Culture

Danza Contemporanea de Cuba is celebrating a half a century since its foundation. The group’s origin dates way back to the Department of Modern Dance of the National Theatre of Cuba, founded in 1959 and under the supervision of professor and choreographer Ramiro Guerra.
—In 1961, not long after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Contemporary Dance was able to perform at the Paris Sara Bernhardt Theater during the 5th Season of the Festival of Nations.
—L’Humanité daily praised “the spontaneity of that evocation, the wealth of rhythms” in “a legendary and at the same time real world,” and Lettres Françaises said: “a national genre has been created.”

Using double meanings and picaresque —sometimes as a shield, others times like a spear— Pedro Luis Ferrer has been a bit removed from the media, yet people still know his tunes. He touches on social and cultural themes that affect people in one way or another.

In the Cuban film “Broken Gods”, Laura, a philosophy teacher doing a thesis, shows that little has changed in the environment for some of the capital’s residents. There are men who continue as pimps, and women who still work as prostitutes, subjected to the desires and will of men.
—This is a story of love from the netherworld, recounted from the emotions of people who occupy this station of Cuban life, and whom -with a moralistic blindfold over our eyes- we try to disregard.

One of the audience’s favorite documentaries was Todo tiempo pasado fue mejor (The past was always better) by Zoe Garcia. A kind of puzzle gets assembled starting with the ruins of the Moscow Restaurant on O Street in Havana’s Vedado district. The director establishes an analogy between the fire at the restaurant and the fall of the Socialist Bloc at the end of the 1980s.

It was a good idea this year to also sell the books being presented at the fair at many different bookstores in the city. Even with those additional sales points, sometimes there were large agglomerations at the special bus stops, sometimes approaching desperation, as if going to the fair was an urgent need.
—The reality is that beyond the books, many people go to the fair for a day’s outing, to eat, drink and enjoy themselves.

A problem at the festival was the ever-changing program which can vary only minutes before the performance is about to begin. The organizing committee should be careful with these inconveniences that throw off a public that plans to see a certain artist or group at a specific theater and when they arrive it’s someone else playing.

They sit on the grass or the ancient stone walls and open a book or draw as if time stood still, as if nothing was more important. And in reality, nothing is. Ever since the International Book Fair has had its main Havana venue at the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress, it’s become a true children’s pleaser.

Women have had a prominent place in Cuban jazz starting with the Anacaona all-women’s band created in 1930. Omara Portuondo and Mayra Caridad Valdes drew standing ovations for their performances on Jazz Plaza 2009 opening night with pianist Chucho Valdes’ new band Akokan Ire.