Luminato welcomes Malpaso, a contemporary blend of Cuban dance
Luminato welcomes Malpaso, a contemporary blend of Cuban dance
MARTHA SCHABAS
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jun. 19, 2015 2:35PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Jun. 19, 2015 2:37PM EDT
Growing up in Cardenas, a small city in the Matanzas province of Cuba, Daileidys Carrazana wanted to be a synchronized swimmer. But she came up against a recurring problem: The community pool had no water – no small irony on an island with nearly 6,000 kilometres of Caribbean coast. So Carrazana decided to pursue a discipline that had no shortage of government funding: ballet.
When Fidel Castro took over the country in 1959, he gave a huge sum of money to famed Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso, head of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, to set up a ballet school. Part of the revolution’s mandate was to bring art to the masses, and the funding enabled a wide-scale recruitment campaign. Children from all corners of the country were picked out of classrooms and orphanages and taken to Havana for eight years of free intensive training. It’s a policy that has made great ballet dancers one of communist Cuba’s most prestigious exports; people such as Carlos Acosta, Jose Manuel Carreno and Yat-Sen Chang have become principal dancers in the best companies around the world.
Under the leadership of Alonso, who’s now 93 and still at the helm, Ballet Nacional de Cuba toured extensively throughout South America and Europe. The company built today’s reputation for the high calibre of Cuban ballet.
“I can walk into a studio and recognize a Cuban-trained dancer immediately,” says Lourdes Hernandez, who danced with the company for 15 years and now teaches ballet at Ryerson University in Toronto. “It’s the perfect execution of technique, but infused with the heat of our climate. You can feel the temper of a Cuban dancer.”
More:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/luminato-welcomes-malpaso-a-contemporary-blend-of-cuban-dance/article25040327/
Images of Malpaso:
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So many, many wonderful images, see the rest at google images:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS566US566&q=malpaso+dance+company+cuba&tbm=isch&gws_rd=ssl
Don't forget Cuba's world-famous dancers, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba:
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Carlos Acosta[/center]
More images of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oq=&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS566US566&q=Ballet+Nacional+de+Cuba&tbm=isch&gws_rd=ssl#gws_rd=ssl
You do remember the US dance company, Pilobulus!
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Pilobolus:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS566US566&q=pilobolus&tbm=isch&gws_rd=ssl
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