You’ve seen it. Everyone has. It’s that one video—the one where an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, sitting in a wheelchair, hears Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and starts moving her arms with such fluid, haunting grace that it feels like you’re watching a ghost reclaim its body. It’s beautiful. It’s gut-wrenching. Honestly, it’s one of those rare internet moments that actually feels human.
But then the questions start. Who was she? Was she really a prima ballerina in New York? Why is her history so... blurry?
The woman was Marta Cinta González Saldaña. To her friends and students, she was Marta Cinta. In Cuba, she was known as Rosamunda. And while the video made her a global icon of the "power of music" in 2020, her real life was a wild, complicated, and somewhat mysterious journey through the 20th century. She wasn't just a "patient" in a viral clip. She was a woman who basically spent her entire life trying to stay in motion, even when her mind started to let go.
The Truth About Marta Cinta González Saldaña and the New York Mystery
When the Asociación Música para Despertar first posted that footage, they claimed Marta was a prima ballerina with "The New York Ballet" in the 1960s. This is where things get a bit messy.
If you look at the official archives of the New York City Ballet (NYCB), you won't find her name. This led to a lot of "internet detectives" and dance critics, like Alastair Macaulay, digging into her past. What they found was a trail of documents that were, frankly, kind of a mess. Marta was apparently a master of the "creative" ID card.
She had documents from a place called "The Higher School for Professional Studies" in New York—a school that doesn't seem to exist in any official records. Some of her IDs had dates that didn't make sense. One said she was 19 in 1966. Another, from just a few years later, said she was 25. Then a third one said she was 23. It’s kinda funny if you think about it. She was clearly a woman who didn't want to be pinned down by age.
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What We Actually Know
Despite the confusion over the "New York Ballet" title, Marta was absolutely a professional.
- The Cuba Years: Her father was an engineer who moved the family to Cuba to build railroads. Marta grew up there and became deeply involved in the dance scene. We have ID cards from the Cuban Ministry of Education proving she was a certified ballet teacher on the island as late as 1968.
- The New York Dream: She definitely lived and worked in New York during the 60s and 70s. While she might not have been at the NYCB, she ran her own ensemble called "Rosamunda." She was the director, the choreographer, and the lead dancer.
- The Madrid Studio: Later in life, she returned to Spain. She lived in the Retiro district of Madrid and ran a dance school right out of her house. People who knew her then described her as "majestically white," always carrying herself with the posture of a queen.
That Viral Video: Why It Actually Worked
Let’s talk about the science for a second, but keep it simple. The video of Marta Cinta González Saldaña wasn't a magic trick. It was a demonstration of how the brain handles music.
Music is one of the last things the brain forgets. Even when Alzheimer's is tearing through the hippocampus (where we store names and dates), the parts of the brain that process melody and rhythm—like the cerebellum and the motor cortex—often stay intact.
For Marta, Swan Lake wasn't just a song. It was muscle memory.
When Pepe Olmedo, the psychologist who filmed her, put those headphones on her, he wasn't just playing music. He was "waking up" her motor system. You can see it in her eyes. The confusion fades, and she starts doing the port de bras (arm movements) of the Swan Queen. It wasn't perfect choreography—some experts noted it was a generalized "swan" style—but it was her truth.
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The Contrast in the Footage
A lot of people think the young ballerina intercut in the viral video is a young Marta. It’s not. That’s actually Russian ballerina Ulyana Lopatkina. The organization used that footage to show the contrast between the memory and the reality. It makes for a great video, but it did lead to some of the factual confusion that’s still floating around today.
Life in Muro de Alcoy
Marta spent her final years in a nursing home called Muro de Alcoy, located between Valencia and Alicante. By the time she got there in 2014, the Alzheimer’s was advanced.
She couldn't always tell the staff about her triumphs in New York or her days in Havana. But she still had "hallucinations" where she thought she was back in a dance academy. She even held a "ballet audition" for the other residents once. Imagine being 90 years old, barely remembering your own name, but still having the instinct to teach a room full of people how to stand in first position. That’s who she was.
Marta died in March 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic was locking down the world. She never saw herself go viral. She never knew that millions of people were crying over her arm movements.
Lessons We Can Actually Use
Marta’s story isn't just a "sad video." It’s a blueprint for how we should probably be treating dementia.
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If you have a loved one struggling with memory loss, here is the actionable takeaway from Marta’s life: Find their "Swan Lake." It doesn't have to be ballet. It could be:
- The specific radio station they listened to during their first job.
- The tactile feeling of a tool they used for forty years (a paintbrush, a wrench, a knitting needle).
- A specific scent or a song that they once knew by heart.
We spend so much time trying to pull people with Alzheimer’s back into our reality—asking them what day it is or if they remember our names. Marta shows us that it’s much more effective to go into their reality. When the music played, she wasn't a patient in a wheelchair in Spain. She was a prima ballerina in New York. And for those few minutes, she was whole.
To truly honor the legacy of Marta Cinta González Saldaña, start building a "memory playlist" for the people you love now. Don't wait until they've forgotten the songs. Collect the tracks that define their happiest decades. When the fog eventually rolls in, those melodies are the only bridge we have left to reach them.
Record those songs, keep those old photos, and remember that even when the mind is gone, the artist usually remains. It just takes the right note to bring them back.