Plan for Cuban landmark's rebirth sparks debate

Posted on Saturday, 11.03.12

Plan for Cuban landmark's rebirth sparks debate
By PETER ORSI
Associated Press

HAVANA -- In a country where money is perennially tight, it might seem a
fantastic gift: A celebrity ballet star pledges to raise millions of
dollars to rescue the ruins of an architectural masterpiece abandoned in
mid-construction five decades ago in his native Cuba.

Instead, Carlos Acosta's plan to inject life into the island's hidebound
ballet scene by refurbishing Havana's crumbling dance school and turning
it into an international center for culture and dance has ignited
controversy for daring to reimagine the original architect's vision.

Acosta, who was in Havana this past week for meetings with Culture
Ministry officials and to raise awareness about the project, was visibly
frustrated by the flap over what he views as a way to give something
back as he prepares to retire from London's Royal Ballet after a
celebrated career.

"I don't need flowers anymore. ... I came from nowhere and I have so
much," Acosta, 39, told The Associated Press on the grounds of the
ballet school Friday.

"What I can tell you right now is: I look at this building, it's
nothing. It's been like that for decades, and one day it's going to
collapse to the ground."

Set in a leafy district of western Havana, the school is an eye-popping
labyrinth of wormlike corridors, graceful arches and majestic domes. It
was designed by Italian architect Vittorio Garatti as one of five
adjacent arts complexes personally requested by Fidel Castro, who
dreamed of building the world's finest art school on the golf course of
a country club seized by his revolution.

Construction began in 1961, but as Cuba increasingly embraced
Soviet-style communism and the functionality of Lego-like prefabricated
architecture, the project was criticized as bourgeois and elitist. Work
was abruptly halted in 1965, with the ballet school lacking only
windows, doors and floors.

"That would have taken 15 days, because the material was all there,"
Garatti told the makers of the 2011 documentary "Unfinished Spaces."
"And then, well ..."

In the mid-1970s the main theater was repurposed as a circus school, but
mostly it has been left alone amid hostile surroundings.

In 1999, Fidel Castro said he regretted that others had persuaded him to
halt construction and vowed that the five art schools would rise from
the ruins. But funds fell short after the campuses for painting and
sculpture and for modern dance were completed, and the schools for
ballet, drama and music were in limbo once again.

Today, weeds and small trees sprout from the ballet school's brick
rooftops. During severe storms a nearby creek jumps its banks and
cascades through the cave-like halls, caking them with mud. Food
wrappers and cigarette butts litter a bathroom with no fixtures, most of
the tile stripped from the walls. "I love you, Angel," reads a graffito
scrawled on a high wall.

Enter Acosta, who enlisted British architect Norman Foster to help raise
money from private donors for the project. A benefit last month yielded
some $320,000 in pledges and enough promising leads that Acosta's people
feel confident they can hit their $10 million target.

But the involvement of Foster, whose renown and ties to the global
financial world are a huge boon for fundraising, has alarmed some people
who fear Garatti's original design could be overwhelmed. Foster is
famous for his expressive glass-and-steel re-imaginings of historic
structures like the dome of Berlin's parliament building and the
courtyard of the British Museum.

Garatti, who did not respond to an AP email seeking comment, reportedly
wrote a letter to Fidel and Raul Castro complaining that the
international project risked "privatizing" the school in a society where
the state has been the dominant patron of the arts for 50 years.

Garatti has defenders in Havana's cultural and architectural community
who debated the plan in public forums and private email chains.

"I would be very happy if there were a work by Foster here in Havana,
but not sitting on top of the work by Vittorio," prominent Cuban
architect Mario Coyula said at a July meeting called to discuss the
controversy.

"The main worry is an ethical problem, which is, to be clear: Is Foster
going to take over the project, or will it continue to be Garatti's?"
Coyula added, according to minutes of the gathering published by the
Cuban cultural magazine La Jiribilla.

Coyula called for a definitive plan to be made public so people can
judge the project on its merits rather than on rumor. At the same time,
he urged Garatti to recognize that some change is inevitable after a
half-century.

In town for the Havana Ballet Festival, Acosta tried to drum up interest
in his campaign during meetings with officials as well as with local and
international media.

He emphasized that he and Foster are committed to remaining faithful to
Garatti's design, and said the center will support an estimated 80 to
100 jobs even after construction finishes. The master plan has not been
finalized, but Acosta said the modifications it envisions are minor,
like repurposing classrooms as student dorms and expanding the main
theater's capacity from 200 to 540.

Such changes are necessary for the center to take in money and be
self-sufficient, according to Acosta and his partner on the project,
Rupert Rohan. It would be a British-registered nonprofit with an
independent board to administer the center in partnership with Cuba,
which would retain ownership of the landmark building.

If that differs from the Communist government's traditional role as the
principal supporter of the arts, Acosta noted that the Culture Ministry
is on board and has signed a preliminary agreement.

"Someone has to pay for everything. And (the government) can't," Acosta
said.

Tensions remain. While giving an interview to a reporter Friday, Acosta
was interrupted by an indignant man who engaged him in a heated exchange
about respecting Garatti's creation. Acosta has apparently been unable
to soothe Garatti's objections, though he insists the Italian will still
be involved.

Timothy Hyde, an architectural historian at Harvard University's
Graduate School of Design, said the ballet school and the other four
arts campuses posed fundamental questions about Cuban identity and
citizenship after the Cuban Revolution, including what should a new
Cuban architecture look like.

Hyde said the debate over one of the island's top 10 landmarks of the
20th century therefore has unfortunately been framed as a stark choice -
leave the school as is, or bring in Foster to create something entirely new.

"Both seem to kind of fix the building in amber," he said.

Ultimately island authorities will have the final say on the dance
center's fate. But Acosta, who lives in London, has made it clear that
while Cuba is his first choice, he's prepared to shop his performance
center project around.

"My greatest desires are to achieve this project in Cuba," Acosta said
in an open letter responding to Garatti's objections, "but I could just
as easily do it in another country, for example: England."

Peter Orsi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter-Orsi

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/03/v-fullstory/3080446/plan-for-cuban-landmarks-rebirth.html