Letters from Havana

“Calm, concise, factual,” he told us. “We are aware of the uncertainties that characterize our work.”

“I did not experience [the change of plans] as a mere alternative, as a way to fill a void, but rather as an opportunity — a consequence of an unchangeable reality — to find ways to add complexity to and expand the collaborative project.”

“My first response was sadness. Then determination. When I arrived in Havana, I realized immediately that the dancers had not lost hope. They were waiting — not for certainty, but for the opportunity to create. That renewed my own faith. We stopped thinking about what had been taken away and focused instead on what we could still build together.”

“This wasn’t simply another commission,” Ruiz told us. “It was an opportunity to honor the humanity of artists living through extraordinary circumstances. I wanted to create something that wasn’t about politics or borders, but about what remains when everything else is stripped away: our memories, our love, our resilience, and our longing for connection. Learning that the dancers would not be able to stand onstage for the premiere was heartbreaking. Dance is meant to be shared in the same breath, in the same space. Yet somehow that absence became part of the choreography itself. Their physical absence reminds us that art continues to transcend the barriers that people cannot.”

“The title came from asking what remains after everything else is stripped away,” said Ruiz. “Beyond nationality, politics, language, or circumstance, there is something deeply human that connects us all. That invisible thread, that shared humanity, is the essence of us.”