Why does Cuban ballet get such a big response? “How much of a salve art offers is difficult to gauge, but the frustrations of Cuban life are revealed in the ballet audience’s response. There is something in the experience reminiscent of Furtwängler’s rendition of Beethoven’s 9th in wartime Berlin. Yet Cuban ballet is an art form caught in an aspic that has melted elsewhere. The Ballet Nacional is a piece of history preserved by the will of an ageing autocrat.”