The Sarasota Cuban Ballet’s “On Stage” performances were first mounted 14 years ago to showcase students from a unique exchange program between the Sarasota school and the Cuban National Ballet School who had jointly participated in an intensive summer training session. For most local audience members, it was their first look at the distinctive Cuban ballet style, which features extreme leg positions, dynamic leaps  and multiple pirouettes that finish with the dancer balanced in stillness on one leg.

Sadly, that exchange fell victim to the contentious political relationship between Cuba and the U.S., but the annual “On Stage” performances have continued nevertheless. They are now a testament to the abilities of the American students trained at the school in the Cuban style, including the small group of professionals in the SCBS Studio Company, whose prowess rivals that of their Cuban counterparts.

This year, “On Stage 2026” also featured one of those first Cuban students, who came from the island over a decade ago to study with Ariel Serrano and Wilmian Hernandez, the Cuban couple who founded the school in 2011. Harold Mendez was just 13 when he arrived in Sarasota; now 24, he has been performing with the State Street Ballet in Santa Barbara, California for the past five years, one of the many SCBS graduates who have gone on to professional careers.

It appeared a good number of the audience members at the Sarasota Opera House were aware that this was Mendez’ final professional performance. Despite his exceptional talents, at 5’5” he has been hampered by his shorter stature in pursuing the roles and career he envisioned. Soon, he will join the Marines. But before doing so, the audience was provided with a final display of the abilities that won him multiple awards and scholarships as a student, including a visit to the prestigious Prix de Lausanne.

His vehicle was the perennial competition and gala performance selection, “Flames of Paris,” with its flashy choreography by Vasily Vainonen, bombastic score from Boris Asofyev and red/white/and blue costuming lending a nationalistic flare. (It was created for the Kirov Ballet in 1932 as a celebration of the French Revolution.) The famously athletic and virtuosic piece was suitable for a swan song, though knowing this represented a final burst of flame lent a subtle melancholic air.

Mendez was paired with guest artist Cristal Odum who, despite her proficiency, wasn’t able to draw much attention away from the dancer most people had come to see. After a subdued beginning and the robust partnering of the adagio that revealed a certain lack of rehearsal or chemistry between the two, Mendez did not disappoint in his demanding solo. His explosive leaps and sequence of turns en l’air (in the air) were surpassed only by his head-spinning pirouettes, during which his bent leg started high above his knee, descended to his ankle like a figure skater to accelerate the spin, then rose again above the knee to finish the sequence with a moment of perfectly balanced suspension.

More like ballet attendees in Cuba than in America, where viewers often politely refrain from applause until a break in the music, this audience burst into enthusiastic whistles and clapping after each impressively clean execution. But Mendez’s performance was less about bravado and more about the humbleness that has marked his career and is endemic to his nature. When Serrano  stepped through the dropped curtain after the conclusion of  “Flames” to extoll Mendez’s gifts and invited the dancer to say a few words, Mendez deferred with characteristic modesty and humility.

There was much more to applaud in this mixed program than just Mendez however. In the final piece, the wedding scene from Bluebeard Act III, the Studio Company’s Evelyn Lyman, partnered by SCBS alum Ariel Martinez (now of the Washington Ballet), was exceptionally elegant and musical, with that same undertone of unpretentiousness. They were backed by a corps of female students in short, full-skirted white dresses who, while variable in ability, nevertheless exhibited the professional posture and detailed artistic nuances that set SCBS students apart from other ballet school counterparts.

Faced this year with a student body of diverse skills, in the first half of the program Serrano wisely chose to stage what were called in the program “demonstrations,” beginning with the steps that make up a typical ballet class and moving into various classical variations in which students took turns rather than performing the entire variation themselves. Though still works-in-progress, Ashlyn Fountain demonstrated the precise footwork of the August Bournonville style in the William Tell variation; Gabriel Rodriquez was quirkily charismatic in “Harlequinade;” and Tricia Hsiung’s turns were impressive in “The Pharaoh’s Daughter.”

For those who (unlike this reviewer) can’t get enough of “The Nutcracker,” there was also an ear-worming “Waltz of the Flowers” with a bevy of young beauties in full-skirted, Romantic style white tutus, and a grandiose coda from “Don Quixote,” during which a male dancer took a tumble after getting tangled in the curtain of a wing as he flew past in a leap. (No worries, he was up and spinning like a top moments later.)

And for those whose preference is contemporary ballet, there was a charming, high-spirited new entry from choreographer Tania Vergara Perez, a member of the school faculty, called “Chicos on the Stage.” To Cuban rhythms with lots of percussion, the summer intensive dancers, in black leotards and bright scarlet socks, cocked their heads, snapped their fingers and performed impressively acrobatic and athletic solo spurts.

The choreographer saved the best for near the end, when Studio Company member Katherine Lane, in a red leotard and pointe shoes, and guest artist Jhostin Jiménez, in black, paired for a pas de deux that featured body-bending isolations and wildly creative partnering. This is truly a dynamic duo and their chemistry and seamless coordination were the perfect vehicle for Vergara Perez’s distinctive and crowd-pleasing choreography.

While it remains a disappointment that the Cuban/U.S. exchange that kicked off this annual presentation is no more, “On Stage 2026” was ample evidence that the Cuban ballet style is alive and well in America. And for that we can only be grateful.