Born in Havana in 1958, Noel grew up in a family of professional artists. His mother and grandmother were dancers, while his father was a painter and photographer.

He attended the prestigious National School of Art, where he studied dance and dabbled in art. He came to the U.S. in 1981, by way of Costa Rica, after a promising early career with the most important dance companies in Cuba. In 1986, he joined the Boston Ballet and also toured with other major companies including Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theater.

After a dislocated knee ended his dance career in the late 1980’s, he turned to art as a vocation. Since then, his work has been internationally acclaimed and risen steadily in value. He is presently at work with a fellow Miamian, pop art superstar Romero Britto, on a collaborative work that will be unveiled early next year.

How did you become a dancer?
I had dreamed of being a dancer since the day I was born. There was a ballet school in my house, so I had no choice. I grew up in a theatrical family. My grandmother was the official dance teacher for the national opera company in Havana. My mother was a dancer. My father was a photographer and painter. I had the good fortune to be born into a family of professionals. They don’t push you. You have to come out on your own and show that you have talent, and then they encourage you.

How old were you when you started dancing?
I was four. I would try to imitate the students in the ballet classes.

When did you actually start studying dance?
At five.

When did you become a professional?
That’s an interesting question, because when you are a dancer, you are a professional from day one. If you’re not a professional from the beginning, you’re never going to be a professional. It becomes a very intense discipline. In terms of the economics, though, I became a professional dancer at 15.

What happened with your dance career when you came to the U.S.?
Before I came to the U.S., I lived in Costa Rica for seven months. I danced as a principal and taught with the national dance company. Then I came here to Miami, in December 1981, and I worked with the only two companies really working here back then, Dance Miami and Ballet Concerto.

You came just after the famous Mariel boat lift. That must have been a strange time in Miami.
I like the fact that I lived through the entire evolution of Miami, from the beginning.

Why did you become a dancer in the first place? What so appealed to you?
 I don’t even know. I just felt it. Like I said, I grew up around singers and pianists, dancers and artists. So, it wasn’t a matter of ‘becoming’ a dancer—it was my dream from the beginning. I can’t even explain it. I just felt from a very early age that it was my passion, my destiny.

When you came to the U.S., how far did your dance career go?
I moved to Boston and went to work with the Boston Ballet soon after I came to the States. I was in Miami a very short amount of time. I got to realize that there was not much support for the arts in Miami. It was a different city back then. There was not much going on at all. So, I heard from dancers and others who passed through that the only way to get a good opportunity was with one of the really good dance companies in a big city up north.

How did you end up picking Boston?
I said to myself, ‘I’m going to go audition for the first company that comes down,’ because no matter where they come from, it has to be better than this. It was tough.

So, the first company to come through was the Boston Ballet, with Rudolph Nureyev performing “Don Quixote” at Dade County Auditorium. I went and auditioned and got the job. I danced in the chorus for some of the remaining performances with Nureyev. I ended up being with the company for two years.

Then what?
I wanted to explore more about myself in a different style of dance and repertoire. In Cuba, we do all different kinds of dance, not just classical.  You also get to dance a more open repertoire. If you just do classical, classical, classical—after a while it gets very robotic and you don’t feel it. So, there was a company in Boston called New England Dinosaur Dance Company. They did ‘contemporary’ modern dance. They came to see me dance with Boston Ballet and then asked me to join their company. I was there for four years and I really enjoyed it.

What happened next?
Then I started doing freelance work in New York, both classical ballet and contemporary ballet, with small companies. And I was fortunate enough to be taken on as a student by David Howard, who was the most important teacher of his time, in the early 1980’s.

He gave me a scholarship, and the first day I walked into the professional class, there was Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland and all these famous dancers. I was surrounded by some of the greatest dancers in the world. So, I became a better dancer and made great connections as a result of him.

That’s when I started working with Joffrey Ballet. I started taking classes with them because that was my favorite company. At the time, I was dancing with American Ballet Theater, but my knee was starting to give me problems. I was getting old for a dancer. I was 28.