Download or read book Performing Cuba written by Denis Jorge Berenschot and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2005 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cuban Revolution has generated extraordinary literary achievements by writers both within Cuba and in exile. This book focuses on selected works by Edmundo Desnoes, Senel Paz and Elías Miguel Muñoz and the transformations of their texts from prose to film and theatre. Performing Cuba breaks new ground by clearly demonstrating how these multiple rewritings and additional authorial voices from the filmic and theatrical media rewrite the characters' gender performances in order to manipulate the texts' reading.
Download or read book Performing Afro Cuba written by Kristina Wirtz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visitors to Cuba will notice that Afro-Cuban figures and references are everywhere: in popular music and folklore shows, paintings and dolls of Santería saints in airport shops, and even restaurants with plantation themes. In Performing Afro-Cuba, Kristina Wirtz examines how the animation of Cuba’s colonial past and African heritage through such figures and performances not only reflects but also shapes the Cuban experience of Blackness. She also investigates how this process operates at different spatial and temporal scales—from the immediate present to the imagined past, from the barrio to the socialist state. Wirtz analyzes a variety of performances and the ways they construct Cuban racial and historical imaginations. She offers a sophisticated view of performance as enacting diverse revolutionary ideals, religious notions, and racial identity politics, and she outlines how these concepts play out in the ongoing institutionalization of folklore as an official, even state-sponsored, category. Employing Bakhtin’s concept of “chronotopes”—the semiotic construction of space-time—she examines the roles of voice, temporality, embodiment, imagery, and memory in the racializing process. The result is a deftly balanced study that marries racial studies, performance studies, anthropology, and semiotics to explore the nature of race as a cultural sign, one that is always in process, always shifting.
Download or read book Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance written by Jill Flanders Crosby and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using storytelling and performance to explore shared religious expression across continents Through a revolutionary ethnographic approach that foregrounds storytelling and performance as alternative means of knowledge, Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance explores shared ritual traditions between the Anlo-Ewe people of West Africa and their descendants, the Arará of Cuba, who were brought to the island in the transatlantic slave trade. The volume draws on two decades of research in four communities: Dzodze, Ghana; Adjodogou, Togo; and Perico and Agramonte, Cuba. In the ceremonies, oral narratives, and daily lives of individuals at each fieldsite, the authors not only identify shared attributes in religious expression across continents, but also reveal lasting emotional, spiritual, and personal impacts in the communities whose ancestors were ripped from their homeland and enslaved. The authors layer historiographic data, interviews, and fieldnotes with artistic modes such as true fiction, memoir, and choreographed narrative, challenging the conventional nature of scholarship with insights gained from sensorial experience. Including reflections on the making of an art installation based on this research project, the volume challenges readers to imagine the potential of approaching fieldwork as artists. The authors argue that creative methods can convey truths deeper than facts, pointing to new possibilities for collaboration between scientists and artists with relevance to any discipline. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Download or read book Screening Cuba written by Hector Amaya and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-09-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innovative analysis of the differing critical receptions of Cuban film in Cuba and the United States during the Cold War. Synthesizing film reviews, magazine articles, and other primary documents, Screening Cuba compares Cuban and U.S. reactions to four Cuban films: Memories of Underdevelopment, Lucia, One Way or Another, and Portrait of Teresa. In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations of Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
Download or read book Cuba Doing Business and Investing in Cuba Guide Volume 1 Strategic Practical Information and Contacts written by IBP, Inc. and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuba: Doing Business and Investing in ... Guide Volume 1 Strategic, Practical Information, Regulations, Contacts
Download or read book Dangerous Moves written by Coco Fusco and published by Tate. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The society, politics and future of Cuba are high on the world's agenda in the 21st century. Published in association with the Absolut Art Award, Dangerous Moves presents a fascinating survey of contemporary life and culture in Cuba through some of its most daring and experimental artists. Coco Fusco analyses the ways in which the regime has wielded influence over artists in recent times, showing how - in a context in which overt political speech is subject to censorship - the language of performance has emerged as the favoured means of social commentary. Focusing on a range of performative practices in visual art, music, poetry and political activism, Fusco examines the relationship between the abject body in performance and the greater body politic of a state officially defined as revolutionary yet seeking to limit and constrain dissent. A major new piece of scholarship from a global artist, writer and thinker, this is a key addition to the canon of contemporary art writing, and will be essential reading for students and scholars as well as those with a broader interest in politics, power and contemporary art."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Cuban Zarzuela written by Susan Thomas and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 29, 1927, Cuban soprano Rita Montaner walked onto the stage of Havana's Teatro Regina, her features obscured under a mask of blackened glycerin and her body clad in the tight pants, boots, and riding jacket of a coachman. Standing alongside a gilded carriage and a live horse, the blackfaced, cross-dressed actress sang the premiere of Eliseo Grenet's tango-congo, "Ay Mama Ines." The crowd went wild. Montaner's performance cemented "Ay Mama Ines" as one of the classics in the Cuban repertoire, but more importantly, the premiere heralded the birth of the Cuban zarzuela, a new genre of music theater that over the next fifteen years transformed popular entertainment on the island. Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage marks the first comprehensive study of the Cuban zarzuela, a Spanish-language light opera with spoken dialogue that originated in Spain but flourished in Havana during the early twentieth century. Created by musicians and managers to fill a growing demand for family entertainment, the zarzuela evidenced the emerging economic and cultural power of Cuba's white female bourgeoisie to influence the entertainment industry. Susan Thomas explores zarzuela's function as a pedagogical tool, through which composers, librettists, and business managers hoped to control their troupes and audiences by presenting desirable and problematic images of both feminine and masculine identities. Zarzuela was, Thomas explains, "anti-feminist but pro-feminine, its plots focusing on female protagonists and its musical scores showcasing the female voice." Focusing on character types such as the mulata, the negrito, and the ingenue, Thomas uncovers the zarzuela's richly textured relationship to social constructs of race, class, and especially gender.
Download or read book Staging Discomfort written by Bretton White and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume examines how queer bodies are theatrically represented on the Cuban stage in ways that challenge the state's categorization and homogenization of individuals. Bretton White critically analyzes contemporary performances that upset traditional understandings of what constitutes the ideal Cuban citizenry"--
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 Fiesta de diez pesos Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba written by Moshe Morad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ‘Special Period’ in Cuba was an extended era of economic depression starting in the early 1990s, characterized by the collapse of revolutionary values and social norms, and a way of life conducted by improvised solutions for survival, including hustling and sex-work. During this time there developed a thriving, though constantly harassed and destabilized, clandestine gay scene (known as the ‘ambiente’). In the course of eight visits between 1995 and 2007, the last dozen years of Fidel Castro’s reign, Moshe Morad became absorbed in Havana’s gay scene, where he created a wide social network, attended numerous secret gatherings-from clandestine parties to religious rituals-and observed patterns of behavior and communication. He discovered the role of music in this scene as a marker of identity, a source of queer codifications and identifications, a medium of interaction, an outlet for emotion and a way to escape from a reality of scarcity, oppression and despair. Morad identified and conducted his research in different types of ‘musical space,’ from illegal clandestine parties held in changing locations, to ballet halls, drag-show bars, private living-rooms and kitchens and santería religious ceremonies. In this important study, the first on the subject, he argues that music plays a central role in providing the physical, emotional, and conceptual spaces which constitute this scene and in the formation of a new hybrid ‘gay identity’ in Special-Period Cuba.
Download or read book Cuba Winner of the Pulitzer Prize written by Ada Ferrer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.
Download or read book Cuba Inside Out written by Yael Prizant and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2013-12-09 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 drastically altered life in Cuba. Theatre artists were faced with new economic and social realities that changed their day-to-day experiences and ways of looking at the world beyond the island. The Cuban Revolution’s resistance to and intersections with globalization, modernity, emigration and privilege are central to the performances examined in this study. The first book-length study in English of Cuban and Cuban American plays, Cuba Inside Out provides a framework for understanding texts and performances that support, challenge, and transgress boundaries of exile and nationalism. Prizant reveals the intricacies of how revolution is staged theatrically, socially, and politically on the island and in the Cuban diaspora. This close examination of seven plays written since 1985 seeks to alter how U.S. audiences perceive Cuba, its circumstances, and its theatre.
Download or read book Screening Cuba written by and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innovative analysis of the differing critical receptions of Cuban film in Cuba and the United States during the Cold War. Synthesizing film reviews, magazine articles, and other primary documents, Screening Cuba compares Cuban and U.S. reactions to four Cuban films: Memories of Underdevelopment, Lucia, One Way or Another, and Portrait of Teresa. In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations of Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
Download or read book Listening in Detail written by Alexandra T. Vazquez and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Listening in Detail is an original and impassioned take on the intellectual and sensory bounty of Cuban music as it circulates between the island, the United States, and other locations. It is also a powerful critique of efforts to define "Cuban music" for ethnographic examination or market consumption. Contending that the music is not a knowable entity but a spectrum of dynamic practices that elude definition, Alexandra T. Vazquez models a new way of writing about music and the meanings assigned to it. "Listening in detail" is a method invested in opening up, rather than pinning down, experiences of Cuban music. Critiques of imperialism, nationalism, race, and gender emerge in fragments and moments, and in gestures and sounds through Vazquez's engagement with Alfredo Rodríguez's album Cuba Linda (1996), the seventy-year career of the vocalist Graciela Pérez, the signature grunt of the "Mambo King" Dámaso Pérez Prado, Cuban music documentaries of the 1960s, and late-twentieth-century concert ephemera.
Download or read book Cuba written by Carla Beltrami and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beaches, architecture, Carnival, nightlife, scuba diving, music, nature preserves, museums, restaurants, hotels, rum"--Cover.
Download or read book DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Cuba written by DK Publishing and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New, expanded edition: the world's best full-color travel guides just got better. Cuba is now very much on the radar of American travelers. With its fantastic music, unspoiled beaches and vintage American cars, it has a unique identity. This Eyewitness Travel Guide explores Cuba's rich cultural history while giving you all the practical tips you need for a perfect vacation.
