Download or read book Contemporary Dance in Cuba written by Suki John and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-08-13 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lens of dance can provide a multifaceted view of the present-day Cuban experience. Cuban contemporary dance, or tecnica cubana as it is known throughout Latin America, is a highly evolved hybrid of ballet, North American modern dance, Afro-Cuban tradition, flamenco and Cuban nightclub cabaret. Unlike most dance forms, tecnica was created intentionally with government backing. For Cuba, a dancing country, it was natural--and highly effective--for the Revolutionary regime to link national image with the visceral power of dance. Written by a dancer who traveled and worked in Cuba from the 1970s to the present, this book provides an inside look at daily life in Cuba. From watching the great Alicia Alonso, to describing the economic trials of the 1990s "Special Period," the author uses history, humor, personal experience, rich description and extensive interviews to reveal contemporary life and dance in Cuba.
Download or read book Dancing with Cuba written by Alma Guillermoprieto and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba’s National School of Dance. For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever. In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto–now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America– resurrects a time when dancers and revolutionaries seemed to occupy the same historical stage and even a floor exercise could be a profoundly political act. Exuberant and elegiac, tender and unsparing, Dancing with Cuba is a triumph of memory and feeling.
Download or read book Contemporary Dance in Cuba written by Suki John and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-08-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lens of dance can provide a multifaceted view of the present-day Cuban experience. Cuban contemporary dance, or tecnica cubana as it is known throughout Latin America, is a highly evolved hybrid of ballet, North American modern dance, Afro-Cuban tradition, flamenco and Cuban nightclub cabaret. Unlike most dance forms, tecnica was created intentionally with government backing. For Cuba, a dancing country, it was natural--and highly effective--for the Revolutionary regime to link national image with the visceral power of dance. Written by a dancer who traveled and worked in Cuba from the 1970s to the present, this book provides an inside look at daily life in Cuba. From watching the great Alicia Alonso, to describing the economic trials of the 1990s "Special Period," the author uses history, humor, personal experience, rich description and extensive interviews to reveal contemporary life and dance in Cuba.
Download or read book Geographies of Cubanidad written by Rebecca M. Bodenheimer and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2015-07-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Derived from the nationalist writings of José Martí, the concept of Cubanidad (Cubanness) has always imagined a unified hybrid nation where racial difference is nonexistent and nationality trumps all other axes identities. Scholars have critiqued this celebration of racial mixture, highlighting a gap between the claim of racial harmony and the realities of inequality faced by Afro-Cubans since independence in 1898. In this book, Rebecca M. Bodenheimer argues that it is not only the recognition of racial difference that threatens to divide the nation, but that popular regional sentiment further contests the hegemonic national discourse. Given that the music is a prominent symbol of Cubanidad, musical practices play an important role in constructing regional, local, and national identities. This book suggests that regional identity exerts a significant influence on the aesthetic choices made by Cuban musicians. Through the examination of several genres, Bodenheimer explores the various ways that race and place are entangled in contemporary Cuban music. She argues that racialized notions which circulate about different cities affect both the formation of local identity and musical performance. Thus, the musical practices discussed in the book—including rumba, timba, eastern Cuban folklore, and son—are examples of the intersections between regional identity formation, racialized notions of place, and music-making.
Download or read book Dancing with the Revolution written by Elizabeth B. Schwall and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an art form that became a darling of the Cuban revolution: dance. In this history of staged performance in ballet, modern dance, and folkloric dance, Schwall analyzes how and why dance artists interacted with republican and, later, revolutionary politics. Drawing on written and visual archives, including intriguing exchanges between dancers and bureaucrats, Schwall argues that Cuban dancers used their bodies and ephemeral, nonverbal choreography to support and critique political regimes and cultural biases. As esteemed artists, Cuban dancers exercised considerable power and influence. They often used their art to posit more radical notions of social justice than political leaders were able or willing to implement. After 1959, while generally promoting revolutionary projects like mass education and internationalist solidarity, they also took risks by challenging racial prejudice, gender norms, and censorship, all of which could affect dancers personally. On a broader level, Schwall shows that dance, too often overlooked in histories of Latin America and the Caribbean, provides fresh perspectives on what it means for people, and nations, to move through the world.
Download or read book Rumba written by Yvonne Daniel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995-06-22 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using dance anthropology to illuminate the values and attitudes embodied in rumba, Yvonne Daniel explores the surprising relationship between dance and the profound, complex changes in contemporary Cuba. From the barrio and streets to the theatre and stage, rumba has emerged as an important medium, contributing to national goals, reinforcing Caribbean solidarity, and promoting international prestige. Since the Revolution of 1959, rumba has celebrated national identity and cultural heritage, and embodied an official commitment to new values. Once a lower-class recreational dance, rumba has become a symbol of egalitarian efforts in postrevolutionary Cuba. The professionalization of performers, organization of performance spaces, and proliferation of performance opportunities have prompted new paradigms and altered previous understandings of rumba.
Download or read book From Mango Cuba to Prickly Pear America written by Melinda Voss and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 2014, award-winning journalist Melinda Voss headed to the Miami airport to travel to Cuba, a country that had fascinated her since she was a girl growing up amid animated dinner conversations about the Cuban revolution, Castro’s leadership, and the missile crisis. After her plane landed, she disembarked with thirty-one other Americans and prepared to explore Cuba’s complexity, its leaders, people, culture, and relationship with America. Offering a thoughtful glimpse of Cuban life, Voss not only interweaves interesting facts about Cuba’s history, customs, housing, education system, agriculture, health care, family life, and aging, but also provides perspective on the differences and similarities between American and Cuban cultures. While sharing valuable insight into landmarks such as the stately University of Havana, Santeria Cultural Center, Che Guevara’s tomb, Revolution Square, tobacco and organic farms, and community projects, Voss introduces others to an impressive array of Cuban musicians and artists and includes excerpts from unusually frank conversations with locals as well as Americans. From Mango Cuba to Prickly Pear America shares a concise and carefully researched comparison between two New World countries as a new and uncertain era of Cuban-American relations dawns.
Download or read book Cuban Fusion written by Eva Silot Bravo and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Danz n written by Alejandro L. Madrid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Initially branching out of the European contradance tradition, the danzón first emerged as a distinct form of music and dance among black performers in nineteenth-century Cuba. By the early twentieth-century, it had exploded in popularity throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean basin. A fundamentally hybrid music and dance complex, it reflects the fusion of European and African elements and had a strong influence on the development of later Latin dance traditions as well as early jazz in New Orleans. Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance studies the emergence, hemisphere-wide influence, and historical and contemporary significance of this music and dance phenomenon. Co-authors Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore take an ethnomusicological, historical, and critical approach to the processes of appropriation of the danzón in new contexts, its changing meanings over time, and its relationship to other musical forms. Delving into its long history of controversial popularization, stylistic development, glorification, decay, and rebirth in a continuous transnational dialogue between Cuba and Mexico as well as New Orleans, the authors explore the production, consumption, and transformation of this Afro-diasporic performance complex in relation to global and local ideological discourses. By focusing on interactions across this entire region as well as specific local scenes, Madrid and Moore underscore the extent of cultural movement and exchange within the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, and are thereby able to analyze the danzón, the dance scenes it has generated, and the various discourses of identification surrounding it as elements in broader regional processes. Danzón is a significant addition to the literature on Latin American music, dance, and expressive culture; it is essential reading for scholars, students, and fans of this music alike.
Download or read book Rebel Dance Renegade Stance written by Umi Vaughan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnography of music and dance exploring the economic, social, and ideological constraints under which social classes and racial groups interact
Download or read book Cuban American Literature and Art written by Isabel Alvarez Borland and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2009-01-26 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection offers an understanding of why Cuban-American literature and visual art have emerged in the United States and how they are so essentially linked to both Cuban and American cultures. The contributors explore crucial issues pertinent not only to Cuban-American cultural production but also to other immigrant groups—hybrid identities, biculturation, bilingualism, immigration, adaptation, and exile. The complex ways in which Cuban Americans have been able to keep a living memory of Cuba while developing and thriving in America are both intriguing and instructive. These essays, written from a variety of perspectives, range from useful overviews of fictional and visual works of art to close readings of individual texts.
Download or read book Show and Tell written by Karen Christian and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What elements are present for a body of writing to be considered Latina/o? Through the analysis of nine recent Latina/o novels, Karen Christian melds the theory of "performativity" with the latest scholarship on ethnicity and ethnic literature to create a framework for viewing identity as a continuous process that cannot be reduced to static categories.
Download or read book Caribes 2 0 written by Jossianna Arroyo and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-14 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Caribes 2.0, author Jossianna Arroyo looks at the Caribbean mediasphere in the twenty-first century. Arroyo argues that we have seen a return to tropes such as blackface, brownface, cultural and ethnic stereotypes, and violent representations of the poor, the marginalized, and the racialized. Caribes 2.0 looks at these tropes as well as the work of writers, vloggers, performers, and photographers that have become media figures or have used new media platforms to promote their work and examines how they are challenging and negotiating these media representations. It analyzes contemporary Caribbean cultures to discuss, taste, guides, and actions (social and virtual) that shape Caribbean global communities today. Departing from Edouard Glissant’s insight that “Caribbean reality might not be accessed by remote control” the book considers what types of political and social agencies are created by mediation. Caribes 2.0 deviates from these historical-globalized views of subjected, colonized Caribbean bodies, and their material conditions, to examine the relationship between the local and the global in contemporary Caribbean cultures, and the role that media is playing in the invisibility or hyper-visibilty of Caribbean cultures in the islands and the U.S. diaspora.
Download or read book The Idea of Cuba written by and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alex Harris beautifully captures many archetypes of today's Cuba, and Lillian Guerra's essay discusses what it means to be Cuban.
Download or read book Cultural Memory and Popular Dance written by Clare Parfitt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the myriad ways that people collectively remember or forget shared pasts through popular dance. In dance classes, nightclubs, family celebrations, tourist performances, on television, film, music video and the internet, cultural memories are shared and transformed by dancing bodies adapting yesterday’s steps to today’s concerns. The book gathers emerging and seasoned scholarly voices from a wide range of geographical and disciplinary perspectives to discuss cultural remembering and forgetting in diverse popular dance contexts. The contributors ask: how are Afro-diasporic memories invoked in popular dance classes? How are popular dance genealogies manipulated and reclaimed? What is at stake for the nation in the nationalizing of folk and popular dances? And how does mediated dancing transmit memory as feelings or affects? The book reveals popular dance to be vital to cultural processes of remembering and forgetting, allowing participants to pivot between alternative pasts, presents and futures.
Download or read book Performance in the Borderlands written by R. Rivera-Servera and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A border is a force of containment that inspires dreams of being overcome and crossed; motivates bodies to climb over; and threatens physical harm. This book critically examines a range of cultural performances produced in relation to the tensions and movements of/about the borders dividing North America, including the Caribbean.
Download or read book Dancing Cubanidad written by Rachael Elizabeth Birks and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: