Dance is in the DNA in Cuba and now Nilda Guerra is bringing the famous salsa spirit to London, she tells

for foreign guests and diplomats.

It’s a fitting place to look back on Guerra’s life — shaped by the aspirations of the country in which she was born. “I was a wild one, and my mother didn’t know what to do with me. So she put me into dance school. I remember I had to dance with an orange on my head and a knife stuck through it, as a witch in a folkloric dance from South America.”

Her talent was quickly spotted as part of a government initiative to help talented people from the countryside to train in art, dance, drama and music and she won a place at the Escuela Vocacional de Arte in Santiago. “Three groups of students from all over the country were invited. We had never experienced city life and it was a big opportunity,” she explains. “This is the good part of the Revolution; they push you to learn even if you live in the end of the world.”

Her own interests extended into all forms of dance — from folk, through the social dances such as rumba, mambo, salsa and son, to contemporary. “I loved communicating with my body. I didn’t know why at the time but I loved it.”

During her training, she encountered Cuba’s most famous dance export, Carlos Acosta. “I remember seeing him dance salsa when he was maybe in his teens and I loved the way he moved,” Guerra says. “Then someone told me he was a classic dancer, because normally the classic dancers aren’t allowed to move like that. The teachers in the school of ballet don’t want you to. But Carlos is special. He is an artist who puts his talent and body on the spot. He has achieved so much for himself and for our country. And he has the most amazing heart.”

She laughs again. She’s a warm and expansive character herself, a human dynamo whose vision and energy led to the founding of Ballet Rakatan, and who now single-handedly runs this company of more than 100 dancers, coping not only with the creative demands of making new work but with the admini strative and organi sational burdens too. She takes her responsibilities seriously.

“My dancers have to look after many families. Each member of Rakatan has to earn money to buy clothes, shoes and food for their whole family. And in my family, my mother has 17 brothers and sisters and my father 25. So there’s a very practical need.”

It was never her intention to be a director or to run her own company. But after years working for Teatro Lirico de La Habana, and various cabarets as a dancer, she began to feel she had something to contribute. “I feel the director mentality is so closed. They don’t let you shine. I hate that. I decided that I had to have a company and everybody has to feel really cool and good and they have to enjoy what they are doing.”

All her beliefs came together in Havana Ratakan, which bec ame a success wherever it played. “People loved it,” she says. “The dancing was really expressive and mad. When you dance you are floating, you feel emotion, both happy and sad. We worked for years to arrive at the point we wanted. We created the way we wanted to move. We just hear the music. We just feel it.”

Working in Cuba, even when you are an est abli shed c o mpany wi t h an appreciative audience and government support, is not always easy. Everything, from finding shoes and costumes for dancers to wear, to getting time to rehearse in the theatre, is a struggle. “It is complicated to try to create,” says Guerra. “You have to fight a lot.”

She is undaunted, and Vamos Cuba! is a show that very much expresses her love for her country but also about the need for change. It is a show that tries to express the hopes and dreams of young people in Cuba today, she says. “This appetite for change has been building in the hearts and souls of the younger generation for some time. It is not just political; we want to believe in the change that is coming and we want to believe it won’t only affec t big businesses but that it will be for us too.”

She chose to set Vamos Cuba! in an airport in order to capture the sense of possibility that has been growing ever since Cuba’s relations with the outside world began to improve. “All Cubans have this great urge to travel — it is about growing, not standing still. But at the same time it is a time when the rest of the world wants to come here and discover Cuba. So there is interest on both sides. It is a moment of transformation for us.”