|
 Making
Mirror
Dance
By Nancy
Wozny
Two
sisters, two filmmakers, and one film that changed their
lives.
“Both
within the family and without, our sisters hold up our
mirrors: our images of who we are and of who we can dare to
be.”
--Elizabeth Fishel
As the
saying goes, “There’s a story behind every door.” Little did
filmmaker Frances McElroy know that the story that would
change the course of its subjects’ lives, and consume five
years of her own, was nestled in her own neighborhood. She had
often walked past Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet (PAB) on her
strolls through the gentle streets of Narberth, a small suburb
of Philadelphia. But once she had unearthed the story of
Margarita and Ramona de Saá, identical twin ballerinas from
Cuba, McElroy teamed up with Maria Teresa Rodriguez to make
Mirror Dance.
A newspaper
article about the de Saá sisters had piqued McElroy’s
interest. Separated by the Cuban revolution, political
differences, and the restrictions on their communication that
followed, the sisters seemed like ripe material for a
documentary film. Both Margarita and Ramona had danced in the
first company of the National Ballet of Cuba under Alicia and
Fernando Alonso. Margarita and her husband, John White, and
their young son left Cuba in the midst of turmoil knowing full
well that their family ties would be forever altered.
Mirror
Dance,
which was
filmed in the United States and Cuba, took five years to make.
“Filmmaking is a slow process,” says McElroy. “It took a while
to secure the funding and then receive
all the necessary permits for shooting in Cuba.” McElroy and
Rodriguez had been co lleagues
at WYBE, a PBS station; after McElroy shared the de Saás’
story, Rodriguez expressed interest in working on the film.
McElroy has done several films on the lives of artists and
Rodriguez had a background in Latino history and speaks
Spanish. Together, they made a perfect team for this film.
The
Story
The de Saás’
story is a familiar one to many Cuban families that were torn
apart after Fidel Castro took power. Among many changes that
the 1959 revolution brought was Castro’s strong commitment to
the arts, especially ballet. Mirror Dance covers the
rise of the twins, who became hooked on ballet at age 11, in
the National Ballet of Cuba, where the Alonsos had trouble
telling them apart. “They could never keep track of us,” says
Margarita. “At my audition Fernando told me, ‘We just saw
you.’ Fernando and Alicia were like a father and mother to
us.”
Margarita
rose to the level of prima ballerina while Ramona became a
soloist (but was sidelined by an injury early in her career).
Each married, Margarita to White and Ramona to Santiago
Narango, a close associate and bodyguard to Castro. As their
mirror lives continued, each bore a son.
When
Margarita married an American, the stage was set for a
divergence in the sisters’ paths. Alicia Alonso had recruited
White after seeing him dance in Los Angeles while he was in
his 20s. “When you are young you do some crazy things,” says
White. “It was a major change in my life direction, but an
opportunity to work with top international teachers.”
It was a
difficult time to be an American in Cuba; White was there
during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and John F.
Kennedy’s assassination. The political situation was
deteriorating rapidly as Cuba’s government drew clos er
to the Soviet Union. “The benefits of staying were outweighed
by the need to live,” says White. “It was a tough decision.”
Because she was married to an American, Margarita was allowed
to leave the country; their son, John, had dual citizenship.
However, once the family announced they were leaving, their
remaining time in Cuba grew increasingly stressful. White was
told to be careful around his associates, to lay low and not
to speak English. Although her husband was returning home,
Margarita was leaving her homeland, possibly for a very long
time. It turned out to be 40 years. She never saw her parents
again and was considered a traitor to the revolution. Her
departure cut a deep divide between her sister and herself.
Ramona, having married an associate of Castro’s, was deeply
entrenched in the revolution.
White
recalls their 2-year-old son singing revolutionary songs on
the plane trip to California. Once there, the change in the
family’s lives was huge. Margarita gave Hollywood a go and
appeared in several films, including In Like Flint and
Funny Girl, while John taught. But the glitzy life was
not a good fit for them, and at one point they considered
leaving dance. Both were overjoyed when Barbara Weisberger
invited them to work with her at Pennsylvania Ballet in 1969.
Five years later they started their own studio, Pennsylvania
Academy of Ballet, where they continue to teach, along with
their daughter, Melinda Pendleton.
Meanwhile,
back in Cuba, Ramona’s career continued on an upward
trajectory, and she became the director of the National Ballet
School. Little did the twins realize that a documentary film
about their story would alter its outcome.
The Film
In 2000
McElroy and Rodriguez held an exploratory meeting with
Margarita and White. Margarita was intrigued with the idea but
cautious. She says she thought the film “would never happen. I
had been disappointed many times about big plans.”
“The time
seemed right,” says Rodriguez. “Margarita seemed open to our
ideas.” At the same time, a German journalist from Stern
maga zine
began to pursue the twins’ story, leading Margarita to wonder
why, after 40 years, so many people had become interested in
her life.
“The more
they told us, the more interesting [the story] was,” says
McElroy. “We really hit it off at that first meeting.”
Everyone
was aware of the tricky arrangements that had to fall into
place, never mind the funding. Margarita had begun sporadic
communication with her sister 10 years before and was able to
arrange a weekend visit in Venezuela in 1996. But the film
offered a greater award: a return to Cuba, her homeland.
Margarita’s
daughter was excited about the documentary and felt it was the
catalyst her mother and aunt needed to reestablish a
meaningful relationship. “I started getting this overwhelming
feeling that my mom needed to do this even before the subject
of the documentary came up,” says Pendleton. “It was time; my
mother and aunt were getting older. We could not let [the
separation] go too much longer.” The film provided the support
and structure the family needed to reunite.
The next
step involved creating a sample reel to show potential funders.
Serendipitously, Barbara Strogatz, one of Margarita’s
students, was on her way to Cuba. She took along a video
camera and returned with footage of Ramona talking about her
excitement about the project. McElroy and Rodriguez now say
that the film could not have been made without Ramona’s help.
She was key in attaining filming permits and important
archival footage and photographs. “[Ramona] helped us with
necessary entrees such as access to the National Ballet of
Cuba’s historian,” says McElroy, adding that “it was thrilling
to see these first-rate ballet dancers rehearsing at the
National Ballet of Cuba.”
“We
absolutely needed to show that Ramona was on board with the
project,” says Rodriguez. With footage of the PAB
Nutcracker rehearsals, interviews with Margarita and
White, and Ramona’s blessing, the filmmakers had a reel that
was enticing enough to get seed money from The Philadelphia
Foundation. Funds from the Latino Public Broadcasting
Corporation, National Endowment for the Arts, 5-County Arts
Fund, Montgomery County Foundation, and Independent Television
Services (ITVS) allowed the filmmakers to complete the
project.
In 2001 the
team made a research and development trip to Cuba to meet with
Ramona and make arrangements for filming. They realized the
inherent risks in delving into tricky political territory and
chose to focus on the twins’ story within the context of the C uban
Revolution. “We didn’t push the envelope,” says McElroy. “We
were not there to do a political story.”
Ramona and
her husband (who has since died) were gracious hosts and drove
the filmmakers all around to key locations. “Without Ramona’s
help the film would have been impossible,” says Rodriguez. In
2003 they returned to film Ramona at work, gather archival
materials, and hear Ramona’s side of the story.
Funding
allowed McElroy and Rodriguez to take a year off to finish the
film and make the final arrangements for the reunion trip. “It
was a logistical nightmare to get all the permits and visas at
the same time,” says McElroy. More than 90 hours of footage
were distilled down to 54 minutes. A feature-length version
remains on the wish list should more funding be secured.
The
Reunion
Mirror
Dance
culminates
in a joyous airport reunion, and the drama leading up to that
event was caught on film. Rodriguez stayed with Ramona; the
twins’ brother, Jovito de Saá; and a crew waiting at the José
Martí Airport, while McElroy and a separate crew accompanied
Margarita and her family. The twins’ nervousness is palpable
as they await the much-anticipated reunion. The powerful scene
of the twins and Jovito locked in an embrace is the film’s
high point.
White
describes his family’s long-awaited return to Cuba as
“surrealistic. So many years had passed and it was like we
never left. The country had not changed much. Sure, people
looked older, but in other ways time had stood still.” They
had left under the most difficult circumstances but were
welcomed with open arms. White noticed that the fanatically
pro-revolution spirit had softened somewhat, yet he was
saddened to see that not much had improved in Cubans’ daily
lives.
Traveling
to Cuba for the first time and seeing the place where her
mother had lived and worked was nothing short of overwhelming
for Pendleton, who describes the trip as both joyous and sad.
“I was finally connecting to a part of my life that had been
completely mi ssing.
The filmmakers had access to so much history—footage and
photos—about my mom that I had never seen,” she says. Visiting
the National Ballet of Cuba School and watching her aunt in
action, Pendleton noticed much about Ramona that reminded her
of her mother. “Their voices and hands are the same,” she
says. “But their teaching styles are different; Ramona is more
methodical while my mother is more instinctual.” As the film
progresses, Margarita and Ramona begin to look more and more
alike. There’s a marvelous sequence in the film where they
move their heads in exact unison as they follow a dancer’s
elegant movements.
The trip
also allowed Pendleton to see firsthand how her aunt’s life
differs from her mother’s. “Yes, my aunt has beautiful
facilities, but she is there all the time,” she says. “My
mother doesn’t have the government support that she would have
in Cuba, but she can take a vacation whenever she wants. They
both work very hard in very different situations.”
Pendleton
is grateful to have had the opportunity to make the trip;
currently, U.S. law does not permit her to return to Cuba. The
pain she feels at never having met her grandparents is
compounded by the fact that without a grandparent or other
relative closer than an aunt or uncle, she is not allowed back
into the country.
The
Aftermath
In
September 2005 Mirror Dance premiered in Philadelphia
at a special fund-raising event for PAB. More than 450 people
attended; many were Margarita’s current and former students.
“It was a wonderful event,” says Rodriguez. The film has been
shown on PBS several times and won a 2005 CINE Golden Eagle
Award as well as first place for documentary
 excellence from
the Society of Professional Journalists, Greater Philadelphia
Chapter. It was a 2006 Imagen Award finalist for best
documentary for television or film.
The sisters
celebrated their first birthday together in 40 years in
Toronto last July and also enjoyed a visit in Mexico in 2005.
Phone contact is expensive and thus rare, so they communicate
via email despite suspicions that their communications are
monitored. Most of the conversation is about family news. “The
important part is keeping in touch,” says White. “We take
every opportunity to visit when Ramona travels, and a trip to
Italy is planned for next summer.” Margarita is allowed to
return to Cuba every three years and may do so in 2007. There
are still many missing years the sisters need to catch up on.
McElroy has
continued her association with Margarita, taking ballet
classes from her, and Rodriguez finds that dance is much more
on her radar these days. The filmmakers are considering making
a sequel to Mirror Dance as the de Saá sisters continue
to reconnect. Each has found her own lessons from making the
film. “Nothing is black and white,” says Rodriguez about Cuba
with mixed emotions. “I have the utmost respect for what they
have done to cultivate the arts; still, their freedoms are
limited.”
As for the
sisters, both say on camera that the documentary changed their
lives. “The film forced the issue [of their separation and
reunion],” says McElroy. “That was the most single rewarding
aspect to this whole project.” For the filmmakers the ideal
ending would be not only that story continues for Margarita
and Ramona de Saá, but that Cuban-Americans everywhere find
hope and healing in it.
To purchase DVDs of Mirror Dance, email:
info@shirleyroadproductions.org
or visit
www.shirleyroadproductions.org;
www.paacademyofballet.com; or
www.pbs.org/independentlens/mirrordance/film.html.
Photo
captions (top to bottom):
Margarita and Ramona de Saá on tour with the National Ballet
of Cuba. Photo courtesy of Ramona de Saá Bello/ITVS.
Maria
Teresa Rodriguez (Producer/Director) & Frances McElroy
(Producer/Director) of Mirror Dance. Photo by James Wasserman/ITVS.
Magarita
and Ramona de Saá, young twins, Havana, Cuba. Photo courtesy
of Ramona de Saá Bello/ ITVS.
Margarita and Ramona de Saá, Ballet Alicia Alonso, Havana,
Cuba. Photo courtesy of Ramona de Saá Bello/ ITVS.
Margarita de Saá White and Ramona de Saá Bello with their
first born sons, 1963, Havana, Cuba. Photo courtesy of Ramona
de Saá Bello/ ITVS.
Margarita de Saá White, co-founder of the Pennsylvania Academy
of Ballet, preparing students for audition. Photo by James
Wasserman/ITVS.
Ramona
de Saá, director of the National School of Ballet, teaching
boy’s first year ballet class, Havana, Cuba. Photo by James
Wasserman/ITVS.
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