Original, with passion? Ballet Nacional de Cuba gets close, but no cigar

<p style="text-align: justify;">( Bill O'Leary / THE WASHINGTON POST ) - Anette Delgado as Giselle and Ernesto Diaz as Hilarion in the Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s rehearsal of “Giselle” at the Kennedy Center.By Sarah Kaufman. There may have been little magic in the Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s “Magic of Dance” program Tuesday at the Kennedy Center Opera House, but there were hints of enchantment. All but one of the works in this showcase of excerpts were commonplace, and Artistic Director Alicia Alonso’s arrangements of the original choreography were ordinary and unsurprising across the board. Read More

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A Cuba music intensive

<p style="text-align: justify;">Gulf Islands Secondary School music students — many of whom took part in a recent trip to Cuba — perform for ressidents at Meadowbrook. The GISS music show runs tonight (Wednesday) and tomorrow night at ArtSpring.Photo by Derrick Lundy. High school music director Bruce Smith’s exuberance for Cuba — its culture, people, music and dance — makes it tough to keep him on track as he chats about the recent trip he and 18 choir students took there.The 10-day trip, which involved several performance exchanges, workshops and an eye-opening immersion in Cuban culture, marks the third time Smith has taken Gulf Islands Secondary School music students to Cuba. Read More

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Oil matters more than communism

<p style="text-align: justify;">Volkhonsky Boris. May 31, 2011 15:23 Moscow Time. A recent discovery of a vast oil field off Cuban shores has given rise to a wave of controversial reactions from the US. The capacity of the deep water oil field is estimated as being between 5 and 20 billion barrels, which in any case will turn Cuba from an oil importing country into an oil exporter.One part of the American establishment reacted rather nervously, and the Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen even initiated a bill aimed at deterring oil-and-gas exploration off Cuba’s coast. Read More

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The Dances of Africa, as Filtered Through the Americas

<p style="text-align: justify;">By GIA KOURLAS.May 29, 2011. There’s nothing like a DanceAfrica performance to send you straight to summer. It has its own flow, and you can’t fight it, no matter how chaotic, raucous and hazily dull it becomes. Chuck Davis, the group’s artistic director, loves to speechify, and during the nearly two-and-a-half hour program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Friday night — it was so long he had to cut the finale — there were two award presentations and a memorial service to honor those once connected to DanceAfrica. This Image by Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Read More

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Meow! Could Cuban blue become new cat breed ?

<p style="text-align: justify;">By Jeff Franks. Reuters. updated 5/26/2011 8:36:43 PM ET 2011-05-27T00:36:43. HAVANA — In a Havana apartment, four silvery gray cats race around the floor and tumble over the furniture playing with each other, occasionally jumping into the laps of their human visitors. Read More

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Diana Nyad, at age 61, prepares for second attempt to swim from Cuba to Key West

<p style="text-align: justify;">Swimming with sharks at age 61: Legendary long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad is ready to make the trek again from Cuba to Key West, and this time finish.By Sally Jenkins, A couple of years ago, swimming legend Diana Nyad was emceeing a swank awards banquet in the Waldorf Astoria ballroom in New York when she suddenly woke up the crowd by stripping off her dress. Standing on stage in nothing but a swimsuit and high heels, dangling her cleavage, she further enlivened the affair by whipping out a bugle and playing reveille. Read More

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Rainy Season Off to a Poor Start

<p style="text-align: justify;">By Patricia Grogg. CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba, May 25, 2011 (IPS) - Despite major underground water reserves and the start of the rainy season, people in the central region of Cuba are anxiously scanning the skies in the face of scant rainfall, which is needed to ease a drought that has become more severe in recent years. "The situation is tense. As of mid-May, no rain had been reported, and in April, average rainfall did not exceed 50 millimetres," commented Benito Rafael Migoya, a provincial agriculture official in Ciego de Ávila, capital of the central province of the same name 460 km east of Havana. Read More

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Cuba focuses on training to protect human lives and property

<p style="text-align: justify;">IN these hard times, when nature is asserting its power without differentiating between rich and poor countries, here in Cuba we have drought, while other peoples face floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and burning jungles, as if the planet were settling accounts. Cuba is preparing, as it does every year before the hurricane season (June 1 – November 1), with the traditional training and practice exercise Meteoro 2011, in order to strengthen organization and the people’s ability to respond to natural disasters. Read More

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Cuban modern dance arrives

<p style="text-align: justify;">By Nancy G. Heller. Posted on Tue, May. 24, 2011. For The Inquirer. To most Americans, Cuba is still a tantalizing mystery: a forbidden island nation, just 90 miles from Key West, where communism coexists with palm trees, really good cigars, and the sultry strains of salsa music. Among dance lovers, it has long been celebrated as the birthplace of great ballerinas - from 90-year-old legend Alicia Alonso to Pennsylvania Ballet's own Riolama Lorenzo - and mambo, a social dance form that has found its way to Hollywood, Broadway, and beyond. But we've never seen Cuban modern dance - until now. Read More

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Cuban art on show at gallery

<p style="text-align: justify;">Published: Mon, 2011-05-23 04:42. Something real big and special is launching this evening at Y Art and Framing Gallery, at 26 Taylor Street, Woodbrook. It’s the premiere of the Cuban Art Exhibition which runs for two weeks and features the amazing works of Cuban artists Alicia Leal and José Fustér. The Y exhibition runs until June 3 and viewing hours are Monday to Friday (9 am to 5 pm; Saturday (9 am to 2 pm).The fortnight of Cuban art and food is also on at two other venues, Horizons Framing and Decor Ltd, at 37-39 Mucurapo Road, St James, and Hyatt Regency, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain. Read More

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