LAS VEGAS -- In one of the largest group defections from Cuba, 44 members of a dance troupe announced yesterday on the steps of a federal courthouse here that they are seeking political asylum in the United States.
The dancers, musicians, and directors of ''Havana Night Club
-- The Show" said they feared returning to Cuba because the
government had threatened to no longer allow them to perform,
so they were defecting before their US visas expire this month.
''This brave and bold action was taken in sorrow but firm resolve," said Nicole ''N.D." Durr, the German-born creator-director of the dance revue. ''The Cuban government had made it very clear that if they tried to return to Cuba they would not be able to continue their art, so they had no other choices."
Durr said her troupe of Cuban nationals, which had performed in 16 nations, ran into a roadblock when they tried to come to Las Vegas in August.
The government eventually allowed the performers to leave not as a troupe but as individuals, but their subsequent performances this fall as a group sparked threats by the Cuban government, Durr said.
The announcement was made on the eve of a two-month nightly engagement at the Stardust Hotel and Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas, which Durr and others hope will become permanent somewhere in the city.
The decision was made by the group about a month ago, Durr said, but three cast members chose not to defect. They will return to Cuba, she said.
For Ariel Michado, the company manager, the defection will mean an indefinite separation from his 8-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, but he said he believes it will help them eventually. Michado and others said that if they can become naturalized US citizens in about five years, they may be able to bring family members to the United States, or at least for visits.
"From my heart, I never wanted to do something like this," Michado said. ''I don't know when I'll see my babies again. This is the most difficult decision in my life."
Another defector, 25-year-old dancer Jose David, was also emotional.
''This is a very, very, very hard decision," said David, who leaves behind his 52-year-old mother. ''This is not the worst part. The worst part is the waiting, the years, the time away from my family. But I am an artist, and I must perform."
Cuba specialists expressed surprise about the mass defection.
''I can't remember when that many people here to do the same thing professionally defected at once," said Julia Sweig, a Cuba specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. ''It is odd because it's not consistent with the Bush administration's current policy toward Cuban visitors to have let them in in the first place."
Indeed, the decision to allow the performers in rankled others who had recently been denied entry.
Last month, a group of Cuban scholars was not granted visas to come to Las Vegas for the Latin American Studies Association convention on grounds that new immigration rules prohibited it.
''One of the rationales the Bush administration used to limit
the visas issued is that they don't want Cubans coming here
to make money to send back to Cuba to then benefit the Cuban
economy," said Michael Erisman, a political science professor
at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind., and the immediate
past cochairman of the Latin American Studies Association's
Section for Scholarly Relations with Cuba. ''Giving them the
visas is inconsistent."
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