Right on cue

What does Letterman say about you going to the ballet?
[Laughs] You know it’s funny because they all think I’m crazy. I like to rub it in: “Guess where I’m going tonight?” They don’t understand how different it is every night. When you know the ballet so well, you can see the nuances. In Romeo and Juliet, after Alessandra Ferri would take the potion, she would drop it; she was the only one to pick up the bottle so no one would step on it without anybody seeing—except me—and then crawls into bed. A lot of times dancers change their diagonal because they can turn better to the left than to the right—they do little tiny things that I love to watch. It’s fascinating. I said to Dave, “It’s like a baseball game. It’s the same game every night. But it’s different people, and they’re better athletes.” I got him with that one. He’s such a sports fan. These guys are like athletes with a soul.

Who do you watch in the corps de ballet?
Sarah Lane I spotted right away, although sometimes she does this little thing with her eyebrows. She reminds me of Margot Fonteyn, and she’s a good technician. Melanie Hamrick is really good and also Simone Messmer. I love to watch the corps de ballet; you see the ones who are good corps de ballet members and some who are still dancing in the corps de ballet, but they have an extra energy that goes out of the tips of their hands. Or the way or the way they don’t look around when they’re standing. They’re in the role. It’s wonderful to watch.

Where do you sit at the Met?
I always buy upstairs in the balcony, but I get the front of the balcony or the center. If I go every night, that’s all I can afford—those are $35 seats. I spend a lot of money, and I don’t think about it. I charge it and I forget about it, because I feel it’s good for my soul. At NYCB, I buy standing room and then I move when the lights go down. But there, when the curtain goes up, the whole proscenium is open and at the Met, half of it is covered. I’ve never the seen the head of the Buddha in La Bayadère. I’ve never seen the end of Swan Lake [when the couple rises like a vision in the sun]. And it’s not fair! Just because we have cheap seats we can’t see it, and at NYCB you can sit in the last row and you can see everything. I thank Balanchine for that. He was very smart when he built that theater. I think he was a genius, and I don’t use that word with everybody. Also, if you’re in the orchestra, you don’t see the patterns, and Balanchine has the best ones. The choreography is the most simple steps from class, yet everything works so well. You know, ballet is so ridiculous when you think about it. I can understand when somebody says, “The guy’s ass is hanging out in those tights.” I’m so used to it.

When did you last see your sister?
She passed away two years ago. They had a big state funeral for her; I didn’t stay for it. I flew back to Cuba overnight to see her. She was in the hospital and she died, like, four days later. You know, I didn’t ask permission from the government to go? I talked to her husband on a Friday night. He said, “It doesn’t look good,” so I arranged for a ticket to Cancún [Mexico] and there I bought a ticket to Havana. And when I got there, they said, “You don’t have permission to come here—you can’t go in.” I said, “But I’m an American citizen and I know that Americans just fly to Jamaica and they get in.” They said, “But you were born here, so it’s different.” So everybody had left and they were holding me there and I said, “Listen, I’m Josefina Méndez’s brother; I want you to call the Cuban ballet and to talk to Alicia Alonso and that her brother is here, and you won’t let me in.” There were conferences, and finally they came over and said, “We’ll give you permission.” So they let me in, but it never entered my mind to ask permission. When I returned I was so afraid that they were going to stamp my passport.

What happened?
The immigration guy said, “Are you going to get in trouble if I stamp this?” And I said, “Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t,” and he said, “Well, if you give a donation…” I swear! It was like a spy movie. I took a $20 bill because I’m so stupid, and I put it on under my hand and said, “Is that okay?” And he said, “It’s usually $50, but it’s okay.” And he let me through. I talked to others who said, “People pay thousands for people not to stamp your passport.” That embargo is so stupid.

How was your sister when you saw her?
She looked so awful at the hospital; she had a tube in her mouth and in her stomach, but her eyes were so alert and she reminded me of when she was a little girl. She was really helpless. I couldn’t wait for them to give her the morphine because I knew there was no going back. She was in intensive care. I didn’t want her to be aware of the situation. It was like when Marty was in the hospital, and I moved in with him; they put a cot in the room and I wanted to distract him. The last time I saw her, she was starting to nod off from the morphine. She died three days later.