Troupe travels next month for dance festival

 BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 The Washington Ballet will perform in Cuba next month, the main event in a
 cultural exchange akin to last year's Cuba-Orioles baseball series.

 The appearance at Ballet Nacional de Cuba's 17th International Festival is the
 brainchild of Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre, whose
 Cuba-born mother moved here in 1959.

 Still undecided is what the troupe will perform, although the entourage is expected
 to top 125, including 22 dancers plus production crew, students and teachers
 from the ballet's school, and 40 to 50 patrons, each paying $3,500 to tag along.

 Webre, 38, first visited Havana a year ago, where he met legendary ballerina
 Alicia Alonso, and was returning today to put final touches on the Oct. 23-29 trip,
 spokeswoman Judy Keyserling said.

 ``We are excited about mixing Cuba's world-class ballet and Latin flavor with our
 Company's energy and Septime's firebrand creativity,'' said Martin Cohen,
 executive director of the ballet, in a statement. ``Most of all, we look forward to
 reconnecting two rich dance cultures for the benefit of art everywhere.''

 Keyserling said the ballet already had received a license for the trip from the
 Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. It should cost about
 $130,000, including air transport and hotels, she said.

 The entourage will fly from Miami and will likely include founder Mary Day, in her
 early 90s. Day presented Alonso to Washington, D.C., in the 1950s.

 Webre, Texas-raised and the seventh of nine children, made the trip the
 centerpiece of a yearlong exchange program, ``Dialogues in Dance: Cuba 2000.''

 Next week, for example, former Cuban prima ballerina Loipa Araújo, will teach at
 the Washington School of Ballet, lecture on Cuba's dance scene and conduct a
 master class for Washington dancers.

 Not a government institution, the Kennedy Center-based Washington Ballet is
 supported by federal, foundation and corporate funds. It performed in Russia in
 1990, toured China in 1985 and has also traveled to Colombia, the Dominican
 Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.

 The troupe will perform twice in Cuba, including at the festival's gala opening.
 Choreographers and dancers will also visit ballet schools and take part in other
 exchanges.

 Keyserling characterized the trip as the first performance by a major American
 ballet in Cuba since New York's American Ballet Theatre, the ABT, went there in
 1960. Alvin Ailey's Repertory Ensemble, the junior company, traveled there more
 recently, as have individual dancers.

 ``We are going to Cuba to dance, but we will do more than dance,'' said Webre in
 a prepared statement. ``We are going . . . to learn, to teach and to share; with the
 hope of creating long-term relationships between artists in our two cultures.''

 Both the Baltimore Orioles and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra mounted
 major expeditions to Cuba last year in a similar ``people to people exchanges''
 encouraged by the Clinton administration.