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My Experience and Experiments in Caribbean Dance Ramiro Guerra Translated by Melinda Mousouris The boy was twelve years old, still in elementary school, already an avid movie fan. He had saved for a ticket to a movie premiere in one of Havana’s fashionable neighborhoods. The film was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by the famous German director Max Reinhardt with an all-star Hollywood cast of the 1930s. Reinhardt’s cinematic production of Shakespeare’s classic had astonished the film world, and the boy walked all the way from his home far away to the Teatro Campoamor, solemnly, full of expectation. The entrance of the King of the Night, flying through the air to earth with his courtiers to dance with the wood nymphs in the forest, was a beautiful ballet to the music of Mendelssohn that left him astonished. Going home in a state of ecstasy, midway he was nearly crushed by a car. So intense was his transport that he didn’t hear the horn’s warning. Only a great leap that he seemed to remember unconsciously having just seen in the film saved him from catastrophe. So began the adventure of a boy already in the fourth year of a Catholic school paid for by his godfather and uncle, as he lived with the family of his mother, whom he had lost at age five. We lived in the neighborhood of Cayo Huseo. If not exactly poor and marginal, the neighborhood was rich in households of black families who drummed and danced the religious rites of Santería and also the popular dances such as rumba in the courtyards. Extended families lived together in narrow rooms that faced on the common courtyard. Through the courtyard, they shared the collective life of an African community. 50 Ramiro Guerra It was a “hotbed” neighborhood in which the boys played dangerous games: throwing stones, flying kites from the roofs with razor blades attached to the long tails, gangs competing in war games for dominance. The sound of drums filled the nights, coming from religious ceremonies or simply from parties. I, protagonist of this story, wasn’t permitted to share in the neighborhood games. I lived submerged in a large family of thirteen, ten women and three men. Among us were widows, married women, and some single women. They were bank employees, businessmen, and, one, a mechanic. A strong matriarchy ruled, as was natural. I lived with the three men in the bedroom that faced a roof and my grandmother’s garden. Dinner was a noisy affair, animated by political discussion, a subject of much controversy in those years in Cuba. My life combined school with reading comic books and an eclectic assortment of old books pulled from the family bookcase; Chaplin, Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy comedies; and movie romances with beautiful women on the arms of Valentino-like men. Music from the radio also filled the house and so did radio serials, popular with everyone. All this made me a huge fan of big musicals, full of songs, chorus lines, and tap dancers moving in the geometric choreographies of Busby Berkeley. All this delighted me, even though I was not too strong as a boy and a little neurotic in the midst of this agitated family life. I played marbles, making geometric formations, humming the popular songs of the day. As an adolescent, I fashioned myself into a dance star invited to entertain the teenagers at block parties held to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. At this time I was living with my godfather and going to high school in Old Havana. There, to the radio, we danced danzóns, fox-trots, pasodobles, and even tangos, which we came to know through Argentinean movies. One day, for a masquerade party, it occurred to me to dress as Pinocchio. The costume caused a sensation and transformed a timid boy into a fifteen-yearold masked seducer. The girls left their boyfriends and even their fiancés to dance with me because they could shine as my dance partners. But I finished these dance parties alone, rejected by the girls I liked or pursued by the ones I didn’t. I graduated and went on to university. By this time I had a steady girlfriend who was a ballet student and impressed upon me that to dance seriously , you had to study seriously. But, in the 1940s in Cuba, for a man to [18.223.159.195] Project MUSE (2024-04-20...

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