LAS VEGAS (AP) – Members of the “Havana Night Club” dance troupe have been granted asylum eight months after they became one of the largest groups of Cubans to defect to the United States, the show’s creator said Thursday.

Forty-nine singers, dancers, musicians and other troupe members received word this week that they would be allowed to stay in the U.S., the show’s creator, Nicole “N.D.” Durr, told The Associated Press. Two members of the troupe decided to return to Cuba.

“A new chapter of their lives has started,” Durr said. “Here’s something we worked very hard for, we fought for. This is something that will change (their) destiny.”

The saga began last summer when it was reported that the Castro government would not let the troupe travel to Las Vegas for its first U.S. engagement. The ensemble had performed in more than a dozen countries.

Cuban authorities said they did not support the effort because they did not believe the United States would grant visas – especially since U.S. officials had rejected a similar request a few months earlier.

After the troupe broke from the Cuban government’s union for writers and artists and declared itself independent, the United States granted visas.

Group members individually entered the country and reunited in Las Vegas where they began performing at the Stardust hotel-casino in August.

Durr told the troupe shortly before Tuesday’s show that their asylum paperwork had begun to arrive, with the final batch coming in Thursday. During the meeting, performers broke into tears, cheers and whistles, said Jose David, the 24-year-old host of “Havana Night Club.”

“Everybody went mad,” he said in a phone interview. “We’ve been waiting for this for almost a year.”

Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, D.C., said he was prevented by law from discussing the citizenship status of the performers.

In Havana, telephones rang unanswered after hours Thursday at Cuba’s Culture Ministry and the government’s National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists, to which the troupe had belonged.

When the dancers left Cuba last year, Culture Minister Abel Prieto expressed surprise they were describing themselves as an independent group, and he denied Durr’s claims that the government was refusing to allow them to leave.

For many troupe members, news they could remain in the U.S. was bittersweet. Dancer Alain Marten Lavalle, 26, said he called his parents in Cuba on Wednesday.

“I wish they could be here with me to share this good thing,” he said.

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