• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 02 / 10 / 2011

---

The Cuban rumba and dance troupe Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, scheduled to be part of the “¡Sí Cuba!” festival coming to New York this spring.Published: February 8, 2011. The Cuban rumba and dance troupe Los Muñequitos de Matanzas hasn’t performed in New York in nearly a decade. Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, which mixes Afro-Caribbean dance and classical European ballet and was founded in 1959, has never been to the United States. Neither have the socially conscious photographers Adonis Flores and Cirenaica Moreira.

Performers from Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, which has never performed in the United States before.

All those and more than two dozen other artists will take part in a wide-ranging festival of Cuban arts that will last more than two months in locations around New York this spring. The festival, called “¡Sí Cuba!,” is one of the most significant indications that cultural relations between the United States and Cuba are thawing after nearly a decade in a deep freeze.

The festival, which is to be announced formally on Wednesday, is scheduled to run from March 31 to June 16, with nearly every form and style of Cuban arts and culture represented, in settings as diverse as Carnegie Hall and the outdoor Big Screen Project; 14 city arts organizations will be taking part. Music, film, dance, painting, theater, photography and literature are all included, and dozens of performers and artists are expected to come from Cuba for the events.

“We felt that this was the right time to do this, and New York the right place,” said Karen Brooks Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is the driving force behind the festival and will host many of the events. “There’s an optimism in the air about freeing up more interactions, which makes things feel very different than they did during the Bush administration and offers an opportunity for all of us to present work of a really high level in concentrated form.”

Ms. Hopkins and other festival organizers said their only objectives were to showcase the richness of Cuban culture and build bridges between American and Cuban creative artists.

“Both governments have clearly identified the cultural space as a safe space for them to pursue connections between the two countries, so this fits very well into that context,” said Julia E. Sweig, author of “Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know” and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “This could be like Ping-Pong diplomacy, except that it’s happening in the cultural sphere.”

The Obama administration began loosening restrictions on travel to and from Cuba nearly two years ago, which led to a trickle of Cuban artists traveling to the United States and enabled American arts presenters to visit Havana and investigate the scene there. Last month the White House announced new measures that permit Americans to send money to Cuban citizens; expand opportunities for travel to Cuba by academic, religious and cultural groups; and allow charter flights from more American airports.

“When we were closed, and it was hard for Cuban artists to travel to the U.S., they were still producing and having their shows,” said Ben Rodríguez-Cubeñas, a Cuban-American who is chairman of the Cuban Artists Fund, which is devoted to promoting cultural exchanges. Mr. Rodríguez-Cubeñas returned on Sunday from Havana, where he was coordinating arrangements for the festival. “Cuba has always had a vibrant arts scene, and Americans are now rediscovering that.”

For its part, the Cuban government has recently eased some restrictions on private economic activity, which, Mr. Rodríguez-Cubeñas noted, allows artists more creative and financial leeway. In addition, some of those scheduled to participate in the festival, among them a group of more than a dozen young visual artists exhibiting under the name Queloides (“Scar Tissue”), tackle subjects that until recently might have created political difficulties for them, like the racism present in a country whose black majority is led by a white gerontocracy.

Two painters, Alberto Casado and Rocío García, will have a joint show called “Concealed Faces” because they “deal with issues that aren’t that much in evidence in our media,” Corina Matamoros, curator of contemporary Cuban art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, said in a telephone interview from that city. “That doesn’t mean they are directly political, but they address some of the less visible spheres of society, like crime, poverty and sexual identity.”

The Cuban artists participating in the festival include a handful of very familiar names, like the National Ballet of Cuba, led by the 90-year-old Alicia Alonso. But there are also lesser-known groups like El Ballet Folklórico Cutumba and Danza Contemporánea de Cuba; that troupe will perform at the Joyce Theater in May.

“We’ve been trying to invite this company for quite a long time, because they are very well trained, and their repertory is really quite fantastic,” said Linda Shelton, executive director of the Joyce. “They’ve had some training in Martha Graham technique, but their choreography really has developed without much influence of American choreographers, so we think New Yorkers will want to see what the dance scene there is like.”

Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, founded 60 years ago, last played in New York in 2002. At the other end of the musical spectrum, the rapper Telmary Díaz will be performing on April 23 at BAMCafé.

“Among aficionados of drumming and Santeria, this really is the premier group, and people have been asking me for years when they were going to be coming back,” said Robert H. Browning, artistic director of the World Music Institute, which is sponsoring Los Muñequitos de Matanzas’ May performances at Symphony Space. “We tried to bring them again two or three times, but Cuba was always on the bad list.”

Several Cuban-American artists have also been invited to participate in festival events, literary readings and concerts among them. Cristina García, the author of “Dreaming in Cuban” and other novels, said that will create opportunities for creative artists on both sides of the Straits of Florida to get to know one another — and each country’s works — better.

“I plan to stay in New York for three or four weeks to partake of these riches, which are not the kind of thing you normally have any real access to,” she said. “And I think it’s wonderfully advantageous for them too. Not only are they desperate for connections and influences and eager to see what is happening in all the different realms of the art world here, I also think they want to strut their stuff. I’m sure they are thinking this will lead to other invitations and travel, if things go well.”

Events in which Cuban artists are involved are contingent on their getting approval to leave their country and visas to travel to the United States. That was often a problem during the Bush administration, but organizers say they are less worried now, even though restrictions on the ability to pay Cubans for their work in the United States remain in place.

“It’s obviously not done until it’s done,” said Susan L. Segal, president of the Americas Society, which will be sponsoring readings and panels on novels and plays and a multimedia exhibition focused on posters and film. “But this is a very prestigious festival, so I can’t imagine they will have problems getting visas.”

Source: www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/arts/09festival.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1