Leading and Following: First Impressions to Rapport How to Tango Across the Border of Cuba and America
/By James Martin
Unlike other Translucent Border groups, we had been charged by our Cuban hosts, Ballet Folklórico Cutumba, to create and perform four finished pieces and presentations. These would take place in three separate venues: a gallery opening, a music concert and a dance festival (FIDANZ) that was taking place during our stay.
Before we left, I roughed out the shape these performances might take. In addition to playing mandolin and singing for the gallery performance and concert, I was to choreograph on the Cutumba dancers and teach a class. The piece I was setting on the dancers was composed for African gyil and singers by Steinhardt Professor Valerie Naranjo. I felt some pressure. Aside from researching and immersing myself in the Cuban artistic landscape, Valerie’s and my roles were to share our artistic practice and collaborate with them.
Most of the Cutumba Company’s dances are narratively driven. After Andy’s previous trip to Cuba, he kept reminding me that telling stories was an essential part of how Cutumba understands making dances. I had little experience with the company’s Afro-Cuban vocabulary. Maybe, I thought, I could fit in with the company if I drew from my experience in Salsa and vernacular street-dance. I took a deep breath. Many, actually.
Cuba
The air was hot and soppy as we descended the stairs of the airplane at Holguin airport. La Shaun Prescott (2014 MFA grad of Tisch Dance and Assistant Professor in Dance at the University of Trinidad and Tobago) was waiting for us. In addition to bringing her specialty (Afro-Trinidadian dance) to our performances, she was going to be my translator and rehearsal assistant. We piled into a small Toyota sedan. With my mandolin and me crammed in the front seat, and with Valerie’s gyil swathed in bubble wrap lying across Polly Jacobs (Tisch Dance BFA), Valerie and La Shaun, we drove for more than three hours to Santiago de Cuba. I offered to share the front seat, but they demurred. I felt undeservedly lucky to be close to the air conditioning.
The ride to Santiago de Cuba was fabulous and harrowing. Fabulous because I was seeing Cuba for the first time. Mostly on single-lane roads, we passed around many horse-drawn wagons, ox-drawn wagons, and oxen in harness being prodded with long poles by farmers in straw hats, tee-shirts and pants held up with rope. Many times we passed men on horseback. Some were riding bareback, but I noticed that even the men who were riding with saddles had their feet dangling with nowhere to put them (it looked terribly uncomfortable). After about an hour and a half we started passing field after field of young lush, green sugar cane. The processing plants’ tall chimneys rose out of the fields like obelisks.
About two-thirds of the way into the drive, things started to get harrowing. Without warning, the car started careening from one side of the road to another. At first, I thought our driver had fallen asleep. But we were avoiding massive potholes that surely would have broken an axle given the speed we were going. And we didn’t just veer to and fro; we often had to slam on the brakes to avoid giant holes while oncoming traffic whizzed by. Miraculously, we arrived in one piece. I later found out that our driver was not only a skilled roadman, but also a doctor. Doctors in Cuba make next to nothing; he was supplementing his earnings with his taxi company (he had two cars that he shared with his brother).
Plan C or D
Every morning I would come to breakfast at our AirBnb to see Andy next to a pot of coffee furiously writing in his notebook. Rehearsal time was tight. Having only rough outlines and needing to add La Shaun, we had a lot of work to do. On top of that, we had no fixed schedule. Extra events like radio interviews or presentations to watch or lead were being thrown in at the last minute. While we and our hosts wanted to take advantage of every opportunity for cross-cultural research, we were feeling the pressure of creating finished performances.
I was allotted four hours in the middle of the week to choreograph Valerie’s piece, Tierra Pura, on six Cutumba dancers. Thankfully, the two parts of Valerie’s piece that I was setting could be expanded or condensed. I had no idea how many dancers I would have to work with (I found out when I got there) nor did I know exactly in what form or how long my pieces would be. For the class I was supposed to teach, our hosts were still trying to decide if I should teach technique or composition.
Time Becomes an Ocean
Pressure notwithstanding, we were settling into a new sense of time. Time wasn’t a line to be chopped into sections for accomplishments; it was rather like the ocean that was close by—full and expansive to swim in and maybe occasionally to fish out of. Yalina Cardero Sierra, our daily host and Cutumba’s company manager, had a smile that was contagious and always helped (at least for me) alleviate stress.
We walked everywhere. The air was full of exhaust. Motorcycles, diesel trucks and late-Fifties cars as big as boats filled the narrow streets. We dodged out of their way. Because of all the exhaust, I thought the city was dirty. But when one of our dancers, Joel Hanna, commented on how litter-free the streets were, I noticed that he was right. They were immaculate. With so many in charge of cleaning the streets and nothing to litter the streets with, why wouldn’t they be?
After dark, the streets filled with music. Drums, horns, singing, and strumming. As you walked along, there wasn’t a street that didn’t have the music of two or three bands saturating the night air. I was starting to relax. Time was an ocean, the oily air was sensual, and music was everywhere.
The night before I started choreographing Tierra Pura, we watched a performance of the Cutumba company. It was an evening-length piece with a story as involved as any 19th century ballet. It had “vivacious villagers” (group dances with women, men, and couples), a featured couple, a second act that went into a nether world at a cemetery and a happy, dancy ending. The dance began in the present day with the whole company doing hip-hop. Then came the kind of explosive Afro-Cuban style that the company is famous for. The live music of bass, guitars, drummers, singers, and horns blew the roof off the theater. So, after seeing this jaw-dropping extravaganza, I was to choreograph on the dancers the next day. In four hours. ¡Ay, Caramba.
Swimming in the Moment
It was 2:00 in the afternoon, at the height of the day’s heat. We arrived to find that construction workers were occupying both of the studios we were supposed to use. Clouds of paint fumes billowed out of the studio doors while electric saws cutting tile blared and screeched. Now I had from 3:00 to 6:00 to work with the dancers. Time had become an ocean. We never did plan A. Schedules changed on an hourly basis. A new rehearsal spot appeared.
We would get there by bus. I first took notice of these “buses” on our way to Santiago. Ours was an over-sized pickup truck with metal hoops welded on the back covered in canvas. If you weren’t lucky enough to sit on the metal ledges and boxes, you stood and held onto the hoops. We all piled in. The Cutumba drummers sat with their drums between their legs. As we rolled through the streets, they played and sang. I clapped to the beat and laughed along with everyone. Amazingly, I guess I had found a way to swim with (and in) the moment.
From First Impressions to Rapport
With dancers I had just met and who couldn’t understand me, I had to work as fast as I ever had in my life. I told them how inspired I was from their dancing the previous night. With faces that showed a gamut of curiosity, earnestness, wariness, and dismay, they looked like they had just heard about having to learn two dances from some gray-haired American. They were exhausted. I needed to connect. When La Shaun translated my praises and my sympathy with their exhaustion, the dancers nodded, smiled, and heaved sighs of relief. I told them that I understood this was an unusual situation to be placed in: working with a stranger who came from such a distance, had different experience and (I pointed to my balding head—they laughed) was old. I told them how much I respected them for what they were doing. Happily, I could feel them change. I told them that I would place my respect for them before anything—that they were more important—that our time together was more important than the dances we were going to make. Then I said, “OK, let’s have some fun…”
La Shaun was a godsend. She was not only able to translate for me but was also able to keep the group together and focused. The first thing I set on them would be the hardest and would be the climax of the dance. It was a canonic structure with dancers weaving in and out between each other. They had to accent beats they weren’t used to stressing (the 3 and 7 within 8 bar phrases). As we moved onto easier material, I gently assured them they would get it.
In three hours, we put together two dances. It was more than I ever would have expected to accomplish. I thanked them profusely. Four of my tee-shirts were soaked.
Class
The next day I taught a technique class. The Cutumba dancers are beautiful. With taut bodies and supple, mobile spines, ribs, shoulders, and hips, they are creatures of motion. Many more than I would have thought had some ballet and contemporary training. Again, La Shaun was fabulous. We were able to weave in nice moments of teaching—moments where we could stop and talk about technical and anatomical nuance. I had three drummers. In a way, my rapport with the drummers was more direct; rather than rely on La Shaun to translate, through eye contact, clapping, dancing and directing, we found rhythm was a universal language. I had worked out a phrase of movement that included the Afro-Cuban style as best I could. By the end of the class, I was delighted to hear laughter both with me and (with my encouragement) at me.
Abandonment and Hesitancy/Learning to Tango
Several weeks before the Cuba trip, I saw a tango demonstration. In tango, a ballroom dance in 2/4 time originating in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the man and woman lead and follow equally. One of the demonstrations was a long dance that was completely improvised. It was mesmerizing. The interplay of lead and follow was a tide that flowed effortlessly between the partners. It was a beautiful model for what intimacy is. With an authority I’ve rarely witnessed in dance improvisation, their dancing was a journey of two people feeling, receiving, and directing one another with tender care and heightened attention.
If we are to develop grounded respect and sturdy rapport across borders, the delicacy and precariousness of first impressions needs the same tender care and heightened attention. The playfulness between tango dancers might be a lovely model to bring to our understanding of how to share knowledge across borders.
One goal of Translucent Borders is to give artists more grist for the mill. Discovering how artists from other cultures conceive of art, find ideas for their art making, and draw from and extend what they consider to be art is critical for artists’ growth. How else will we have the perspective to challenge our own habits and orthodoxies?
Working with my Cuban collaborators was a lesson in the value of being cheerfully flexible. I hope I might relax into time as an ocean again. I want to learn how to practice human interaction as a journey of feeling, watching, listening, and sharing with heightened care and attention. I want to hone the skill of balancing abandonment with hesitancy—to soar to uncharted realms while avoiding getting waylaid or lost—to tango with my brethren—to lead and be led with delicacy and authority, to follow and be followed with respect and earned trust.
