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  • Contemporary Dance in Cuba: Técnica Cubana as Revolutionary Movement by Suki John
  • Elizabeth Schwall
Contemporary Dance in Cuba: Técnica Cubana as Revolutionary Movement by Suki John. 2012. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. 231 pp. text + 53 photos, notes, bibliography, index. $38.00 paper. doi:10.1017/S0149767713000181

This is an exciting moment for U.S.–Cuban dance relations and, as it turns out, for Cuban dance history as well. While official U.S.–Cuban relations remain mired in Cold War–era politics, dance artists and supportive nongovernmental institutions blaze trails between the nations, leaving eloquent dance creations in their wake. Although dance exchanges have gone on for decades, they are increasing in number and intensity with events like the 2011 ¡Sí Cuba! Festival, the ongoing “The Windows Project” spearheaded by Cuban-born choreographer Pedro Ruiz, and the 2013 announcement that choreographer Ronald K. Brown and his Evidence, A Dance Company will collaborate with Cuban dancers, culminating in a performance at the Joyce [End Page 152] Theater in 2014.1 Concurrently, over the past decade, excellent dissertations, books, and articles have expanded our knowledge of ballet, folkloric, social, and ritual dance in Cuba. Adding to this growing literature is Contemporary Dance in Cuba: Técnica Cubana as Revolutionary Movement by Suki John, the first published monograph in English devoted to analyzing the history and significance of técnica cubana (Cuban technique), Cuba’s modern or contemporary dance.2

The author aims to bring Cuban contemporary dance “into the international spotlight it deserves,” noting that the genre has suffered from relative obscurity (8). Decades of strained U.S.–Cuban relations have kept Cuba relatively isolated from dance centers and audiences. Ballet has dominated theater dance forms in Cuba largely as a result of the talent, initiative, and politics of Cuban prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, her former husband Fernando Alonso, and her former brother-in-law Alberto Alonso. Some authors suggest that the Castro government has favored ballet at the expense of other genres, or as John more moderately puts it, ballet has “both helped and hindered Cuban contemporary dance” (95; Burdsall 2001; Guillermoprieto 2004). Today, Cuban ballet dancers perform with the world’s top ballet companies, and a considerable English-language literature has developed that deals with the history and aesthetic of Cuban ballet (Roca 2010; Terry 1981; Tomé 2011). Additionally, folkloric dance companies have received attention from anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and historians who are interested in analyzing how theatrical renditions of Afro-Cuban music and dance have reflected and affected conceptions of race in post-1959 Cuba (Daniel 1995; Hagedorn 2001; Viddal 2012). Although memoirs, chapters, and dissertations have dealt with Cuban contemporary dance, no book-length study in English has focused on the topic (Brill 2007; Burdsall 2001; Guillermoprieto 2004; John 2007; Mousouris 2002).

With a mixture of anecdotes, historical context, and movement analysis, Contemporary Dance in Cuba lies somewhere within and between the genres of memoir, academic scholarship, and dance journalism. It is, as the author describes, a “creolized book” (6). John touches on milestones in Cuban contemporary dance history: its official beginning in 1959, an instance of government censorship in 1971, and the outpouring of creativity in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to recounting this history, John details her extensive travel and work experiences in Cuba from 1973 through the 2000s, adding to and complicating the picture provided by previous contemporary dancers’ memoirs (Burdsall 2001; Guillermoprieto 2004). John focuses particularly on the Cuban choreographer Narciso Medina and his company during the Special Period, the era of economic crisis and social change that began when the Soviet Union fell. John worked with Medina’s company on several occasions, and her participant/observer account contributes to the growing literature on artistic production in Cuba during the 1990s and early 2000s (Daniel 1995; Fernandes 2006; Frederick 2012; Hagedorn 2001). John also uses the text as a platform to debunk myths about Cuban dance. In chapter 6, John challenges the popular misconception that Cuban ballet is just a Soviet import—an idea voiced by numerous observers, including The New York Times critic Gia Kourlas (76, 90, 201, note 2). In chapter 7, John takes on The New York...

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