Dance Flash: The 2010 CubaCaribe Festival of Music and Dance

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Beginning this weekend, the sixth annual CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music will pay tribute to Cuban and Caribbean dance and music. This year, the festival turns its focus to New Orleans and Haiti, "[paying] homage to the concept of evolution through displacement."

The first weekend will focus on companies hailing from New Orleans, Haiti, and New York. Afoutayi, a dance company from Haiti (with performers who have relocated to the US following the earthquake), will share the stage with Ase Dance Theatre Collective (from Brooklyn) and Kumbuka African Drum & Dance Collective from New Orleans. The following weekend includes Bay Area-based companies Las Que Son Son (Cuban Rumba), Los Lupeños de San José (Mexican folkloric), Liberation Dance Theater (Reggeaton and contemporary), Tata Kaya Art (Congolese), Alafia Dance Ensemble (Haitian), Paco Gomes & Dancers (Afro-Brazilian modern), and storyteller Muriel Johnson. The final weekend hosts the festival's Artistic Director Ramón Ramos Alayo and his Afro-Cuban modern dance company, Alayo Dance Company.

Stella Adelman, one of co-producers, also dances with La Que Son Son. She says that "[the festival] is CubaCaribe, so it's Cuba and the Caribbean Diaspora. The focus started out on Cuba and then it expanded. In terms of Cuba, a lot of the dancers know each other because Cuba is small and the dance community is even smaller. Especially for those dancers who are now in the States, it's a real treat for them to come back together and work here. So we try to find a balance between local artists from the local community and then bring in outside artists from across the nation...

CubaCaribe is different from the Ethnic Dance Festival because it's not only traditional dance or folkloric dance. We do have a lot of modern dance. Ramon's dance company is an Afro-Cuban modern company so it's based in... the way [dance teachers] teach modern Cuban, which is different than the technique that [America-based modern dance teachers] teach it here. But you'd definitely call it contemporary dance. We also have a group doing Reggaeton. [The festival isn't] necessarily traditional dance; we have a range of stuff."

Alayo, who is originally from Cuba, moved to California in 1997. With his base here in the Bay Area, he travels back to Cuba every so often to visit his family and friends, who still live there. "One of the reasons I go there as much as I do is to keep me fresh in Cuban technique because my work is mostly about Afro-Cuban modern dance," Alayo remarks.

About his new dance work, Alayo says that it centers around immigration. "[T]he first time I went to New York, and I was on the subway, there were so many artists performing on the train and outside the train, making their lives as dancers, as musicians, as artists... This year I'm focusing my piece on immigration, how the artist immigrates from one country to another one to make their living, and the idea of this is [bringing together] street dancers and street musicians. We'll have different dancers: hip hop dancers, tap dancers, a musician from Trinidad and Tobago, and all my dancers. It's going to be a combination of all of the dancers together, and we're building something like a subway train station on the stage."

But remember, just because a dance work is serious doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy it. Adelman commented, "Even with Ramon's [piece]; [it's] is a full-length, what you would typically consider modern. [But you] still feel that contagious energy even though it's a more somber theme. [The festival isn't] just celebration dances. These pieces often tackle issues such as slavery and cancer and death, things that are usually downers."

On the phone, Adelman spoke with such an upbeat tone that I debated taking the afternoon off, finding her in the Mission, and giving her a giant bear hug. Hearing how much the audience reaction meant to her as a performer really struck a chord with me. She said, "One of the things that I think is the best thing about the festival is the audience. The excitement--you can feel it. The energy is so alive in the air. You feel the electricity; it's contagious. People jump to their feet at the end of the show, and [performers] feel the energy radiating from the stage and and the audience gives it back. It's really exciting."

About the work that goes into the festival, Adelman reflects that "we're a grassroots organization where we're not at a level yet for the organizers to really get paid... We all are working artists and have full time jobs, day jobs; I'm also the theater manager at Dance Mission. [The festival staff] try during the hours of 8PM and midnight to organize [the festival], and we've just got a few grants to help us really institutionalize ourselves and pay staff for the first time for the upcoming year. We're really excited about that because we're at a turning point as an organization."

In addition to the three weekends of celebratory and culturally creative performances, the festival includes dance and music classes with master teachers, a movie screening, and lectures that do not require reserved tickets. A special events (i.e. non-performance related) schedule can be found here.