Attitudes.

Cuba has for so long been a forbidden island to American visitors that when I accepted an invitation to visit the International Ballet Festival of Havana, a biennial event now in its eighteenth year, it was with feelings of excitement and wonder. Of course, Alicia Alonso I knew--I first saw her dance Odette, Giselle, Hagar in Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, and much else as long ago as 1946--and I knew the world-famous Ballet Nacional de Cuba from 1978 on. But I had never seen the company on its home turf--and the prospect held the promise of strange mystery.

Actually, its home turf turned out not to be as strange as all that. Havana is a fascinating town. Some of the legends about it are true: You can see carefully maintained and restored American autos from the '40s and '50s--but there are even more modern Japanese and European cars. It is also true that there is a strange, double currency system, whereby tourists are expected to pay in American dollars whereas Cubans use pesos--and it is also true that one taxi fare (in dollars) would cost what a doctor earns (in pesos) in a week!

Yet in this country of contrasts, the consistently charming people look well clothed and fed, the children are exemplary, and health service is obviously excellent--there is no comparison here with the poverty you find in, say, Haiti or the Dominican Republic. On the other hand, it's a Communist dictatorship and, presumably, people have to be careful what they say. But for a small country--any small country, especially one primarily agrarian--ballet and the fine arts, especially painting, are astonishing and astounding, and the public for dance in general seems almost limitless.

The wonderfully organized festival is intended to be a window for the world into Cuban dance, and also as a window for Cuban dance into the world. Although the Ballet Nacional is known worldwide--certain Cuban dancers, such as Jose Manuel Carreno and Carlos Acosta, have their special fame and visibility--in Cuba classical ballet flourishes alongside professional ethnic and state-supported modern dance. The Cubans are a dancing people--the young people even seem to walk in dance-time.

At one time, before the Castro regime, some major ballet companies visited, including American Ballet Theatre (with Alonso, who was one of its prima ballerinas), and later, Soviet troupes were made welcome. Nowadays the outside world has to be represented largely by guest dancers, and even they can only be recompensed with goodwill, the opportunity to work with Cuban dancers, and the knowledgeable and enthusiastic Cuban audience.

Alonso remains incredible, a legend and an inspiration in the world of dance. Now 82, she has conquered every disability she's encountered, including partial blindness, and remains as much in charge of her company as ever. And the company is beautiful. It has its own style--a lot of Russian, a touch of American, and a kind of insouciant risk-taking that is totally its own. My friend Donald Saddler, a sometime partner of Alonso at ABT, who was also in Havana, put it succinctly: "They are fearless."

I caught the company in three splendid performances of Giselle--one with Nicole Siepert (Germany) and Yoel Carreno (the younger half-brother of Jose Manuel); one with Larissa Lezhnina (Russia) and Jose Manuel Carreno; and a third, and perhaps most impressive, with Viengsay Valdes and Acosta. There were quite a number of visiting dancers on view in the galas: the Paris Opera pair Agnes Letestu and Jose Martinez, Julio Bocca, Alessandra Ferri, Giuseppe Picone. Bocca is particularly loved in Cuba and received a giant reception, but I was most interested in watching the new generation of Cuban dancers. Valdes and Yoel Carreno are outstanding, two of the best young dancers in the world. In the closing gala their Black Swan pas de deux was literally breathtaking.

Choreography is rather a different matter--the fascination is less in what these Cubans dance than in how they dance it. Yet the whole festival proved enormously exciting. The days and nights were packed with action: wandering through the old streets, the Spanish colonial buildings, the museums (including the impressive Museo Nacional de la Danza) and the modern art galleries; watching rehearsals and class at the school and its offshoots. I saw a performance by the school, including a frisky rendering of David Lichine's Graduation Ball (nowadays a favorite with ballet schools the world over), and--even more interesting--by two other government-supported large dance troupes, Conjunto Folklorico Nacional and Danza Contemporanea de Cuba.

Drifting from Alonso downward like tendrils from a great tree, Cuban dance culture is extraordinarily vibrant; it seems as popular as baseball. Tickets are cheap, performances are packed, audiences are knowledgeably vociferous about both style and technique, and teachers and coaches are dedicated. A group of students at a neighborhood ballet school--I was told that Fernando Bujones had once studied there--were so keen and delightful that they gave a thrilling insight into the Cuban ballet in fifteen or twenty years' time. Wonderful Alonso! What a legacy!

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to DANCE MAGAZINE since 1956.