Dance

In Cuba everybody knows Carlos. He’s like the icon, not only for Cuban dancers, but for the whole country,’ says Varona. Even Fidel Castro came to the opening night in 2003. The show became a huge hit. There have already been two London seasons as well as tours to Italy and Hong Kong. ‘The reason why audiences love it,’ he adds, ‘is because the story is completely simple. The boy from the countryside and the city gangster. It’s a contest between them. Carlos is the star, but,’ he says with a sly, satisfied smile, ‘I’ve got the best part.’

Varona, 36, danced for 12 years with the national folklorico company before breaking out to work with Cuba’s leading contemporary companies. He also spent a season in Monaco appearing in the famed and flashy Tropicana cabaret show: ‘That was very hard work, doing the same thing night after night.’ In contrast, he says, ‘Tocororo’ is a spontaneous game: ‘I enjoy it so much, I never thought how far this character could grow.’ Feature continues

Nothing else in his career quite equals his notorious experience as the first man to dance naked in Cuba. ‘The choreographer had said, “At this moment, at the end of the dance, you have to take off your clothes.” She explained to me the idea, about the life spirit, the freedom from oppression.

‘I don’t want to lie to you, the government said, “Oh no, you can’t do that”. But for the premiere we were not in Havana, we were in a small city and the choreographer said, “OK, you do it tonight.”

‘My heart was really beating,’ he admits, ‘but I did it. The audience – I can still hear them saying “Oh, this is disgusting, look at that”, and covering up the eyes of the little girls. People shouting, shouting, shouting. It was only 10 seconds, but at the end it was “bravo, bravo, bravo” too.’

Returning to Cuba after his year in Monaco, Varona felt at a loose end.

‘I didn’t want to go to Tokyo and just teach salsa and make a lot of money. (At the time he was married to a Japanese woman) No, no. I think I’m more intelligent than that. I wanted to be somebody big. So I made my own performance in Havana – singing, acting, everything.’Then came the call from Acosta. ‘Tocororo’ changed Varona’s life, not just on the stage, but behind the scenes as well. The BBC sent a camera crew to Havana to make an Acosta documentary. Lucy Blakstad, the show’s director, and Varona gradually became an item and now have a ten-month-old son.

‘In Cuba they all think that you marry a foreigner only in order to get away, to leave the country. But that’s not true for me and Lucy. ‘She’s my number one first fan. She helps me all the time. She’s the one who told me I had to audition with Russell Maliphant. My relationship with Lucy and my dancing for Russell Maliphant are the same – full of possibilities, they grow together.’ This past year Varona and Julie Guibert have triumphantly replaced Maliphant and Sylvie Guillem in his mesmeric duet ‘Push’.

‘When you’re dancing together you start to understand each other. We started far apart, but now we don’t even have to talk to know what we want, who we are, we’re family. That’s like my relationship with Lucy, you grow, we help each other.’