Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

by Alma Guillermoprieto

A vivid and mesmerizing memoir of the six months the author spent in Cuba in 1970, a time when she began to develop her own fervent political conscience.

Alma Guillermoprieto—an award–winning journalist and arguably our most clear-eyed observer of Latin America—now turns her keen powers of observation onto her own, younger self. In this richly evocative chronicle, Guillermoprieto describes the remarkable, transforming journey she made as a twenty-year-old, when her love of dance—which had led her from her native Mexico to the New York dance studios of Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla Tharp—took her to a job teaching poorly trained but ardent dance students in Cuba. At first unaffected by the revolutionary spirit and the adoration of Castro that pervaded the island, Guillermoprieto slowly fell under the spell of the idealism that buoyed the often destitute lives of the Cuban people. And as she opened herself to what became a complex, galvanizing revolutionary experience, she found, as well, the ideas and ideals that would shape her thinking for the rest of her life.
Beautifully written and deeply felt, Dancing with Cuba is a revelatory account of the making of an impassioned political heart and mind.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, History, Travel, Biography, Biography Memoir, Cultural

290 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2004

About the author

Guillermoprieto was born and grew up in Mexico City. In her teens, she moved to New York City with her mother where she studied modern dance for several years. From 1962 until 1973, she was a professional dancer.

Her first book, Samba (1990), was an account of a season studying at a samba school in Rio de Janeiro.

In the mid-1970s, she started her career as a journalist for The Guardian, moving later to the Washington Post. In January, 1982, Guillermoprieto, then based in Mexico City, was one of two journalists (the other was Raymond Bonner of The New York Times) who broke the story of the El Mozote massacre in which some 900 villagers at El Mozote, El Salvador, were slaughtered by the Salvadoran army in December, 1981. With great hardship and at great personal risk, she was smuggled by FMLN rebels to visit the site approximately a month after the massacre took place. When the story broke simultaneously in the Post and Times on January 27, 1982, it was dismissed as propaganda by the Reagan administration. Subsequently, however, the details of the massacre as first reported by Guillermoprieto and Bonner were verified, with widespread repercussions.

During much of the subsequent decade, Guillermoprieto was a South America bureau chief for Newsweek.

Guillermoprieto won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1985 to research and write about changes in rural life under the policies of the European Economic Community.

During the 1990s, she came into her own as a freelance writer, producing long, extensively researched articles on Latin American culture and politics for The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, including outstanding pieces on the Colombian civil war, the Shining Path during the Internal conflict in Peru, the aftermath of the "Dirty War" in Argentina, and post-Sandinista Nicaragua. These were bundled in the book 'The Heart That Bleeds' (1994), now considered a classic portrait of the politics and culture of Latin America during the "lost decade" (it was published in Spanish as 'Al pie de un volcán te escribo — Crónicas latinoamericanas' in 1995).

In April 1995, at the request of Gabriel García Márquez, Guillermoprieto taught the inaugural workshop at the Fundación para un Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano, an institute for promoting journalism that was established by García Márquez in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. She has since held seven workshops for young journalists throughout the continent.
That same year, Guillermoprieto also received a MacArthur Fellowship.

A second anthology of articles, 'Looking for History', was published in 2001, which won a George Polk Award. She also published a collection of articles in Spanish on the Mexican crisis, El año en que no fuimos felices.

In 2004, Guillermoprieto published a memoir, 'Dancing with Cuba', which revolved on the year she spent living in Cuba in her early twenties. An excerpt of it was published in 2003 in The New Yorker. In the fall of 2008, she joined the faculty of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago, as a Tinker Visiting Professor.

Reviews

[Professor Weasel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was given to my sister by her friend in Oakland. I've never read Alma Guillermoprieto before, but apparently she's the Latin American correspondent for the New Yorker, a publication I wish I had the $ to subscribe to (even more so now that all their fiction and poetry is subscription-only). A lot of this book hit close to home for me. I loved Alma's younger-self narrator: her constant self-critcism, her dislike of her ignorance about politics and Latin American affairs, her love for art, her low self-esteem, her poor choices in men. Even the section where she contemplates suicide is charming. I guess I liked her narrator because she reminded me a lot of myself, haha. This to me isn't a good book just because it's a snapshot of a very specific time and place, or because I learned a lot about Cuba while reading it. More than anthing I liked this book because it powerfully captures the feeling of what it's like to be young and confused and enamored of art and completely lost in your life. I am definitely going to try to track down more of her work to read.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alma Guillermoprieto has made a name for herself as a journalist reporting from Latin America. The surprise of this book is her previous life in the troupes of Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham, which resulted in her recruitment for a brief, chaotic tenure as a dance teacher in Cuba in the seventies. The Cuban Revolution was still new then, and could blame Soviet micromanagement and American interference for its failures. She went as an inexperienced idealist, and even the ideology-driven ineptitude she witnessed did not completely disillusion her. The school was something of a disaster, in great part due to ideological blinders, and was underfunded and overseen by a Castro comrade from guerrilla days who clearly hated the job. Despite the great cultural gifts of the Hispanic and Afro-Cuban traditions, the students were taught modern dance, but not thoroughly.
The bias against independent culture, homophobia and racism of the Castro government is evident throughout, but Guillermoprieto's portrait of her younger self is of a young woman still entranced by the Revolution. That includes Castro himself, whose famously long-winded speeches kept her rapt even when admitting the bungling of the sugar harvest that was supposed to provide Cuban with an independent economy.
I must disclose that I have worked with applicants for asylum, including victims of the Cuban government's racism, police surveillance and torture chambers. Guillermoprieto alludes to the new elite's racism and homophobia, and their employment of revolutionary cant to silence dissent, but that's as far as it goes, or perhaps as far as she noticed.
The final page is what makes the book compelling, with two irrefutable points. The old Afro-Cuban music styles, disparaged at first, are now thriving abroad. Havana itself has become a tourist museum. So the Revolution that promised to vanquish the old world is to some degree a monument to what was supposed to wither away. Some of this is due to American interference, some of it to Soviet stubbornness (and to the loss of its support), but some of the blame belongs squarely on people who into old age wore fatigues and wartime beards, and held their people hostage to interminable speeches about the historical and ideological reasons why they should not be blamed for trying to increase sugar harvests by sending amateurs to do it, or for marching in to make it all better for the Cuban, including Afro-Cubans, and for many of them making it worse.

[Leyre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me parece que Alma comienza el libro con una reflexión en mente y que construye el libro para poder hacerla. Creo que eso es un poco trampa. No me molesta que manipule sus recuerdos o que me cuente mentiras: me molesta que quiera decirme algo y en vez de decirmelo y ya está me intente manipular para poder llegar a esa conclusión. Al principio me gusta, pero hay un momento que me lo dejo de creer y ya solo quiero que me cuente lo que quiera que sea que me quiere contar de verdad.

Dicho esto, hay un par de momentos muy emocionantes. Me gusta especialmente la descripción del cuerpo, la presencia del movimiento y de lo físico.

[Joey Zhou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, I wish I had lived through the 70s, the peak of the ideological conflict, where the Intellectuals in Latin America would risk their lives seeking a path to greater social equality and better living conditions. Life was difficult for a lot of people. However, repressive regimes incurred social awareness and struggle. A myriad of guerrilla movements proliferated in every part of the continent. Cuba, against this backdrop, was the Mecca of Revolution. I remember the admiring look of my Latin American history professor, an aged lady in her 50s when she was talking about the Cuban revolution. It was a beacon of inspiration for several generations of leftists.

This is the type of book I will frequently go back to. It offered me a unique insight into Revolution and resonated with me personally. It gave me many profound ideas and thoughts that will benefit me forever. Did communism create a "better" society than Batista, the then-military dictator of Cuba? Could a band of ardent but ragged guerrillas rule over an amazingly diverse and culturally rich island? The book offered its answer.

I laughed, saddened, and moved with Alma, the protagonist, as I was her accompany throughout the book. Witnessing her entire journey of transformation from a naive 21 years old modern dancer from New York to a dedicated internationalist, determined to change her life and make the best out of it, I feel like I have become her closest friend. Having set foot on the island where she struggled, I connected with her on a deeper level: humid summer night on Malecon, the glamorous Grand National Hotel, or the long line in front of every single store. My memories came back alive. On the other hand, this book revealed what I missed as a tourist in Havana, the social history of its Revolution days. No one told me how the vibrant Afro-Cuban culture was severely suppressed. Or the world-renowned Buena Vista Social Club members suffered from official indifference and prejudice during the harshest years of the Revolution. Or Soviet technicians would enjoy the finest refreshments and the best hotel the Amercian ever built on the island while typical Cuban would never have a chance to have a bar of chocolate (and they still don't, unfortunately).

In the end, if you are interested in reading it, you must be aware that it is a dense piece, full of observations and thoughts, loaded with in-depth analysis of the Revolution. It's a great book to get to know Cuba, after all, the one behind its mysterious communism and romantic facades.

[˜”*°•.˜”*°• Sheri •°*”˜.•°*”˜ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"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."

I had to keep reminding myself that I was not reading a history of the Cuban revolution but a memoir of a young, sometimes naive and idealistic young woman, who was telling me about how she coped with living, by choice, in a society struggling with political issues as well as social issues. She's talking about HER own observations and HER perceptions of what is happening at the time. I also had to keep remembering that this was written in the early 1970's and the writer wasn't there as an adviser, mercenary, guerilla, or political pundit, she was there to teach dance - her passion - to interested students.

Even though this is dated, I enjoyed reading it and think anyone interested in reading about Cuba will agree.

[Vanessa Velasquez Mayorga · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Les ha pasado que terminan de leer un libro y quieren abrazarlo? ¿Con qué libro les ha pasado?
😌
Pues eso me pasó al leer “La Habana en un espejo”, de la escritora y periodista mexicana Alma Guillermoprieto. A Alma la admiro muchísimo desde que inicié mi formación como periodista, y en el 2016 tuve la fortuna de aprender de ella durante un semestre en la universidad. Su trabajo periodístico es maravilloso e inspirador, es una excelente reportera y narradora y por eso me lancé a leer este libro. Aunque es una obra de no ficción, no es un libro periodístico. Es, en cambio, un recuento de sus memorias durante una época fundamental en su vida. Es la historia de una Alma jovencísima que sale de Nueva York hacia La Habana, cuando Fidel Castro estaba estrenándose en el gobierno de la isla y en todo Cuba se respiraba la Revolución. Es la historia de una mujer joven que deseaba ser bailarina más que nada, y resulta siendo maestra. Es una historia de contrastes, de privaciones y privilegios, una reflexión personal de la autora detonada por un sistema político revolucionario. Es uno de los libros más bellos que he leído y un recordatorio de que a veces la realidad supera a la ficción.

[C.P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

La Habana en un espejo trata de ser una crónica periodística de la Cuba de los años 70 en primera persona. Una crónica doble: la de cómo era ese país y la de cómo era la autora en ese momento. Alma Guillermoprieto trabajó como profesora en la Escuela Nacional de Danza de Cuba en el 69 durante seis meses. Y viaja al pasado para intentar recuperar su ingenuidad de 20 años y contarnos qué descubrió en esa Cuba y cómo ese descubrimiento la transformó.
Sin menospreciar la calidad literaria obvia y algunos pasajes memorables -el capítulo del discurso de Fidel, por ejemplo, es extraordinario- creo que es una obra fallida. No me creo a esa Alma de 20 años. No me creo los diálogos. No me creo la reconstrucción de los personajes. No me creo la mayor parte de las situaciones. Y la sensación que me queda es que el libro trata de ser una crítica con disculpa al régimen cubano y una excusa para conducirnos a una reflexión final -lúcida, eso sí- sobre la imposible relación entre el arte y la revolución.

[Evelin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interestingly enough, I found that my favorite parts of this book was when Alma was writing about Fidel and the Revolution. I’ve mostly read and heard about how awful it all was and how no one wanted it to happen, but I saw a different perspective in this writing. How charismatic Fidel came across to many and why they so easily followed him. How the U.S. embargo against Cuba affected the Cubans and what many felt about it. I suggest you read it to get a different point of view.

[Carolina Estrada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alma GuillermoPrieto narra una crónica que desvela el fracaso rotundo de la revolución, el magnetismo de Fidel, en sus primeros años como líder, una Habana suspendida en el tiempo.

Este libro me costó al comienzo, lo perdí en un avión, y volvió a mis manos. Después de eso, me pude conectar con la historia.

[Carol · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. But I found it a little plodding. Worse, it felt bizarrely self-indulgent to me. All the sanctimonious revolutionary fervor mixed with snark about others and self-loathing was difficult to slog through.

[Bego Arechederra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro me ha tocado todas las fibras sensibles. Una chica en un lugar que no entiende y que le urge entender, la guerrilla en América Latina, el sentido del arte en la Revolución, la aparición de Roque Dalton... Siento que me lo han susurrado al oído mientras estaba acurrucada en mi cama.

[Juan Simón · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un retrato de la vida cotidiana de la cuba de los años setenta. Ésta crónica de Alma Guillermoprieto, además de leerse con gusto, permite conocer las preocupaciones, los sueños, las frustraciones y los hechos que marcaron la vida de los jovenes cubanos que vivieron y creyeron en la Zafra de los Diez Millones.

[Danial Tanvir · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is not a novel
infact it is a memoir.
its about a girl who is from mexico originally.
she is offered to teach dance in Havana or caracus.
she then goes to new York city to be with her mother.
from there she finds a job to go to ,Havana,cuba to teach music.
she accepts the offer.
she goes there and teaches dance.
it is about the revolution and about fidel castro.
the story is all about the revolution In cuba.
she then thinks about commiting suicide for some reason.
in the end she has an affair with some men and then she goes back to new York city to her mother!.

[Daniela Romo Matus · Rating 5 out of 5]

De danza y revolución, sobre la juventud y el despertar político. A los veinte años Alma viaja a La Habana, no como reportera, sino para impartir clases en la Escuela Nacional de Danza. Alma, la joven bailarina en 1970 se enfrenta con la revolución, con sus luces y sombras, y con el idealismo del pueblo cubano.
La Habana en un espejo son las memorias, ya decantadas de esa experiencia, pero ágil, minuciosa, lúcida y muy veraz, tanto del devenir de la autora como el de la propia revolución.
Me encantó, de esas lecturas que son realmente un placer.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the writing style of the author, captivated by her story. She parses the history of Cuba and the revolution in appropriate places to bolster the narrative. Exquisite story.

More than 3 decades ago, I spent 6 months teaching modern dance in Cuba.
vuelve (come back)

Martha Graham - brilliant, temperamental, most revered choreographer
Her quest for a body language that reflected the deepest inner conflicts and the way she used gesture and movements to stage great myths, centering them on the internal universe of a single woman -- Medea, Joan of Arc, Eve, all of them ultimately Martha herself in any case -- brought her admirers and disciples from all the arts.

Merce Cunningham - elegant, alert and unfailingly courteous. avant-garde. the modest, unassuming way he had one day taken his leave of Martha’s company where he had been a principal dancer. Without any rhetorical fuss he left behind the obsession with passion and narrative that was characteristic of Martha and her disciples; the use of dramaturgy as the connecting thread of choreography; and rhythmic music that guided the dancers’ movements like a tambourine leading a trained bear in a circus. Instead he chose to pursue the meandering paths of abstraction, chance and Zen philosophy. Yet his avante-garde experiments never interfered with the technical perfection and extraordinary refinement of his choreography. In his own way, he was a classicist.

John Cage’s delightful “prepared piano”

Those who left Martha’s studio for Merce’s were attracted to that Apollonian temperament, which demanded concentration and intensity but rejected drama.

We would go off to class in search of the miracle that would fulfill all our desires. Look at me. say I’m beautiful, say I’m for you. Choose me. Let me dance in your company.

Graciela Figueroa. She was the only woman friend I had who read Søren Kierkegaard and Theodor Adorno, and for years, against all logic, I was convinced that Julio Cortázar had based the character of La Maga in his Hopscotch on her. She was from Uruguay, penniless. -- introduced Alma to Twyla Tharp

Elaine went from one brief disaster to another, with length recovery periods in between. Graciela lived through a series of agitated experiences that, since she was Graciela, went far beyond the mere problem of male-female relations and became philosophical inquiries, repostulations of the very nature of love that always left her drained and bewildered.

No one ever asked me then, and I don’t know if I myself understood that I had a life that was not only extraordinary but real -- the kind of life that doesn’t happen by accident but is put together only slowly and with effort.

My political attitude toward the world I lived in, if I had one at all, was, I believe, a mixture of sincere elements of antiauthoritarianism, anticlericalism, horror of torture, revulsion at social inequality, defense of animals, terror of any type of violence, and distrust of anything related to big business, especially advertising. To me, this was the attitude of a revolutionary, as I felt I was in art. But my deepest conviction, so deep I would never have been able to articulate it, was perfectly elitist: I had no doubt that we artists were the highest form of human life. That conviction justified my existence.

It had never occurred to me that I had a moral obligation to protest against injustice. I’d never once imagined that I belonged to a wider community that than of my friends and fellow dancers.

zafra -- Zafra de los Diez Millones, or Ten Million Ton Harvest
sugarcane - to allow the Revolution to settle its debts to the Soviet Union and generate a surplus. Cuba would be able to finance its own development and free itself from what was becoming an alarming dependence on Soviet aid. Fidel was to announce this great victory on July 26, 1970, the 17th anniversary of the Revolution (1953)

Martha: From the vagina, girls! Movement is born in the gut!

In Merce’s view, art has to resemble nature and nothing in nature is ever the same. So there must be varying approaches to the leg warm-ups...

Celia Cruz -- There’s never been anyone else like Celia

The rumba and son have a lot to do with whorehouses, the same way jazz was born in the New Orleans brothels. And both are music played by blacks. In Cuba, among the leaders of the Revolution and the intellectuals, there’s just as much racism as there was before among la gente decente -- because they’re all decente, if you want to know the truth.

Havana: This is a city that never loses its refinement. From the slums of Santos Suárez to the crumbling buildings of Old Havana, it’s always elegant.

The USA - They’ve got us by the small hairs, said Boris - making a precise illustrative gesture with both hands. He shared with the majority of his compatriots an inexhaustible lewdness.

He was living his life in earnest, and I hadn’t found that very often outside the dance world. I valued his work as a poet (Adrian), and nothing seemed more manly to me at that point in my life than his peculiar lack of superficiality, conformism or duplicity.

una flor da una flor - a flower from a flower

Coño is a common Spanish idiom expression (somewhat vulgar) primarily used in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean - fuck or damnit. literally “cunt”

Stillness - an absolute quietude, growing out of a harmonious position of the body. It was futile. It make no sense to seek stillness in the middle of a Revolution.

In the same newsreel: images of dead Vietnamese, burned alive by napalm, of children fleeing their thatch-roof homes in terror. I had just discovered was that Evil wasn’t something that existed only in that prehistory before I was born. I had lived alongside Evil -- and in willful ignorance of it! It existed with my complicity and bloomed because I had allowed it to. Very small children were dying while I went on living, effortlessly and painlessly, and I hadn’t done so much as raise my voice in protest.

I’m everyone now, too.

Angel Castro was a gruff man without pretensions or refinements. The Castros worked hard. Angel was a determined poverty-stricken Spaniard who first came to the island in the 1890s as a soldier with the Spanish royalist troops. A few years later he returned, seeking better fortune than that offered by life as a farmhand in his native Galicia. He rented some land in the province of Oriente, at the opposite end of the island from Havana, and began growing sugarcane. By renting and then buying, he became rich. When Fidel was born, about 300 families, many of them Haitian, lent Don Angel their labor in exchange for a conuco, a plot of land on his ranch on which to grow their own sustenance. Nevertheless, the Galician was neither a man of leisure nor an oligarch. There were no luxuries on the finca, and the Castros worked hard.

Angel married and had 2 kids with a country schoolteacher. As time went by, he fell in love with a laundress name Lina Ruz. From that love affair, 7 more children were born: Angela, Ramón, Agustina, Emma, Juana, Fidel and his younger brother, Raúl. Fidel was said to have a bad temper.Heir to a certain fortune, educated in the best schools of Santiago and Havana, tall and good-looking, the young Fidel was out of control and somewhat eccentric. A parvenu (a person from usually a low social position who has recently or suddenly become wealthy, powerful, or successful but who is not accepted by other wealthy)

He participated in a popular insurrection in Colombia, and a failed attempt to overthrow the Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. Fidel transformed his affinity to violence into a fundamental ideological conviction: that armed struggle alone can bring about meaningful social change.

Carlos: It’s just that we’re still living like consumers of culture here. Why do we have to be given everything? Why don’t we produce it ourselves? Right now we should be exercising our right to creativity, maybe writing a play or rehearsing. But we’re all a bunch of comemierdas who produce less and less -- who know why? Obviously, our inner resources are withering away.

Few women had any influence, but Fidel owed those few a great deal.
Vilma Lucila Espín was a Cuban revolutionary, feminist and chemical engineer. She acted as a messenger when the guerrillas were hiding in the Sierra Maestra. Celia Sánchez was messenger, intermediary, secretary, organizer, adviser, and wife. When Fidel went into exile and traveled to Mexico in May 1955, he returned to Cuba on Dec 2, 1956 aboard the yacht Gramna (named after the original owner’s grandmother) and in the company of Che Guevara. Celia rejoined him in the Sierra Maestra. Two year later, on 1 Jan 1959, the rebel army under the command of Fidel, occupied the capital city. It was the greatest moment of euphoria in the history of the Cuban Revolution.

Compañero, women must always be given what they want! [compañero = person of equal status]

I had always tried to apprentice myself to the geniuses… I didn’t yet know how very easy it would be to find another teacher, so I was interested in keeping this one, for my doubts were multiplying.

Tupamaros: hyperintellectual, improbable, rigorous, crazy
an abundance of philosophy and literature students normally swell the ranks of militant movement, but also doctors and engineers.

I returned obsessively to my eternal questions: Who was I? Who could I be?

“Well, it does a lot for me when you make me laugh, and when you’re quiet and you listen.”

Roque Dalton was assassinated in El Salvador - star-crossed and impassioned intellectual that he was
asked the question of revolutionary coherence - Is it possible to be an intellectual outside the Revolution?

I’ll diligently apply the whip to myself, if you’ll acknowledge some value to my existence or at least, allow me to go on existing. But the margins for negotiation were narrow, for the truth is that at the very moment when Roque Dalton and his colleagues were debating the question of whether spilling their blood or sacrificing their calling was the best way of contributing to the Revolution, that same Revolution had already managed to dispense with them almost entirely.

Ya Te Aviso -- I’m Warning You

[Dana Clinton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Music Hall book group met last night with some discussion of Dancing With Cuba (by Alma Guillermoprieto), but most of the meeting was a presentation and question-answer session with two remarkable men sharing their experiences of Cuba (I am sorry to say I remember Mr. Labrie but not his great photographer partner...) where they have been traveling frequently to chase down and record great music as well as seek out amazing photograph opportunities. It was fascinating and allowed us all to engage more with the book, which was somewhat disappointing. Our moderator thought the author was whiny; I wouldn't qualify her as that, just a young, confused 19-year old who lived an unusual few months in Cuba and tried to present her memories of that along with other aspects of a difficult time in her life as she tried her best to figure out what was irresistibly attractive about the Revolution all while understanding that she couldn't completely buy into it. Alma G wanted to be a dancer good enough to join one of the great companies of modern dance in NYC. Much of the book, including the entire long first chapter, is terribly dense and tedious unless you are well-versed and well-immersed in the world of dance. However, her reflections on these months in 1970 when she accepted a position to teach dance in the ENA in Cuba were worth the effort to read because of how much I gleaned about Cuba, her history leading up to that year, the realities of the Soviet influence and the disasters wrought by embargoes that plunge entire populations into poverty... There is a lot of food for thought in the discussions about arts and intellectuals in the reality of a revolution, no matter how those people look upon the revolutionary process. I am so ready now to return to some fiction!!

[Lucía Morán Gaitero · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5
¿Qué papel desempeña el arte en medio de la Revolución? ¿Puede ser el arte de la Revolución un arte revolucionario?
Una crónica autobiográfica de una bailarina en la Cuba de los 70, que retrata el inicio del desgaste de un proyecto cuya materialización distaba del ideal que muchos tuvieron.
Alma pone sobre el papel la falta de recursos para desarrollar un proyecto artístico propio porque por delante estaba la revolución. Revela el maltrato a los homosexuales en una tierra donde los hombres tenían que unir esfuerzos físicos para sacar adelante el país.
También cuenta, sin embargo, la tenacidad con la que se resistía a las estrategias estadounidenses y la confianza en un proyecto de cambio que no salió como se esperaba.
Con admiración hacia la revolución cuestiona constantemente las grietas y fisuras, se pregunta por qué su cuerpo no se hace a la isla y lanza al aire la pregunta: ¿qué hizo que quienes en un momento la apoyaron se distanciaran?
Un libro para entender uno de los momentos cruciales de la historia de Cuba.

[Vivian Henoch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Planning a photo journey to Cuba, I chose in prep, Alma Guillermoprieto's extraordinary memoir, Dancing With Cuba at the recommendation of a friend. A dance indeed! Written in her native Spanish, then artfully translated into a riveting narrative with uncanny authenticity -- Guillermoprieto depicts her life as a young artist, her passions and shortcomings as a budding student of Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp in New York, her true-to-the-Revolution challenges in teaching modern dance in Cuba to students under the near impossible conditions, restrictions and deprivations of their school.

Nuanced, rich in its research, recollection of dialogue and political context, Dancing With Cuba is a dark, self-searching, multi-layered memoir, a tale of love and loss, yet ultimately a love letter to Cuba -- both a pleasure and a challenge to read, but so well worth the effort.

[Linda Puente · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many hotly debated opinions about the Cuban Revolution, but this memoir avoids joining the polemic. Rather, Guillermoprieto, who traveled to Cuba near the end of the first decade after Fidel took power, relates her personal experience rich with observations made by a naive, non-political somewhat spoiled young woman. A Mexican by birth, she spent her teen years studying dance in New York City with the BIG names in modern dance: Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla Tharp. She didn't jump at the chance to travel to Cuba to teach dance; rather she saw it as a rather inevitable next step when she began to accept the idea that she would never be a great dancer. While she doesn't claim to be a great historian, anyone interested in the recent history of Cuba really should read this book.

[Flowergarden24 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this a 3.5. Reading about and doing further research about the famous choreographers mentioned was fun and I enjoyed the author's honesty about her lack of knowledge about worldly topics. There are nice descriptions of the areas, events and people she knew. Writing books obviously is a better pursuit for this author rather than dancing. It doesn't seem like she had a lot to offer to the Cuban students. She lived among some interesting people and presents that in an interesting, not name dropping way.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this fascinating memoir of a 21-year-old dance teacher in 1970 Cuba in the midst of the 10 million Ton harvest.

My biggest criticism and frustration is that despite being written decades later from fragmentary memories but from a now grown and seasoned journalist, Guillermoprieto still manages to fetishize the physicality and bodies of Afro Cubans. It’s so weird to hear it from someone who at the time was developing far left politics and who as a narrator is quite critical at times of Cuba’s treatment of Afro Cubans.

[Kat B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in preparation for a trip to Cuba later this year. This is a really uneven book. I enjoyed the early chapters that talked about the author ‘s experiences at a dance school in Havana. The chapters set the scene well – I got a feeling for what Havana must’ve been like in the early 1970s. Later chapters are strange, such as where suddenly the author is suddenly suicidal - these chapters feel like a different book.

[Deborah Charnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating memoir about a 21-year-old who heads to Cuba to teach dance at the national academy. I was shocked to read what the author experienced and overheard from bigwigs in the Castro regime. Readers will learn much about the revolution fairly objectively. The author, as a dancer, was focused on teaching and sharing her art with students who were not much younger than herself.

After reading this book, I'd like to read more from Guillermoprieto.

[Ana Karenina O. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hay algunas partes donde me parece que la autora se azota mucho, demasiado sufrimiento juvenil en una mundo colapsado. Entiendo que sea contado desde las emociones de la juventud, y que el despertar al mundo resulte doloroso viviendo una revolución.
El retrato que hace de los cubanos, la descripción de las instituciones revolucionarias van más allá del romanticismo revolucionario.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book. It is also an interesting attempt by the author to potentially fictionalize memory. I read this book while in Cuba and thoroughly enjoyed it. I learned something about modern dance and revolutionary Cuba at the same time.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating lens to sink into the story of Cuba in the 70s with. Sometimes hard to get through because of my own lack of context but thoroughly enjoyed being taken for this ride with Alma. Particularly loved it as someone who loves dance history as well.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first thing I want to do when I finish anything by Ms. Guillermoprieto is read it again for the first time. This is no different. A meditation on memory, youth, and dreams misunderstood, I can’t recommend this one enough.

[Daniel Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Draft written in Spanish. Translated to English by Esther Allen for publication.

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an in-depth memoir about a time in the Cuban Revolution most Americans probably don't know much about - the late 60s and early 1970s. Fascinating from a historical and cultural perspective.

[Rita]

2004 born 1949
highly r ecommended NYR 27 May 2004
and all her reports/essays written for Washington Post and New Yorker