a future. The other side contends that, while Acosta was under the prima ballerina’s umbrella, in 1991, he was the leading dancer at the Cuban National Ballet.

Those of us who saw him in this, his first visit to the island, were impressed by the simplicity and humility of this dance genius who never for a minute stopped thinking about his native country and who, as he told the Agence France-Presse, misses the guavas and the mangoes.

Let’s hear a cheer for whoever had the idea to erect a giant TV screen outside the theater, for the benefit of those who couldn’t get a ticket — which, incidentally, cost less than a dollar, a fact scalpers took advantage of to make a killing. That’s very typical nowadays. To do something clever but outside the law. To bend one’s back as little as possible and to “resolve,” because the gray skies are turning black.

Everybody knows that the public that attends a rock concert is not the same as the one at a salsa jammer or — in this case — ballet performance. There’s elegance and sobriety in the attire, to the point that people are alarmed at seeing so many women dressed in black, as if this were an old-style funeral or a Spanish wake. Those of us who didn’t bother to buy tickets watched the giant screen for nothing. A dual spectacle. The crowd at the Capitol, near the Grand Theater of Havana, was worthy of a documentary. People of every type and class. The peculiar little world that pullulates the area stopped working for a while and sat on the Capitol steps.

In the crowd you could find the ordinary José, the bum, the worker, the prostitute (female and male), the flim-flam man, the vendor of illegal cigars, the old retired folks, students, laborers, the soldier on leave, employees, the multicolored mosaic that sociologically constitutes our fauna.

While inside the Grand Theater of Havana the expert audience hailed the Havana-born Carlos Acosta with the traditional “Bravo!” during “The Corsair,” outside, on the steps, a 20-plus-year-old with a cardboard container of rum and a scar on his face as a souvenir of some brawl over love or money shouted: “That guy is outtasight, man, lookit that leap, son of a bitch!” God creates us and ballet brings us together.

The renovated theater — once the Blanquita, then the Chaplin and now the Karl Marx, three names in half a century — also puffed with pride at welcoming such select London visitors. Before 1959, it was catalogued as being one of the world’s largest theaters; an ice show was performed on its stage. Years later, right in the middle of the Revolution, the Russian Maya Plisetskaya danced “Swan Lake,” and those of us who were children at the time remember her arms, undulating in agony, like the wings of a dying swan.

There was a giant TV screen outside the Karl Marx, too, but the public was different. Less heterogenous, more of a neighborhood party for people who called each other on the phone and agreed to meet next to the 12th-Street seawall, sit down on plastic chairs, smoke, chat, take pictures, have a couple of drinks and talk on the cell phones, a behavior totally forbidden inside the theater, as theater management cautioned in perfect Spanish and London-accented English.

The program could not be better. “Manon,” a classic at the level of “Romeo and Juliet.” The tale of the gentleman Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, of the abbot Prévost. Even if you never before sat down to watch ballet, you could have instantly understood the plot. Very few in the theater, but many watching the TV closeups, realized that, at the end, Spanish dancer Tamara Rojo (Manon) went overboard kissing Acosta, her lover on stage and in real life. We enjoyed that. Call it island pride.

There, near the sea (who in Cuba isn’t near the sea?), gathered about 300 people and, during an incredible moment of total silence, the sea breeze carried, from one end of the Malecón to the other, a comment from one of the spectators on a portable chair. Sounding like the famed Luis Carbonell, the so-called watercolorist of Antillean poetry, the man hushed a child, apparently his granddaughter: “Caridad, honey, keep quiet ’cause this is culture.”

The Royal Ballet has packed its suitcases and left Cuba. From my many inquiries, everything went like clockwork, except that six members took away with them the famous influenza virus.

Another great event will soon come from the north. The New York Philharmonic has confirmed it will visit the island and give two concerts. If the giant screens return, there will be no dearth of homespun incidents, but none like the one in the early 1960s, when a radio announcer in a rural town came up with: “And now, let’s dance and enjoy ourselves with the National Symphony band.”

Aurelio Pedroso, a Cuban journalist, begins his regular contributions to Progreso Semanal/Weekly.