Forging a new path to cultural exchanges with Cuba

Forging a new path to cultural exchanges with Cuba
BY JORDAN LEVIN
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com

Negotiations between the United States and Cuba to reopen diplomatic
relations may be proceeding in fits and starts. But the rapprochement
between the two countries is turning what was a small stream of artistic
exchanges into a powerful river.

From classical orchestras to choreographers, hip-hop producers to jazz
musicians, visual artist meet-ups to new plays, the flow of artists and
creative projects joining Cuba and the United States — and Cuba and
Miami — reflects an energy and eagerness that are rushing past political
boundaries.

"Culture is the glue that binds us together," says New York-based Latin
jazz composer and bandleader Arturo O'Farrill (son of renowned Cuban
musician Chico O'Farrill) who has been doing music projects in Havana
since 2002. "There's a lot of catching up to do and people are hungry
for it."

For many behind these exchanges, the political changes have eased and
vindicated work they have been doing for years.

"The broader changes that took place on a government-to-government level
in December are really the official reflection of a cross-cultural flow
that was already happening on the ground very intensely for the last
couple of years," says Miami curator Elizabeth Cerejido. She brought
seven Miami-raised Cuban-American artists to the just-concluded Havana
Biennial for a series of intensive encounters with their Cuban peers for
a project called Dialogues in Cuban Art.

While the Obama administration encouraged the "people to people"
cultural exchanges that almost entirely disappeared under the Bush
presidency, the bureaucracy facing U.S.-Cuba artistic exchanges could
still be daunting. The State Department could frequently deny visas to
Cuban artists, who needed a special letter of invitation to come,
putting their visits under a cloud of uncertainty. Americans traveling
to the island for cultural projects had to do so with organizations able
to go through the laborious process of getting a special license from
the U.S. government. Political and bureaucratic barriers in Cuba also
made it difficult for its artists to travel abroad.

The process has opened up significantly, as the United States began
giving Cubans tourist visas that allowed them to come and go for five
years, and Cuba made it easier for its citizens to go abroad. Both
measures smoothed the way for Cuban artists to come to the United
States. As of December, Americans no longer need a State Department
license to go to Cuba for artistic projects.

"The roadblocks are being removed for our efforts to make artistic
exchange," says Beth Boone, artistic and executive director of the Miami
Light Project, which has been working with Cuban artists since the late
'90s. "We were doing the work before, but it was like the camel going
through the eye of the needle. Now it's relatively normal."

That normalization represents the Obama administration's view that
artistic interaction is one of the best ways to create better relations
with Cuba, says Christina Tribble, cultural affairs officer at the U.S.
Interest Section in Havana — a new position there.

"When Obama came to office there was a concerted effort to increase
connections between the people of Cuba and the people of the United
States," Tribble says. "The best way to do that is through cultural
exchange, educational exchange. … It's where you see the most hope, the
most openheartedness, and the most willingness to reach for what's good. "

Earlier this year, Tribble met with Miami presenters who work with Cuban
artists. In April, the State Department sponsored Company E, a modern
dance troupe from Washington, to participate in a Havana street dance
festival, and the interest section hosted the group in a reception and
outdoor performance.

Artistic encounters can spread into politics, Tribble says. "Once those
people know and trust each other, they're inclined to give each other
the benefit of the doubt, they're inclined to work with each other. That
spills over into all other areas of society."

Cuba has attracted famous names such as Questlove, the frontman for
hip-hop group The Roots, who went to Havana in April, stopping at EGREM
recording studios and DJing at the Fabrica De Arte Cubano, a music and
creative venue run by rocker X Alfonso. (A short film documenting the
visit was co-directed by Jauretsi Saizabitoria, whose parents presented
exile singer Albita at their Little Havana club in the '90s, an
important chapter in Miami's Cuban music history.) In May the Minnesota
Orchestra visited Havana, with a packed schedule that included master
classes at the National School of Music, jam sessions and a concert at
the National Theater.

A Spanish language production of the musical Rent (directed by Florida
International University graduate Andy Señor Jr.) played to sellout
crowds in Havana for months this winter. And in January, Debbie Ohanian,
who made headlines presenting Cuban band Los Van Van in Miami in 1999,
premiered a dance and music revue, Salsa, Mambo, Cha Cha Cha, with Cuban
salsa musician Isaac Delgado (who has returned to Havana after a stint
in exile in Miami) as her creative director.

But an increasing number of artists and presenters are creating more
in-depth projects. They strive to bring artists from both countries
together to collaborate, to foster long-term relationships, to seek new
inspiration and common cultural ground. Their motivations include an
admiration for Cuban artistry, a desire to bring U.S. resources and
ideas to a country with limited access to the world and curiosity about
a long forbidden culture.

Many are Cuban Americans eager to explore their roots and their
relationship to a country that is part of who they are, even as it has
been mostly off limits.

Arturo O'Farrill was drawn to the island through his father, an
influential and much-admired Cuban jazz composer and arranger who died
in 2001 after more than half a century in exile. O'Farrill recorded his
last album, The Conversation Continued, in December in Havana with Cuban
musicians and members of his own Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. He has
composed scores for the Cuban dance troupe MalPaso, which performed in
Miami last summer. Now he's working to set up an exchange between Havana
and New York music conservatories.

"It was such an incredible journey for me to be able to finish the
journey my father was never able to finish," O'Farrill said.

He identifies with the creative urgency he has found in the island's
musicians, a quality that also drove his father.

"What really turns [Cuban musicians] on is the lineage of aesthetics,"
O'Farrill says. "We're relentlessly dissatisfied with the musical status
quo. It's a real earmark of the Cuban mentality.

"I'd like to provide a new generation of students from Cuba and the U.S.
the chance to go and study each other's musical culture. Maybe we'll
stop mythologizing and exoticizing Cuban musicians and maybe Cuban
musicians will stop putting jazz on a pedestal. We have so much to learn
from each other."

Dancer and choreographer Pedro Ruiz, now 51, left Cuba at 18 and danced
for 21 years with New York's Ballet Hispanico. In 2011, he returned to
choreograph a work for Danza Contemporanea, the island's first modern
dance troupe, and was struck by their talent — and isolation.

"When I got there I realized the importance of giving back to a new
generation of Cubans," Ruiz says. "You see so much talent, and many of
them need information, an opportunity to dance in a different way, to
see life in a different way. When I taught my first master class they
were like sponges. They stole my heart."

This spring he became associate artistic director of Endedans, a
contemporary ballet company in Camaguey. Endedans performed one of
Ruiz's dances at a festival in Camaguey in March, and premiered another
work at the Havana Biennial last month. Soon Ruiz hopes to bring the
company to New York.

Ever Chavez, a theater producer and presenter who came to Miami in 2000,
has long presented Cuban artists here through his group Fundarte. He
travels regularly to the island, building experience and connections
that enable him to do more elaborate projects and to partner with other
U.S. organizations. In March, Chavez worked with the Kennedy Center in
Washington, which presented three Cuban jazz pianists he brought to
Miami for Global Cuba Fest, an annual music festival he co-presents with
Miami Light Project. He is developing an original theater piece with
Miami theater artists and Cuba's Teatro El Publico, his former troupe in
Havana, which he has presented several times in Miami. Fundarte will
present their play, with actors from both cities, at the Havana
International Theater Festival in October and in Miami in November.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his long experience, Chavez takes a
cautious view of the recent rapprochement.

"In Cuba some people are very hopeful that everything is going to
change," he says. "But many people are very skeptical. I think it's
going to take years. But it was so static — at least now something is
changing."

Boone, another veteran Cuban presenter, plans to position Miami Light as
a bridge between the island and the United States, and a center for
collaboration for artists from both countries. She has taken a number of
Miami artists on trips to Cuba, including choreographer Rosie Herrera
and Spam Allstars leader Andrew Yeomanson. Miami Light is currently
sponsoring Edgar, a Havana electronic musician creating a sound
installation at The Light Box, their Wynwood space; and producer and DJ
Toto Gonzalez, known as Mr Pauer, who will teach workshops in Havana in
the fall. This month B-Joyce, a young Cuban DJ, will spend three weeks
working with Gonzalez and other musicians at The Light Box.

"Logistically and symbolically Miami is the first port of entry," Boone
says. "I see the Light Box as a crossroads for Cuban artists coming to
the United States. We want for them to see it just like the artists in
our community do, as a place to make work and show it to a really
excited community and audience."

Interaction is at the heart of the Cuba projects at Copperbridge
Foundation, a new Miami group headed by Geo Darder. He has organized
multiyear collaborations between Cuban groups and the Chicago Jazz
Philharmonic and Chicago's Hedwig Dance troupe. Copperbridge hosted a
series of events and exhibits at the Havana Biennial; some of the Cuban
artists featured will come to Miami for the group's second Copperfest.

"What I love is the intimate settings," says Darder. "People meet Cubans
here and want to go see Cuba there."

Cerejido, the Miami curator, hopes that her Dialogues project will
inspire not just new art but new ways of thinking about Cuba and Miami.
She was inspired by a visit to the island for an exchange program in
2002, where she discovered a connection with young Cubans there, and to
a place her parents had fled, that was "life-changing … intense and
cathartic."

"Going back was a culture shock," she says. "The discourse here was so
driven by exile politics. I went to Cuba and found this whole other
reality."

To her surprise, she received a $60,000 grant from the John S. and James
L. Knight Foundation for the Dialogues project, and it was matched by
Cuban-American developer and collector Jorge Perez. The project,
sponsored by FIU's Cuban Research Institute, and by the Casa de las
Americas in Cuba, brought seven Miami-raised Cuban-American artists to
Havana last week. Early next year their counterparts will come to Miami,
and both groups will eventually create a collaborative exhibit for both
cities.

One of Cerejido's goals is to question what it means to be a Cuban
artist. She notes that Miami artist Glexis Novoa recently established a
studio in Havana, where his mother lives, and added a Cuban address to
his profile; meanwhile, Havana artist Sandra Ramos has created a base in
Miami. As more artists from both countries travel back and forth more
frequently, claiming Cuban roots and U.S. connections, what does it mean
to be Cuban or Cuban American?

"The aim of this project is to ask new questions," Cerejido says. "This
is not about the standard definitions of Cuban and Cuban American, but
challenging those definitions. These are questions that are going to
continually destabilize things in terms of Cuban vs. Cuban American.
This is rapidly becoming less about two things than about something that
is plural and complementary."

There are still obstacles to the growing artistic relationship. For
instance, U.S. law still does not permit American presenters to pay
Cuban artists, who can only receive travel expenses. Artists can still
suffer political repression in Cuba, the most prominent recent example
being Havana's Tania Bruguera, who has been arrested and harassed for
her outspoken performance pieces on free speech — treatment that
shadowed the recent Biennial.

Still, for many Cuban artists, this is a thrilling time. MalPaso, the
Cuban dance troupe that Copperbridge brought to Miami last summer on the
heels of their enthusiastically received New York debut, has had dates
at several major U.S. venues. This summer they'll perform at Jacob's
Pillow, a famous Massachusetts dance festival, dancing a new piece by
well-known U.S. ballet choreographer Trey McIntyre.

"All of a sudden it's perfect times for us," MalPaso director Fernando
Saez said in March, as the group stopped in Miami on its way home from a
U.S. tour. "Everyone wants to have this love affair with Cuba. And here
we are."

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