Cervilio Miguel Amador never quite fit the image of a
principal dancer. He's short. He's tough. Quite honestly, he looks more
like a hunky longshoreman than a prince.
But don't bother debating that with anyone who has
seen him perform. Amador is, arguably, the most dazzling and memorable
male dancer in the Cincinnati Ballet's 49-year history.
Audience members, female and male, adore him. And
it's obvious that he adores them. The moment he walks onto the stage,
it's the beginning of a palpable love affair. He's a man's man, athletic
and fiery. He has first-rate technical chops, too. Balletomanes are
drawn to him as much as newcomers. And, dare we say it, women in the
audience just love ogling him.
There is a moment near the end of The Nutcracker
where the Snow King and Queen complete a short duet. She walks off the
stage. And the King "” that's Amador "” moves to the front corner of the
stage, then turns and walks to the back.
He's wearing white tights. And ... well, you get the
picture. Listen carefully and you can hear a distinctly female buzz.
This has nothing to do with ballet. Or technique. Or much of anything
else except that there's a man in exquisite physical shape strutting in
front of a thousand or so admiring women.
Aware and Flattered
Does Amador get what's going on? He smiles and
blushes slightly. He's searching for something to say. Anything. But he
can't find it. For those who know Amador, blushing and silence are
nearly unknown states. At 29, he's confident to the edge of cocky.
And silence? By his own admission, this is a man who loves to talk.
Finally, he comes up with something.
"I am aware of it, yes," he says, measuring his
words very carefully. "I'm flattered by it. But ... let's just say that
it helps me to keep myself in shape."
He is, to be sure, a babe magnet. In the course of
nearly two hours in a downtown's coffeeshop, close to three dozen women "”
and more than a few men "” cast lingering glances his way.
But adoration isn't what brought Amador to Cincinnati. He had that in Cuba.
In Search of Freedom
He came here in search of freedom.
Most Americans might only think about freedom on the
Fourth of July. But for Amador, it is a treasure he was willing to
leave family, friends and homeland to pursue.
If he had stayed in Cuba, he was guaranteed a job
for life. As a member of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, he commanded
enormous respect.
But that wasn't enough. When he and then-girlfriend
Gema Diaz, now a senior soloist with the Cincinnati Ballet, fled from a
company tour in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2003, he was leaving it behind.
Cincinnati Ballet Artistic Director Victoria Morgan
read about their defection. Within days, she had contacted the couple
and offered them plane tickets for an audition.
It would be a year before Diaz joined the company.
But for Amador and Adiarys Almeida Santana, who defected a week later,
the decision was almost immediate.
"I thought their classroom work was OK," recalls
Morgan. "But when they did the Don Quixote pas de deux and Flames of
Paris ..." Morgan isn't sure how to describe the power of their informal
studio performance. "I hired them right away. I don't think they knew
how to say hello' or my name is so-and-so.' We were doing charades the
whole time. But we did manage to agree on contracts."
Defecting was never about the money, though. Or
stature. In the United States, dancers work incredibly hard and earn
remarkably little of either one. Amador knew that the U.S. doesn't offer
million-dollar signing bonuses to ballet dancers the way it does to
Cuban baseball stars.
But in the U.S., he had the freedom to vote, the
freedom to dance contemporary works. No longer would he be limited to
dancing classics that were more than a century old. Now he would be able
to participate in the evolution of ballet rather than merely observe it
from a distance.
"My life is so much bigger now," says Amador. "I
look back to when I was in Cuba and I never would have imagined that my
life would be like this. Ever. You know, my dreams in Cuba were nothing
compared to the way I actually live. They were so far below this.
"I never imagined that I would own a house. Or a
car. I never would have imagined I would have an American girlfriend. Or
work with choreographers from all around the world. I never imagined I
would speak English."
He is a U.S. citizen now. He owns a condo in
Covington and a house in Mount Washington. He drives a BMW. He performs
all over the country and at international galas. And he has immersed
himself in every aspect of American culture. He goes to the symphony and
opera. He dances at salsa clubs. He goes to galleries, restaurants and
Reds games.
All About Family
Most of all, he loves Cincinnati.
"It's not a small city. It's not a huge city. And I
like that. I like it that it has the feel of community. I love all the
sports we have here. I love how people feel so strongly about the arts. I
love how each season is so different. I hope that I will spend the rest
of my life here."
If you had asked about his life two years ago, though, the answers would have been quite different.
"I made my decision that I was going to leave," he
says. He pursued other companies and had been offered a job in a bigger
city. He won't say which one. "It was really nothing to do with
Cincinnati Ballet, because I've always been treated very well by the
company and by Victoria. And I love the audience here."
It was, he says, about his "hunger."
"I always want more," he says. "I get something and
then I want something more. I never want to stop. I almost felt like I
did everything I could here. I thought I needed something else, I needed
more."
But he changed his mind.
The decision wasn't about dance, though. It was about family.
Instead of spending the rest of his life scrambling
to find a few weeks to visit his parents and sisters in Cuba, he decided
he would try to bring them here. Once he made that decision, everything
seemed to change.
"Cincinnati feels like home now. I never really had that before. I've been in Cincinnati longer than I've been anywhere."
His father, a math teacher, is already here. His
mother, a Spanish teacher, and his older sister, a guitarist, will
arrive sometime this year. Another sister, a violinist, will come with
her husband and 8-year-old daughter as well.
"I am so proud of being born in Cuba and all the
things that Cuba taught me," says Amador. "Cuba made me strong. But I am
also so proud of being here and all the things that I have learned ...
This is my city. This is my home. This is my country."