The Diplomat
Eight of the forty dancers who make up the Ballet de Camagüey (Cuba) left the company not to return to their country, after an eight-week tour of Spain, during which they performed ‘Swan Lake’ in 43 performances at the Teatro Apolo in Barcelona and at the EDP Gran Vía in Madrid.
This was confirmed by Regina Balaguer, director of the Ballet -one of the most renowned in Cuba- in declarations to the official regional newspaper Adelante, acknowledging that such withdrawals have already been recorded during other tours.
Balaguer is resigned to this flight, because, she says, the dancers cannot be “tied down”, but she is convinced that the company will find “alternatives” because it has a good “school”. The director considers that “it is a question of salaries and prices”.
Numerous sportsmen, artists and professionals from different sectors have left Cuba in recent years to take advantage of tours, tournaments or multilateral meetings abroad, sometimes for political reasons, but also in search of a better economic situation.
The trend has been aggravated by the deep crisis that the country has been going through for more than two years, with shortages of basic products, double-digit inflation, serious fiscal deficits and the de facto dollarisation of its economy.
