Who was this mysterious ballerina from the viral Swan Lake video?
People are more curious about her now than they probably were during her life, says dance critic.
A video showing a former ballet dancer afflicted with memory loss gracefully dancing to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake from her wheelchair has gone viral.
The elderly woman, identified as Marta Cinta González, moves her arms in elegant arcs as the orchestral brass intensifies. She flutters her hands to the tune of the music and gazes at her surroundings with vibrant eyes, as though she had been transported back in time.
"It's a very moving video," said Alastair Macaulay, the former dance critic for the New York Times.
The video was captured by Asociación Música para Despertar, a Spanish organization that uses music therapy to improve the mood and memory of those afflicted by memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.
It was shared on the organization's social media accounts, including on its YouTube account, where it has been watched nearly 2 million times.
Though the video was taken in 2019, it was only published to the organization's YouTube channel last month, where it was since gained worldwide popularity. But with that increased attention came questions about González's backstory.
"Nobody quite knows how old this woman is, and she seems to have lost the use of her legs long since," Macaulay said.
Who was Marta Cinta González?
The lack of concrete information surrounding González's history, as well as the video's growing popularity, prompted Macaulay to try to piece together her life story.
"Because I was getting this video [sent to me] from all kinds of people, I finally thought, 'Alright, I better respond,'" he said.
Through his research, Macaulay came across a 1966 document issued by an organization called the Higher School for Professional Studies in New York, of which there is no clear record.
The document, which bears what appears to be a Cuban governmental stamp, says that a Marta C. González Saldaña — possibly Marta Cinta González — can be called a prima ballerina.
"If you're a ballet snob, the word 'prima ballerina' has very important significance," Macaulay said.
This finding supports the claim put forward by Música para Despertar — they suggest González was a former prima ballerina with the New York Ballet in the 1960s.
Though no such organization exists in New York or the United States today, Macaulay says it could've been a very small or relatively unknown company.
"Sometimes it was called the Ballet de las Américas and it may have been a minor company in Cuba, but there is a Ballet de las Américas in Bogota, Colombia, and it's also the name of a folklorico company in Mexico," he said.
Through his research, Macaulay also found documents suggesting that González had, at one point, been a choreographer. He says she might've made as many as 20 pieces while she was still a teenager.
"She had a list of them, and she had press clippings that talked about them being performed in Cuba, one or more being done in America and one or more — the prospect of being done in Europe," he said.
Though the mystery continues, more details are being unearthed about the ballerina. Over the weekend, Spanish outlet El Español reported that González might've previously worked and taught in Cuba, New York and Spain. The outlet also claims Gonzalez was born in Spain in the mid-1920s, though her ID seems to have been falsified.
González's final years were spent at the Muro de Alcoy, a nursing home she moved into in September 2014. Though it was clear to her caregivers she had come from a ballet-based background — on one occasion she held her own ballet audition within the nursing home — significant cognitive impairment prevented her from sharing her story in detail.
González died in March of this year, months before her viral video was published and months before anyone could inquire about her mysterious past.
"She has a past about which she can no longer really speak," Macaulay said. "She can't tell anybody at the home just what roles her choreography was, how long she was in Cuba, [and] how long she was in America. We just have these few documents about her"
"It's ironic. People are now more curious about her probably than they were ever during her life."
Written by Mouhamad Rachini. Produced by Ben Jamieson.