Dancing with Cuba
Author | : Alma Guillermoprieto |
Publisher | : Vintage |
Total Pages | : 306 |
Release | : 2007-12-18 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780307425447 |
ISBN-13 | : 0307425444 |
Rating | : 4/5 (47 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba’s National School of Dance. For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever. In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto–now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America– resurrects a time when dancers and revolutionaries seemed to occupy the same historical stage and even a floor exercise could be a profoundly political act. Exuberant and elegiac, tender and unsparing, Dancing with Cuba is a triumph of memory and feeling.