Rich talents in poor Cuba

This is Cuba: a world away from grid-locked Britain, where old, battered Cadillacs chug unbelievably along Havana's streets. Ordinary Cubans have little money, but they enjoy a support for the arts that proportionally would be considered fabulously generous here. As a result, Cuban dance, like Cuban music, enjoys a high profile abroad. They train sublime dancers who achieve international fame, such as Carlos Acosta. And yet they receive little cultural traffic in the opposite direction. Despite the focus on tourism to shore up a desperate economy, Cubans remain cut off, with little idea of what goes on elsewhere.

The biennial International Ballet Festival, in its 18th year, is one effort to counteract this. It invites artists from around the world: this time, for example, the Paris étoiles Agnès Letestu and José Martinez dancing the pas de deux from Forsythe's In the middle, somewhat elevated; Larissa Lezhnina, ex-Kirov, now with Dutch National Ballet, in Giselle with Cuba's José Manuel Carreño; the Argentine whizz Julio Bocca; and Alessandra Ferri, ex-Royal Ballet, now prima ballerina assoluta of the Ballet of La Scala, Milan.

For the opening gala programme last October, at the elegant Gran Teatro de La Habana, the ultimate symbol of government support came in the form of Fidel Castro, who heroically pruned his normal six-hour speeches to 30 minutes. Alongside him was Alicia Alonso – first lady of Cuban dance, perhaps even of Cuba – a familiar figure with her signature bandanna and wide carmine mouth. Born and trained in Cuba, she became a megastar of American ballet from the Forties to the Fifties; back home with Fernando Alonso (her first husband) and Alberto Alonso (her brother-in-law) she founded the present National Ballet of Cuba in 1948. "Deferential" is an understatement for the treatment she gets. Taking her seat at theatres with husband no 2, Pedro Simon, at her elbow and tremulous cortège behind, she elicits the kind of spontaneous applause the British would give the Queen.

At almost 82 she might have been just a figurehead, wheeled out for grand occasions. But Viengsay Valdes, a ballerina with the Cuban National Ballet, insists Alonso still holds absolute power. "Nothing of importance is done without her permission. She has a lot of experience and a clear vision of what should be done." And certainly watching and listening to her, you soon realise there is nothing faded about her mind, or awareness, or determination.

This is all the more remarkable given her physical state, which brings us to the one question not to ask Alicia Alonso: has your blindness ever been a serious handicap? Everybody knows she has been blind for years, but nobody seems to mention it. Everybody knew she could barely see her way to centre stage when she was still dancing. Everybody knows that it is clearly some Santeria miracle that, sightless, she can decide on artistic matters, not to mention choreograph and stage ballets as well.

To achieve so much you need a monstrous dimension, a will that brooks no obstacle, an ambition that forges onwards remorselessly. Cradled by a political regime that venerates old age and panders to dictators, such a personality becomes lethal. This was evident in programming that showed glorious dancers trapped like flies in Alonso's disastrous productions.

It's not a question of economics – the cut-down designs are understandable. But the stage action is ill-judged, from productions of the classics like Don Quixote and Giselle, to an eye-popping version of Balanchine's Apollo, with totally erroneous dance steps and phrasing. This is such a travesty, you wonder if the Balanchine Foundation know about it. (They probably turn a blind eye, since permission hasn't been sought for performance outside Cuba.)

Yet the handsome Oscar Torrado is one of the National Ballet of Cuba's emerging, ultra-talented principals, a natural-born Apollo who needs the right choreography and coaching. The same goes for Alonso's Dido Abandonada, a confusing recreation of an 18th-century ballet by Gasparo Angiolini. Yet how many companies could field such a large cohort of men with the right balon and crispness for the punishing beaten jumps? How many companies can boast a soloist of Romel Frometa's calibre, a silver-medallist at the famous Varna Competition, whose whistle-clean shapes and jet-powered elevation were spotlighted in Balanchine's Theme and Variations? If the men are getting most mention, it's because the company has been consistently producing exciting male talent, almost tailor-made for part-time export. The next to reach audiences abroad will be the promising Joel Carreño, half-brother of José Manuel Carreño, who is joining New York City Ballet as a soloist.

The Alonsos forged the Cuban style out of old Russian and Western techniques, grafted on to an extrovert national temperament and culture blending Africa with Spain. There is Cuban joie de vivre and sensuality, but equally musicality and academic precision. "Cuban technique is closer to the natural anatomy, less extreme than today's Russian style, less stressed and therefore more elegant," explains Valdes. "And the communication between male and female dancers is different, closer. You really notice it when there are two Cubans dancing."

As one of the top ballerinas, Valdes gets a salary similar to an important scientist or a doctor. She graduated from the National Ballet School in 1994 and remembers the relatively prosperous pre-1989 days, when Cuba could count the Soviet Union as a friend. Then the USSR was dismantled. "And there was a lack of resources in the whole country. For us in the school that meant, for example, a lack of ballet shoes. Because they didn't have my size, I had to adapt smaller shoes, cut them at the back, so in a way I was making my own shoes."

These days, although money is still tight, conditions have improved and she has the right-sized shoes – still Cuban-made and harder than European ones to withstand the humid heat.

Watching Valdes rehearse Giselle with Acosta is a sobering experience. The studio may be hot, damp, and shabby, but these stars don't seem to notice. Scrupulous care and absolute commitment to art emerges from the humblest places.

Coached by a celebrated former ballerina, Loipa Araujo, they discuss and try out the fine physical detail that determines whether a lift works or not, they negotiate compromises. "Use the floor like a lover," says Araujo. And they do, acting out the story's drama with an intensity, even in rehearsal, that shakes you to the core.

But material difficulties seem almost beside the point for many of the dancers who are bonded to their company and country by a deep love. Besides dancing with American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Ballet, Acosta regularly returns to the Cuban National Ballet. The lure of Mammon – and he must earn far more abroad than the average Cuban dancer – is less compelling than the warmth of sun and family. Similarly, Valdes has not only toured abroad with the Cuban Ballet, but also guested with foreign companies. The government, seeing culture as promoting national prestige, facilitates this. The dancers give part of their foreign earnings to the government – but then our own dancers pay income tax too.

As a profession, dancers are perhaps more fortunate than others in Cuba. At least they are likely to find work, teaching or performing. Besides the National Ballet, there are classical, modern and folk dance companies. And there are ballet schools in many of Cuba's provinces. The National school, housed in one of Havana's many elegant, palatial buildings, is being extensively refurbished. Castro's gala speech stated an aim to place 400 students in the refurbished school and to increase the number of provincial schools. The best will become professional performers, others will become teachers, and the rest an educated audience.

Among the society at large, though, things seem less clear-cut. Talk to one Cuban and he still believes in the Revolution; talk to another and you find disillusion. The hotel porter who trained as a pilot for two years in Russia and speaks several languages returned to Cuba to find there were no jobs for his training. He is on an island prison because he can't leave. It is the ultimate sacrifice, where the individual is subordinated to the collective.

Nobody knows what will happen to the Caribbean island when Castro dies. But when Alonso dies, she will leave a wonderful training system and extensive provision for this, but a repertory as troubled as the Cuban economy.

Carlos Acosta leads Havana's Danza Contemporanea in his first full-evening choreography, at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London EC1 (020-7863 8000), 15-26 July