distinctions and awards in competitions and international festivals. The success is known as the reflection of its founder Alicia Alonso. The company has created more than 600 works and performed in more than 60 countries worldwide. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary Fidel Castro awarded the ballet and Alicia Alonso its highest civil decoration, the Lazaro Pena Order. The opportunity to join foreign ballet companies is a big incentive for numbers of the National Ballet of Cuba, where a top dancer's pay is about $30 a month. Today several American and British companies have former dancers from the National Ballet dance school among their principal dancers as Lorna Feijoo and her husband Nelson Madrigal who perform with the Boston Ballet, Lorna's sister is with the San Francisco Ballet, in the San Francisco Ballet where Cuban Jorge Esquivel is one of the ballet masters. In 2004 Jose Manuel Carreno was the first Cuban to win the Dance Magazine award for contributions to ballet since the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso did in 1958. Defections In 2003, the Cuban National Ballet toured the United States for the first time with new dancers in the troupe and was known as a very successful tour impressing audiences with an exuberant version of Don Quixote in New York City and other cities. The lead roles were danced by Viengsay Váldes, 27, and Joél Carreno, which is Jose Manuel Carreno's brother. The American tour's brilliance was overshadowed by the defection of five lesser known dancers which two of them, Cervilio Amador and Gema Diaz, both of 20, were taken up as soloists by the Cincinnati Ballet. For Alonso, the defection of dancers who had received nine years of free training, was "painful". In 2005 two more dancers from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba defected. Octavio Martin, a principal dancer, and his wife, Yaima Franco, who ranked slightly above the corps de ballet, left after a performance at a festival in Villahermosa, Mexico, on October 30, 2005. The most recognized figure from Cuban National Ballet to have defected in the past few years is, without question, Rolando Sarabia. Hailed by The New York Times as the 'Cuban Nijinsky'. Rolando defected in 2005, a year after his brother Daniel Sarabia, also a former dancer with Cuban National Ballet, entered the United States via Mexico. Rolando, danced as a principal with Houston Ballet and while Daniel danced with