Defection is not for the faint of heart. Fortunately, Cincinnati Ballet dancers Cervilio Amador and Gema Diaz are brave souls who took risks and faced challenges to build a new life here.
When I think of defection, my mind goes to Barishnikov and the ‘80s flick White Nights, of a daring, clandestine flight. According to Amador, I wasn’t far off.
“It was like a movie. We were trying to escape.” He laughs as he says, “In the middle of the night.”
Flash back to mid-October 2003. Amador and Diaz were in Daytona Beach on tour with the National Ballet of Cuba when they decided if they were going to actually defect, now was their only time to do it. Because their handlers hold their passports whenever the company travels they would flee without them hoping to get to Miami where Diaz’s cousin lives and could help them.
“We were very scared… we left the hotel at 2 in the morning so nobody would see us,” Amador recalls. “If they catch you doing that with your bags and leaving –it wouldn’t be a great time. You would never dance again. They would take you back to Cuba, and your life is destroyed.”
The pair took a cab to Miami, retained an attorney to help with the paperwork, and stayed with Diaz’s cousin for a couple of months. It sounds simple, but it was far from easy.
“It’s so hard,” Diaz says. “Especially when you don’t know where to go or how to do things. Because in our country everything is so different, you get here and you feel like a baby. You have to start to learn how to walk again. Then you can run.”
Victoria Morgan, Cincinnati Ballet's CEO and artistic director, after reading an article in the New York Times about their defection, knew that talented Cuban dancers would be a prize for any dance company. "The dance community is pretty small so after three phone calls I had them on the line with two of our interpretors. I thought for sure we would be behind at least five other artistc directors."
But Morgan's nimble and forward thinking had managed to beat out any other company and within days, Amador and Diaz were on a plane heading to an audition, and eventual contracts for both of them, in Cincinnati.
Initially, their move to the Cincinnati area meant additional adjustments.
“In the beginning when we got here we thought, ‘There are no Latin people in Cincinnati! Oh my God, I’m gonna die,’ ” Diaz recalls.
They soon discovered that Cincinnati, in fact, does have a sizeable and active Hispanic community that welcomed them including several close Mexican friends and one couple in particular that feels like their second family.
When asked about their experience living in Greater Cincinnati so far, Diaz says, “To us, it’s been very good actually. I think it’s very welcoming to us.”
After knowing no one after arriving here in Cincinnati, Amador and Diaz described their early months “like a huge school” for them. Learning English was lesson number one. Before moving here for Amador’s secured Cincinnati Ballet contract, the couple spent nine months in Miami where Spanish language is ubiquitous. Though she took English classes, Diaz says she often would watch cartoons because the characters speak slowly and clearly. Watching movies helped, too.
Amador says that from what at first sounded like “rlah, rlah, rlah,” he gradually would understand more and more words.
As for speaking with his heavy Cuban accent, he says, “You can laugh, I’m OK with that, I don’t feel bad for that, but just correct me. I’m a person who really loves talking. In the beginning, that was a big wall for me, being not able to communicate to express myself to friends, to my boss, to my neighbors, to anybody. That was very bad.”
“Here we have learned many things about how this country works, how a first-world country works,” Amador says. “We have learned so much. It’s been great for us.”
Earlier this summer, the couple paid a two-week visit to Cuba for their first trip home since they defected to the States five years ago. Although their families reside in Cuba, Diaz says it doesn’t really feel like their first home anymore. They found themselves wanting to get back, even missing sleeping their own bed.
“It’s a moment in our life when we say, ‘Wow, here we are: we are adults, we’re not kids anymore,’ ” Diaz says.
“We were younger when we were in Cuba, so we were part of our family. And now here, we are creating our own family,” Amador says. “Because we’ve been here in that process of time, we feel like this is becoming our home.”
Though some years have passed since their arrival, the Cincinnati area has, indeed welcomed them as much as the two have welcomed their adopted city. They purchased a condo in Covington along with furniture, and Amador treasures his red BMW (aside from a few speeding tickets he’s landed). A Siberian Husky welcomes them home each night, as well.
“I like Cincinnati,” Amador says. “You can find anything you want. It might not have a thousand of them, but they have everything. You just have to go to it. You have options.”
And Cincinnati likes them.
"They're very warm and generous and completely at home and love being onstage," says Morgan. "Since moving here they have absolutely flourished."
Amador says they have many friends here now, both inside and outside the Ballet.
“A lot of people recognize us when we’re on the street and that makes us feel very, very comfortable,” Amador says. “We like this a lot – you know, like home…Everywhere I find people I know, and they know me.”
Amador and Diaz both say they plan to apply for U.S. citizenship.
Speaking about their reasons for coming here, Diaz explains, “We don’t like to talk about politics and all that, but as a human being, I felt like I needed to be free to express myself. If I don’t like to be in a Communist country, why do I have to be there? There are many countries around, and I’m human. If you know where you want to be, why can you not go and get what you want to be?”
Amador says it’s also about the independence of the opportunity to be self-sufficient.
“One of the main things is being able to choose,” he says. “The problem we had [in Cuba] was it was only one big [ballet] company in the whole country. We were feeling uncomfortable that we had no place to go. So we were thinking of freedom and we feel good that we have it.”
“We like it here,” Diaz says. “I have no doubts. I would never say I regret what I did. I would never regret my decision to stay…We got what we wanted.”
Amador adds, “We feel very happy here, we have our house, we have our lives. We [have] started feeling like we are being part of Cincinnati.”
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Photography by Scott Beseler
Cincinnati Ballet practice