Here in the old town, there's the rumbling engines of 1950s pink Cadillacs rolling down cobblestone streets and the ubiquitous songs of street buskers perched in shaded doorways, strumming chords on beat-up guitars, a signature Cuban white straw hat pulled down just above their sweat-beaded brows. There's the crackle of arc-welders as their ironwork rains sparks on perilous balconies with once-ornate adornments from the Spanish and French colonial era. Mothers' voices echo down the narrow roads, shouting to their boys playing an improvised game of handball, generating low booms as a filthy tennis ball bounces off a black metal garage door bookended by piles of rubble. Bustling cafes hum with small talk and clanking espresso cups, as tourists and locals traverse lunch menus, sampling cortados, Cohibas, and mojitos.
Much of ordinary life in old town Havana happens here on the streets with dodging bike taxis, black-market cigar salesmen, and leisurely strolling cats, but today, a new sound permeates the air.
Mechanics work on a car in Havana. | Photo: Drew Tewksbury.
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There's a pop-and-rumble of drums and resounding chants: a new pulsating soundtrack added to the everyday sounds. Residents and travellers alike assemble for Habana Vieja: Ciudad en Movimiento, a site-specific dance festival, which has brought global performers to the streets of Havana. The crowds follow a troupe of whimsically costumed musicians on stilts, snaking between the newly renovated historical buildings, still pungent with the smells of fresh coats of paint and wet concrete. Along the way, the leaders stop at historic buildings, including lavish mansions of former sugar barons and Spanish-style plazas shaded by towering palms. Each stop serves up a different performance: traditional dancers spin and stomp before the audience providing an emotional throwback to the slave dances of Cuba's plantation years; colorfully dressed women and men sashay to the big-band swing of salsa; and teens in skinny jeans break-dance to dubstep -- the bass-heavy electronic music popular in international clubs in the middle 2000s. It's a cultural collision of Cuban dance history: the old style of dance and the next generation, prompted by youth who learn moves from Youtube videos downloaded by gleaning Wi-Fi emanating from hotels -- one of the only places where internet is allowed on the island.
But for the crowd standing at the corner of the expansive Plaza Vieja, something different is about to happen, as performers of Los Angeles' Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre bring California's contemporary dance styles to Cuba for the first time.
Rob Lambaren, Teresa Barcelo, and Nick Heitzeberg perform in the streets of Havana. | Photo: Sean Deckert.
Onlookers stare as a bearded man scales the side of a craggy, abandoned beaux arts theater. He descends behind a wall, where a woman's head, and another man's legs peek up from a red tin barrier. The trio then crawl over, nearly in slow motion, as the men fight over the woman, rolling on the ground and on top of one another, perching atop pylons made out of cannons, and eventually scaling up walls and windows of adjacent buildings. While limbs move through the humid air, the performance is redefining how Cubans can interact with their own urban space. Defying expectations and gravity, the space is upended, in a comic and contemplative dance piece that's equally balletic and Buster Keaton.
After the performance, young members of the audience begin to use the space too, climbing atop the cannons and jumping from steps; the city has become their playground. In a rapidly changing Cuba -- where new rights have been granted as leader Raul Castro has eased restrictions, and American relations have recently been restored -- cultural exchanges, like Heidi Duckler Dance Theatres otherworldly performance, are the first wave of new ideas bridging the schism dividing two countries just 90 miles apart.
Rob Lambaren and Nick Heitzeberg perform in the streets of Havana. | Photo: Sean Deckert.
Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre has been creating performances around the world for more than 30 years. The company focuses on non-traditional spaces, often hybridizing street style moves with contemporary and classical dance choreographies. Whether the company is dancing on cars, in laundromats, or around abandoned buildings, founder Heidi Duckler says that the throughline for each piece is their site-specific nature.
Site-specific work is where you mine the location for the content, Duckler says. We work everywhere, but typically not in a theater; in public locations, private locations, all kind of places. Sometimes, it has to do with the architecture, the history, the geography, and human connection.
Cuba had been on Duckler's mind since her first visit 15 years ago. I became very interested in Cuba from that point on, she says. I found it to be a place like no other place. I recall walking down to the sea, and three Cuban men were singing the song about Che Guevara, Hasta Siempre, Comandante,' and it was the very first time I had ever heard that song, so I asked them to write down the words. To this day, I still have that paper with those lyrics. That was the seed that started it all.
Dancers perform a piece based on plantation workers. | Photo: Drew Tewksbury.
Years later, she discovered the Habana Vieja: Ciudad en Movimiento festival, which invites international dancers to perform in public locations throughout Havana. But she noticed that from the 20 countries visiting, the U.S. lacked representation. She tried to contact the director of the festival, and found that without internet in Cuba, it proved a challenge. Then at an event, Duckler met a travel agent with connections to Havana and asked her to deliver a handwritten letter to the
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Here in the old town, there's the rumbling engines of 1950s pink Cadillacs rolling down cobblestone streets and the ubiquitous songs of street buskers perched in shaded doorways, strumming chords on beat-up guitars, a signature Cuban white straw hat pulled down just above their sweat-beaded brows. There's the crackle of arc-welders as their ironwork rains sparks on perilous balconies with once-ornate adornments from the Spanish and French colonial era. Mothers' voices echo down the narrow roads, shouting to their boys playing an improvised game of handball, generating low booms as a filthy tennis ball bounces off a black metal garage door bookended by piles of rubble. Bustling cafes hum with small talk and clanking espresso cups, as tourists and locals traverse lunch menus, sampling cortados, Cohibas, and mojitos.
