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Raulito's voice cuts through the syncopated music, urgent and insistent. As he speaks, his hot breath fluttering on my ear, he indicates the stage with his head, gracefully arcing his neck.
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The tumbledown Casa de la Cultura, nestled in the heart of the picturesquely bohemian maze of la Habana Vieja's dilapidated streets, is packed to its gills. More courtyard than casa, the oblong venue is roofless, walled high by irregular Tom's Secret Garden style walls, with an iron prison bar design gate at one corner. Paying pesos and smuggling street rum, people are still trickling in. In a couple of hours' time this venue will be a thriving mass of whirring skirts and gyrating hips, of sinuous, synchronised duos, a-throb with energy. Set against the backdrop of the collective heartbeat—the 'toc-toc.toc-toc-toc' of the clave—individuals, each with rum-lubricated limbs, will disappear into a pulsating blend of glistening skin, a swirling, delirious melt of Coppelia 'cream sundae: dark chocolates fused with vanilla, cashew, and banana, rippled with caramel and dusted with cinnamon spice. And all undulating, quivering and swishing in time with reverberating drumbeats, booming bass, and lofty guitars, interspersed with a saxophonist's trills and sweeping brassy collaborations. Jelly-bean bright colours will punctuate the heaving throng: lurid orange Lycra-clad buttocks will shiver and quake, and a sparkly scarlet neck scarf will whip faces as its wearer is whisked around through a flurry of intricate spins and complex steps. A couple of hours' time, and this place will have converted into a cyclonic orgy of sweaty, grimy, exchanges: libido driven, sensual bliss. Right now, though, in the waning light of dusk, the crowd is softly swaying, content to feel the breeze and watch the show. And what a show it is. Accompanied by top-notch instrumentals and the traditional call-and-response of a vocal chorus telling poignant tales of sugar cane and slavery, some of Havana's most skilful male rumberos strut their stuff, giving virtuoso displays of one of the most technically demanding dances among Cuba's extensive array of styles: columbia. Along with guaguanco and yumba, columbia constitutes one of the three main Cuban styles of rumba dancing (none of which are anything like the eponymous glitzy westernised version danced in ballrooms). Guaguanco and yumba are partner dances that originated in urban locales, such as the former slave-port in Matanzas. Columbia, however, is performed as a solo piece—traditionally by black African males—and has its origins in more bucolic settings: the sugar cane plantations. Indeed, columbia's typically jerky and angular motions, resulting in a series of Vogue-like poses, are said to have evolved from the slaves' impromptu dancing within the fields, where they would have to take small, tip-toeing steps among the sharp cuttings of cane, and execute rapid changes of direction and unnerving balancing acts to avoid injuring themselves by stepping on the splintery rattan protruding from the soil. Whatever its roots, well-danced columbia truly is an aesthetic delight. A proud, macho dance, it is reminiscent of tango or flamenco in its execution: wild energy and passion embodied by the dancer is restrained until an almost unbearable tension is achieved, and then unleashed in sudden, volcanic eruptions of expression combining deft agility, acrobatic strength, and staccato limb jabbing, as if the dancer has been momentarily possessed, or is fleetingly experiencing an epileptic shudder. Here an elbow, there a knee, a hip off-centre and there a heel. It is an edgy dance, incorporating humour through the dancer's playful improvisations, yet also intrinsically imbued with an element of danger and competitive aggression. The testosterone-infused dancers are rivals: lions in a show of superiority, each trying to out-roar the other; or peacocks, vainly displaying their colourful brilliance. Each of the three dances in the rumba family has its roots in the African slave community in Cuba; each is implicitly an expression of identity and, like the Afro-cuban folkloric dances of Santeria, innately rebellious. Despite these commonalities, stylistically columbia is somewhat incongruous with the more sensuous hip movements, the rhythmic pulsing of shoulder and chest, the bent-kneed softness and more rounded, circular feel of its rumba relatives yumba and guaguanco. And of course it is the only one of them performed solo. By males. So what am I—white, European, female—doing even considering taking a spot on this exposed stage to dance columbia (of all dances) in a cultural celebration such as this? Surely this would be symbolically inappropriate, an insensitive denial of historical conflicts that would implicate me more explicitly in a civilisation-long struggle surrounding fundamental human-imposed boundaries concerning race, gender, nationality, custom? Well, yes, in a sense it could be perceived as such. But Cubans wouldn't see it in that light. I have danced in public here before: salsa. And guaguanco. And cha-cha-cha. And mambo. And even some of the traditional folkloric dances, adopting the character of one of the many adulated orishas—deities in human form, each of whom have a host of typical characteristics that are displayed in their dance moves and associated music. And each time I've danced, it's been well-received, appreciated, even encouraged. The Cubans like the fact that I am so evidently fascinated about their culture, their customs, and ways of life. Of course they like it; it's a compliment: my efforts to learn and integrate are blatant displays of interest and solidarity and they recognise it thus. Indeed, when it comes to dance and music, one can't really go wrong here. Unlike any other place that I have visited, in Cuba dance and its accompanying forms of music are inherent ingredients of simply being; like eating or drinking one simply can't do without. In the face of struggles—material, spiritual, and emotional—Cubans dance; over the years, even in times of extreme scarcity and hardship music and dance have been used inspirationally as a means of uplifting the spirits and of coping. Moreover, it is largely a result of the various socioeconomic and political situations Cubans have lived through—both in the more distant and more recent past—that have led to the evolution of the music and dance forms of current day, and indeed to the collective Cuban identity, a major aspect of which is dance and music. Bridging a gap between the human and the divine, dance and music are used in all sorts of contexts and in very different ways. Sometimes demonstrative of the playful, expressive, resourcefully inventive and resolutely courageous Cuban mentality and other times a form of reverential worship, one thing can be sure: Cubans dance everywhere. Continuously so. Even when they are not dancing outwardly, you can tell they are dancing within. They shimmy as they sweep the floor, they twirl when talking on the 'phone, they gyrate as they drive down a potholed road. As for when they dance outwardly: you really know it. The most libidinously charged and expressive people globally, Cuban current day choreography really shows this characteristic. Casino, the most popular and commonly danced style, is salsa Cuban-style, with a quintessentially Cuban edge to it: eroticism. If dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, as has been claimed, then no other nation even comes close to the Cubans. And all this libidinous articulation is far from being hidden away behind closed doors of nightclubs, or dare I say it bedrooms; danced displays of erotic confidence and desire are evidenced in every location imaginable: on the street, on the beach, in the kitchen, on the roof tops, midst laundry wavering in the breeze. I have even been privy to an impromptu orgiastic dance party on a careening coach, when the entire coach load of mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings spontaneously erupted into a rather off-balance, mobile fiesta, as graceful as any group of people could be on a swaying vehicle to a somewhat dubious rendition of 'No hay que llorar'. It could just as easily have been a coach-load of sixty-somethings. My musings are broken by a gasp of appreciation by the crowd: the current stage occupant—unusually tall and ripplingly athletic, with silky copper toned skin sheathing lithe muscularity—demonstrates an innovative dip, strikes an impossible, gravity-defying pose before jolting back up with an angular kick and karate style fling of his left arm. Fast and furious, the dancer's moves momentarily dictate the tempo of the music, musicians and dancer intertwined in a duel of mutually challenging wild and playful improvisations, at odds with one another. And then he's back, onto the beat with shivering chest contractions and elbow shimmies; a harmonious return to unity. Along with the rest of the crowd, I am astonished. but not merely by the dancer's skilful manoeuvres. Lingering in my psyche, flashbacks of gratitude Cubans have shown at my past efforts to dance to the beats of their drums are whipping through my mind, one replacing the next. Overpowered by the spirit of dance and propelled by an unknown force within, I take a step away from Raulito, towards the stage. |
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