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nd two of his fellow dancers in the National Ballet of Cuba,=20
Miguel Angel Blanco and Hayna Gutierrez.

    * audio Audio | Interview with Taras Dimitros (Spanish)
    * audio Audio | Interview with Miguel Angel Blanco (Spanish)
    * audio Audio | Interview with Magaly Suarez (English)
    * audio Audio | Interview with Hayna Gutierrez (Spanish)
    * Slide show | Dancers arrive
    * 3 Cuban dancers defect to perform in S. Florida
    * Video from the Associated Press Video | Cuban dancers' arrival

It was close to midnight in Hamilton, Ontario, and Magaly Suarez was
in her hotel room packing her bags to go home to Miami when she was
surprised by a knock at the hotel room door from her son, Taras
Dimitro, and two of his fellow dancers in the National Ballet of
Cuba. They wanted to defect. Would she help them?

''I was very impressed,'' Suarez said Wednesday from her ballet
studio in Pompano Beach. 'My reaction was, `OK, I think it's great,
I'll help you guys.' ''

The three Cuban dancers said they had been thinking about leaving for
years, but they all said they made the decision in hours, shortly
after a 2 p.m. matinee performance of The Nutcracker by the National
Ballet of Cuba on Sunday in Hamilton, a city near Toronto.

Each came to the decision alone, they said.

''I'd been turning the idea over in my head for three years, and I
made the decision in three hours,'' said Miguel Angel Blanco, 24. 'We
were leaving for Cuba at 6 a.m. I went back to my room, packed my
suitcase like I was going to Cuba, sat down and thought, `Why not
take the chance?' ''

''I decided the same night we left,'' said Dimitro, 21. His mother, a
former teacher with the National Ballet of Cuba who left nine years
ago, had traveled to Canada to see her son for the first time in five
years.

'I thought, `Now I have the opportunity, and I'm going to do it,' ''
he said.

All three were principal dancers who danced leading roles in classics
like Swan Lake, Don Quixote and Giselle. But all were longing for
more.

''I'd like to open myself up, open my artistic horizons, work with
new choreographers, experiment with something new, develop myself
much more,'' said Hayna Gutierrez, at 26 the oldest of the three.
``In my case, I've already danced the classics so many times. And
it's not that it bores me, but you feel the need to dance other
things because this is part of a dancer's, an artist's, career: to
have freedom of movement, to do something different for the world to
know you by.''

THE STORMY NIGHT

The three dancers drove with Suarez, her husband and a friend through
a predawn snowstorm to the border at Buffalo, N.Y., a trip of about
two hours.

They were nervous but exhilarated.

''The drive was crazy. It was very very cold. There was a bad storm
in Canada that night,'' said Suarez. ``But everybody was doing what
they wanted to do. We were talking, we were happy. They were not
afraid at all.''

Despite worries because they did not have their passports, which
ballet company officials took as soon as the troupe arrived in
Canada, the three young Cubans were processed quickly by U.S.
immigration authorities. ''They treated us very well, they were very
nice,'' said Blanco.

Suarez, 45, who left Cuba after 19 years of training dancers for the
National Ballet of Cuba, said she was frustrated with economic
hardships and lack of recognition, with riding a bicycle and bottling
up her complaints. But she said she was somewhat surprised that her
son and his friends broke with the troupe.

''This young generation . . . they never understand until they get a
little older why they have to leave,'' she said.

``They just think about ballet, they don't get involved with anything
else, they don't understand anything else, they just think ballet,
ballet, ballet.''

But it is precisely to do even more ballet that the young dancers
left. ''I'd like to dance, to do things,'' says Gutierrez.''

''My dream is the same that it was in Cuba,'' says Blanco. ``To dance
a lot, above all.''

''I want to dance here in the U.S., dance for everyone,'' says
Dimitro. ``The greatest opportunity for dancers is here.''

RECEPTION IN MIAMI

After their arrival in South Florida on Monday night, they were met
by a minor media maelstrom, starting with photographers and TV
cameras at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Wednesday morning, they were being filmed by NBC, and the same
afternoon there was a press conference at Versailles Restaurant in
Little Havana, the center of exile Miami.

''It's been a great crossing,'' says Gutierrez. ``I didn't expect all
this.''

The trio will give their first performances in Miami on Feb. 23-24 at
the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater, in a
production of Swan Lake presented by the Cuban Classical Ballet, a
company co-directed by Suarez and Pedro Pablo Pe=F1a.