Right on cue

TIME TO REFLECT: Mendez goofs around in the West Villave

Photograph: Imogen Brown

[Editor's note: This story has been expanded with online bonus content.]

There are a few things that even the most rigorous David Letterman fan might not realize about the Late Show’s cue-card star Tony Mendez. He is worried that Ethan Stiefel will hurt his knees again. He watches Veronika Part with binoculars even though he knows he shouldn’t. And he giggles when Gillian Murphy tosses off some dazzling technical feat, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Mendez rarely misses a performance by American Ballet Theatre. He is a bunhead. A former dancer himself—he started training after he began his cue-card career in Los Angeles—Mendez performed briefly with the Houston Ballet and was an apprentice with the Harkness Ballet, before appearing extensively on Broadway, in shows including Irene, Pippin and Dancin.’ As it happens, dancing runs in his family—after Mendez, with his parents, fled Cuba in 1961, his sister, Josefina Méndez, remained in Havana, where she was Alicia Alonso’s protégé and a major ballerina with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. (She died of cancer in 2007; the siblings were close, especially toward the end of her life, but circumstances prevented Mendez from seeing many of her performances.) Over lunch in the West Village—the Late Show was on a break, but he had remained in town for Giselle—we spoke about his favorite place to be in the dark.

What happens to you when ballet season is over?
You know, I sink into depression. It’s like magic every night. I think, I’m going to the ballet tonight. I get this rush, I get so happy. It happens more with the ballet, but it also happens with the theater. When you go and the curtain is going to go up and you sit in a little box of magic? [Kisses fingers] I miss that magic at night. So last year, I got depressed after the season; this year, I’m going to start watching videos.

TIME TO REFLECT: Mendez as a member of the singing trio the LATINFOLK

Photograph: Courtesy of Tony Mendez (LATINFOLK)

What is your background with ballet?
I was born in Cuba. I left at 15, in 1961. My sister was already with the Cuban Ballet: Josefina Méndez. She had been with the company since she was 14 or something, so I grew up with all that stuff. I missed a lot of her performances. We had a big 15-year gap where we didn’t see each other because after we left Cuba it was hard to communicate. Toward the end, I used to fly out whenever the company was performing somewhere, but by that time she wasn’t performing. The company was at the Met a long time ago, and I saw her do a couple of Giselles and Swan Lakes, and that was it. So I missed most of her career, and it’s sad because when my parents died, we had gotten much closer. We only had each other so we were really getting to know each other. And then all of a sudden she got ovarian cancer. I tried to get her to write a book but it was too late.

How did you end up leaving Cuba?
My parents decided overnight to leave. The American embassy was closing and Josefina was on tour with the company—in Czechoslovakia somewhere. She was Alonso’s protégé. They looked a lot alike; everybody thought Josefina was her daughter. My mother always hated Alicia. And Alicia didn’t get along with her own daughter then, so my mother was jealous. For her, she was the reason why we lost my sister. She used to put her makeup on and walk with her. Toward the end, she would stand in the wings and yell, “To the right, to the left, to the front!” And then run around to the other side.

Alonso was dancing even though she was virtually blind; your sister acted as her eyes?
Yeah. So we went straight to L.A. We were supposed to go to Canton, Ohio, and luckily my parents decided to go to Los Angeles because my mother had a cousin there. We took a bus; in those days, they had separate bathrooms in the back—it was real bizarre, like five or six days on a bus. For me, it was an adventure, but my parents were freaked out. We had $15 and the clothes on our back.

Did your parents try to get Josefina to come, too?
Yes. From L.A., my parents contacted my sister and said, “We want you to come to Los Angeles. Don’t go back to Cuba.” And she was crying and said, “All right, I will.” And they talked to Alonso and her husband and they said, “Yes, we’ll send her.” And then my sister sent a telegram saying she was going back to Cuba. I think if she had come to L.A., she wouldn’t have developed into the artist that she was. You know, I accept things the way they happen. There’s no ballet in Los Angeles. Under Alonso’s example, she became such an amazing artist and surpassed her in many ways. It worked out. I wish I had more siblings though. The family was split completely; at least we never had relatives in jail or tortured. A lot of people did.

Did you want to move to the U.S.?
[Laughs] For me, it was an adventure—and then when I heard we were going to Hollywood? [Grins] I went to North Hollywood High.

When did you start dancing?
I was about 22. I moved very fast. And in those days, if you could point your toes, they would give you a scholarship. I got scholarships everywhere. You know, you learn so much from osmosis. It was amazing how much I had picked up from just watching because I used to go to all of my sister’s performances and a lot of times I’d have to accompany her to class so I could chaperone her on the bus or whatever. The music was already in me. I had really good turnout, and I could point my feet so in a year the Houston Ballet hired me. There were just 12 of us, so we got a chance to dance. Then I came to New York on scholarship at American Ballet Theatre. I was an apprentice at Harkness Ballet. Ben Harkarvy was there and David Howard. Did you ever go to that townhouse where the school was? Rebekah Harkness was so eccentric. One day, I heard she was coming to watch class, and I envisioned this woman with jewels and fur and she was real frumpy and not very good-looking; it was bizarre. The elevator was bejeweled and there was a beautiful staircase, and there was a niche on the wall for this urn, The Chalice of Life, by Salvador Dalí. It was all gold for her ashes. The big studio had a chandelier. They gave us $65 a week, and we’d go around the corner in our tights to the bank on Lexington Avenue. [Laughs] I told them that I was 18 and they took me. That was the cap.