Cuban choreographer Tania Vergara Perez’s “Casa Havana” begins with three dancers seated around a kitchen table, teasing playfully and pounding out percussive rhythms on its checkered tablecloth surface. In walk two others who are greeted with the easy affection typical among Cuban relatives and friends.

In case the family dynamic wasn’t already apparent, each dancer in turn sashays across the stage flashing a sign to identify who they are. There’s the Older Brother (Dairon  Batista); the Girlfriend (Isabella Serrano); the Younger Brother (Aiden Bjorklund), and the Younger Sister (Roxana Alonso). But when it comes to the Mother (Sabine Dimante), the flip side of her sign reads: “Motherland.”

That’s the first indication that “Casa Havana” is about more than just family and relationships in a country where lively Latin music brings a buoyancy to daily life. There is a darker side to life in Cuba that pulls on the heartstrings of its natives, especially those like Vergara Perez who were compelled to leave the land they love. And that’s part of “Casa Havana” too.

This hour-long dance-theater piece, which debuted at the Squeaky Wheel Fringe Festival June 3, is an expanded version of a work-in-progress that was showcased in multiple venues last year. Vergara Perez returned to Cuba in 2025 to mourn the death of her second brother, and this work captures the mixture of sadness, fear and community she found there, as well as revisiting the memories of her own younger years in Havana.

With a mix of music (credited to Vergara Perez, with IA Suno; Juan de la Sierra and Renecito Avich), spoken word (a poem entitled “Mother Cuba,” also by Vergara Perez); voiceovers (by Yoleidy  Rosario-Herenendez) and videos of Cuba from various social media networks, it captures the enduring bonds of family, the dynamics between young people full of dreams and the painful departure of a son who chooses to leave.

Each of its multiple sections captures a different scenario and stirs a new emotion. The older brother and his girlfriend alternate between playfulness and passion as they slide on, off and around a faded purple couch. The two brothers joust, with a competitiveness underlined by caring. The lively salsa rhythms give way to a minor key adagio as the younger brother swoops and swoons in angst, clutching a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. What is it?

We can soon guess when, projected on the backdrop, we read the words: “Active military service has been mandatory in Cuba since 1963.” What follows are images that appear with increasing rapidity, of young men, whose deaths and “disappearances” are attributed to acts of negligence, abuse, murders and – over and over – suicide. The message is clear: In a country where the government suppresses the truth, fear and misfortune is rampant.

There is an alternating mix of agony and joy in the sections that follow. Dancers in hooded masks demonstrate the brutality that meets anyone who dares to mount a protest. T-shirts strung on a clothesline – a common sight between buildings on the streets of Havana – become partners in a dance that leaves the dancers (and a couple of audience members called on stage) in a tangle. There’s a tortured separation between the older brother and his girlfriend. The mother, left alone, weeps.

Voiceovers underscore the pain of a country that “teaches its people how to endure, but not how to live,” and of a people who are “tired of loving this land that never loves back.”

All of this works because Vergara Perez has the sensitivity and skill, humor and heart, to embrace life in all its complexity. And also because she chooses dancers who not only have the foundational base in ballet that delivers elegant lines and astounding extensions even when performing her non-balletic movements, but who are sensitive theatrical interpreters in their own right.

At the end, the lively salsa music returns, as do the dancers, joining together one by one to create ensemble poses, as if playing to a camera. Even the harsh realities of today’s Cuba cannot destroy the enduring bonds of familial love, the choreographer seems to say.

And yet, the sadness remains. In a final program note, Vergara Perez dedicates the dance to the memory of her brothers, “Carlos and Ernesto Vergara, who died without ever knowing a free and democratic Cuba.”

“Casa Havana” will be repeated at 2:30 p.m. June 6 as part of the Squeaky Wheel Fringe Festival in the Cook Theatre, which continues through June 7 at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $15. squeakywheeltheatre.org