Caribbean Dance From Abakuá to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity

Caribbean Dance From Abakuá to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity. Ed. Susanna Sloat. Gainesville, FL:University Press of Florida, 2002.

The focus of this anthology is tracing the African systems of movement (dance) through Caribbean and North American dances. It centers on the Caribbean, but argues carefully and with exceptional detail for the ways in which African dance and musicality have influenced the world.

The authors write on Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe, Trinidad and Tobago, Curacao, and the US-Caribbean connection. Of interest to my current research were the articles on Cuba, in particular the one on Ramiro Guerra, the modern dance choreographer of Cuba. (Interestingly, of the three articles on Cuba in this anthology, two refer to modern dance. The first one is an overview of dance history in Cuba, with attention to African influences.) This article, “The Dance World of Ramiro Guerra: Solemnity, Voluptuousness, Humor, and Chance” by Melinda Mousouris (pgs, 56-72), paints Ramiro Guerra as an aging dancer and intellectual who lives on the border between being a hermit and cultural innovator. Mousouris gives the history of Guerra, his training, appointment as founding member of Conjunto Nacional de Danca Contemporánea, and his success in the 1960s. She also situates the 1970s as a time of “suspicion of contemporary dance” because “the artistic freedom of the 1960s was challenged when the ministry of culture placed control of performance companies in the ands of political officials, who knew little about art and perceived sedition in all they did not understand” (57). Of course, Guerra was creating his “magnum opus” the Décalogo, which was a dance re-presentation of the 10 commandments with edgy themes like sexuality and class. Famously, after a year of preparation, the presentation was canceled, and he was removed from his role on the Conjunto (although he retained his salary). This censorship resulted in Guerra’s immediate ending to choreography until the 1990s, but only in limited arrangements. Rather, he became a scholar and writer of dance history and anthropology in Cuba. It’s unclear where or if much of his work has been published, but Mousouris places Guerra endlessly in his small apartment, in the center of Havana, between his books and barre, continuing the wheel of técnica cubana.

This article is useful for its history, interview quotes, and general support of other pieces of Guerra I’ve encountered.