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  • Submitted by: lena campos
  • 04 / 26 / 2012



A new Cuban ballet company is pleasing crowds with its very modern twist on classical dance, as Metro found out.

Ballet Revolucion is turning Cuban dancing on its head
A bunch of hot Cubans strutting their stuff on stage to Beyoncé, Prince and Usher sounds a top night out but it’s hardly revolutionary. That’s not how Roclan Gonzalez Chavez sees it, though.
Chavez, one of Cuba’s leading choreographers, is the creative mainspring behind Ballet Revolución, an unashamedly crowd-pleasing mix of outstanding classical and contemporary dancers let loose in a stylistic mash-up on a mostly MTV-friendly playlist. Talking to him during European debut tour rehearsals at Havana’s Teatro Nacional, pliés and freestyling whirring away behind us, he makes light of the connection to a key word in Cuba’s history.
‘Hey, it’s a good name, we don’t get hung up on that,’ he says. ‘But it is a revolution. In our show, the dancers get to open their minds and bodies. These dancers have trained in one style, ballet or contemporary, but here they get to show everything they can do. This show is all about the dancers, there’s no story or anything to tie them down. It lets them fly.’
Alongside the chart-topping dance hits there is more traditional Cuban fare on offer in Ballet Revolución’s debut show, too, with mambos by Pérez Prado and Juan Luis Guerra cropping up on the songlist. But the lion’s share is devoted to feelgood numbers with the dancers revelling in marrying classical lines to club rhythms with a spot of hip hop and world class gymnastics thrown in for good measure. Was he worried it could end up looking like one long MTV video?

Roclan Gonzalez Chavez is one of Cuba's leading choreographers
‘I don’t want it to be completely commercial but if you do something that’s supposed to be “authentic  Cuban”, that’s just a tourist thing,’ he says. ‘Cuba isn’t stuck in a time warp. I’d like to use some more  Cuban music but, for now, the great thing is we can use all kinds of choreographic styles with music people know. This is a company that’s evolving very quickly. We’re very different from how we started out and that’s only a year ago.’
There’s no doubt Chavez and show’s co-choreographer Aaron Cash had a remarkable talent pool to pick from. Visiting the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte in  Havana, home to both a modern dance and ballet school, is a remarkable experience, the studios full to bursting with a rich mix of burgeoning talent, dance moves spilling out into the sunny corridors. It’s where the Ballet Reolución dancers trained, shining examples of a system where educational opportunity is free to all and that breeds top talent and fierce competition.
Juan Carlos Hernández Osma, at 19 a star in the making, jumped at the chance to swap classical ballet for a step out with Ballet Revolución. ‘For me, Michael Jackson was always the one, now I’m doing all this stuff I never danced on stage before,’ he says.
Former junior diving champ turned dancer Dannys González Medina, 22, backs him up. ‘The Cuban dancer is really complete. We can dance folk or salsa or classical or hip hop. I  always danced Michael Jackson. So this is a big opportunity for us.’
It’s a big opportunity, too, for  Cuban dance fans to compare Ballet Revolución’s new moves with the hotly anticipated return of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba for a British tour. Dancer/choreographer George Céspedes, whose Olivier-nominated Mambo 3XXI features on the programme, has taken a more traditional route with his dance career but is quick to point out that Cuban dance is constantly evolving.
‘Cuban dance is a lot of things. It’s not just a party,’ he says. ‘My generation grew up hating salsa because it felt like the past. Then you think what you can take from your own history. Mambo 3XXI is my attempt to reinvent myself and to show  Cuba’s place in the third millennium. It’s about finding a place for Cuba’s past in Cuba’s future.’
You could call that a revolution.
Ballet Revolución opens at London’s Peacock Theatre tomorrow.

Source: metro.co.uk


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