Moving Words: Re-Writing Dance

Black Diaspora Review, 2016

In the scholarship of anti-racist struggle in Cuba, rumberos (rumba practitioners) are typically ignored for operating within racist folkloric stereotypes that further the commodification and appropriation of Black expressive culture by the state. This ethnographic case study explores how the Afro-religious urban poor in Havana deploy rumba within the sacred sphere to perform an affirming Black cultural difference and create an alternative market in which to secure autonomous economic and socio-spiritual sustenance: salvándose (saving themselves). This particular form of political agency finds itself in a paradoxical relationship with the dominant ideological thrust of the " New Afro-Cuban movement " against racism. Using performance theory, Black feminism(s), and political economy, this study found that performances by and for this overlooked sector in the sacred sphere cannot be dismissed as insignificant vis-à-vis antiracist objections to the narrow social definition of Blackness as folklore and the increasingly narrow opportunities for Afro-Cubans in the emerging private market. A performance-oriented lens can offer key insights into how alternative Black political consciousness is developed and transmitted across generations.

A B S T R AC T Using discursive analysis of selected historical sources, this article historicizes the construction of the category of sabor in the Cuban nineteenth and early twentieth century. White creole elites started using the word in the second half of the nineteenth century to describe their new experiences with Afro-Cuban popular rhythms, the contradanza, danza, and danzón. I read these processes against the backdrop of racial conflict in the early nineteenth century, specifi cally the efforts by white creole elites to distance themselves culturally from working free blacks in the field of painting. As white creoles appropriated elements of black taste into their systems of difference on the verge of Cuban independence, they introduced a kind of eroticized (white bourgeois) dancing body into the national imaginary. I propose an understanding of sabor as a racialized construct rooted in the experiences of nineteenth-century white Cubans in the world of Afro-cultural expressions. I also situate sabor as an aesthetic and moral category within changing systems of difference in colonial society, and as an important element in white imaginations of Cuban nationality. As such, this discussion adds critical new dimensions to the racialization of Cuban nation building from the less examined framework of affect studies. R E S U M E N En este artículo se estudia la construcción de la categoría del sabor en el siglo XIX y el temprano siglo XX cubano. Las élites blancas criollas empezaron a usar esta palabra en la segunda mitad del siglo diecinueve para describir sus nuevas experiencias con los ritmos populares afro-cubanos, la contradanza, la danza y el danzón. Se analizan estos procesos en el contexto de los confl ictos raciales del temprano siglo diecinueve, especialmente, los esfuerzos de las élites blancas criollas por distanciarse culturalmente de las clases negras trabajadoras libres. En la medida en que los blancos criollos se apropiaron de elementos del gusto negro insertándolos en sus sistemas de diferencia, introdujeron un tipo de cuerpo danzante (blanco y burgués) erotizado en el imaginario nacional. Propongo entender el sabor como una construcción racializada, enraizada en las experiencias de los cubanos blancos en el mundo de las expresiones culturales negras. El sabor fue una categoría moral y estética inserta en sistemas cambiantes de diferencia en la sociedad colonial y un elemento importante en las maneras de los blancos de imaginar la nacionalidad cubana. Este artículo aporta nuevas aristas desde los estudios del afecto, para entender la construcción racializada de la nación cubana.

In the 1960s, the initial decade of the Cuban Revolution, policies of proletarianization of culture intersected an economic model built upon the heroic labor of the New Man--the ideal revolutionary and communist worker. Adapting the practice of ballet to this Marxist context, ballet dancers took their art to the working classes through popular performances and outreach events in farms and factories. Given the centrality of manual work to the Revolution's ideology, dancers drew upon their own physical labor both in ballet and agriculture to establish an even stronger association with the working classes and embody the New Man's morality. Known for their strict work ethic, Alicia Alonso and other baller dancers became public examples of hard work for the nation--one way of fulfilling the politico-pedagogical role that the state expected from artists. At the same time, media representations of female dancers' labor enabled formulations of the New Man's gendered counterpart: the New Woman.

This presentation summarises in English key issues of the MSc in Arts thesis written in Spanish (Conceptualización de la corporeidad en los bailes populares tradicionales cubanos) available at: https://independent.academia.edu/KirstiAlamutka/Thesis-Chapters It is based on the M.Sc defense presentation given on 16th December in Havana, Cuba, but includes also some additional points, which did not fit into the presentation limited to 20 minutes in length.

Toward a Theory of Latino Literature. Dispositio. 41 (1991): 61-70.

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Cultural Memory and Popular Dance, 2021

On Latin dance scenes worldwide, within performances and social manifestations of salsa or casino, one can find dancers of various nationalities, ethnic origins, and backgrounds performing the steps of Yemayá or Eleguá. These are some of the deities of the orisha pantheon, but most of these dancers will neither be trained in folkloric dance nor be practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religious tradition to which these deities and their dances pertain. Similarly, the same dancers may also include steps from Afro-Cuban rumba in their practice, although they may have never danced rumba in its original context. This chapter examines the increasing use of movements borrowed from Afro-Cuban rumba and religious dances in both Cuban and international salsa repertoires. For some, this trend represents a homage to Cuban folklore and an expression of the embodied memory of Cubans dancing, re-anchoring a seemingly placeless “salsa” back within its forgotten Afro-Cuban roots. But for others, the frequent and out-of-context inclusion of these dances within salsa formats has resulted in the diffusion of a caricature of Cuban dance, trivialising deeply important aspects of Cuban culture for the sake of commercial interests. Issues around who may include these movements, when, why, and how are discussed throughout this work.

NWIG: New West Indian Guide, vol. 79, no. 3/4, 2005

Latin American Music Review, 2012

This article deconstructs the wave of moral panic caused by reggaeton in Cuba to suggest that behind issues of “national” and “legitimate” culture lays a social but mainly political rejection to the marginal subject that this music brings to the fore. Reggaeton's embracing of money is a painful reminder to the authorities of the dreadful consequences of the dual economy and of the increasing gap between emergent values rooted in everyday life experience and socialist ideology. The text also discusses ethnographic work at performance venues that shows how this genre has been particularly successful in articulating not only the values and subjectivities of an underclass, but also the practices of symbolic distinction of more upward class sectors. In a different direction, the article exposes how reggaeton further participates in change, through discourses that voice the contradictory responses of male identity to the impact of sex tourism and the role of money in romantic relationships. Este artículo analiza la ola de pánico moral suscitada por el reggaeton hecho en Cuba y sugiere que tras discusiones sobre “cultura nacional” y “legitimidad” cultural se esconde el rechazo social y político al sujeto marginal que este género saca a la luz pública. La celebración del dinero en el reggaeton cubano es un amargo recordatorio para las autoridades de las terribles consecuencias de la economía de doble moneda y del creciente divorcio entre valores emergentes anclados en la vida cotidiana y la ideología socialista. El artículo expone cómo el reggaeton también participa de la interpretación del cambio social en Cuba, al proveer de discursos que permiten negociar los riesgos que el creciente rol del dinero en las relaciones de pareja y el turismo sexual suponen para la identidad masculina. También se discute en el texto trabajo etnográfico realizado durante varios conciertos de reggaeton y que indican que este género ha sido exitoso no solo en la articulación de valores y subjetividades ligadas a una underclass cubana, sino también como escenario de prácticas de distinción simbólica de sectores sociales más favorecidos. Keywords reggaeton, Cuban music, moral panic, underclass, symbolic distinction, hypersexuality, reggaetón, música cubana, pánico moral, clase baja, distinción simbólica, hipersexualidad