Malpaso Cuban Contemporary Dance at the Joyce Theater

New York Latin Culture Magazine

5 years ago

Malpaso Dance Company. Courtesy Nir Arieli / Malpaso.

Malpaso Dance Company, Cuba’s leading contemporary dance company, opens the Cuba Festival at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea, Manhattan, Wed-Sun, January 9-13, 2019. From $10

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The program includes:

Fielding Sixes by Merce Cunningham
Carrying My Own Floor by Abel Rojo
Ser by Beatriz Garcia Diaz

Tabula Rasa

The season highlight is Tabula Rasa by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin (former Batsheva Dance Company Artistic Director). He worked with the Malpaso in Cuba to reestage this dance.

A “Tabula Rasa” is a blank slate. It is the uncarved block of Zen. It is the blank canvas, the empty space before the idea occurs.

If you think about it, this is very appropriate for a young Cuban dance company making its way out into the wider world.

Performance Schedule

January 9, Wednesday at 7:30pm
January 10, Thursday at 8pm (preceded by a curtain chat)
January 11, Friday at 8pm
January 12, Saturday at 2pm (family matinee) & 8pm
January 13, Sunday at 2pm & 7:30pm

Master Class

Malpaso’s Artistic Director Osnel Delgado is teaching a master class at Gibney 280 in Manhattan’s Financial District on Friday, January 11 from 10am – 12pm. $20

The class is Cuban Technique of Modern Dance, which is a fusion of North American Modern Dance (including Anna Sokolow, Martha Graham, José Limón, Merce Cunningham), European ballet, and traditional Afro-Cuban dances and rhythms.

Have you ever wondered, “How do they move like that?” The fusion of modern, classical and Afro-Cuban movement is the somethin-somethin that makes Malpaso special.

Malpaso Dance Company

Malpaso is more than just another dance company for several reasons:

Cuba is the living heart of Latin culture in the Americas, so whatever happens there has relevance to the rest of Latin America.
Cuba (New Spain) was the gem of the Spanish empire. Of all the Spanish colonies, it had more European sophistication because it was the Spanish capital of the Americas. That legacy is in its ballet school.
Cuba is where Spaniards and Africans mixed into something we now call Afro-Cuban or just Latin. Because Havana was the main slaving port of the Americas, Afro-Cuban culture went everywhere.
National Ballet of Cuba (Ballet Nacional de Cuba) is the world’s biggest ballet school. The old Soviet system of arts training produces world-class ballet dancers. Training there is a dream of every Latin American dancer. In Cuba, you learn good technique and get noticed by New York and the rest of the world.
Economic and political troubles have made life hard in Cuba for many years. If you are going to dance in Cuba you have to be very good and really want it.
The Joyce Foundation, one of America’s leading dance producers, has been nurturing Malpaso since 2012.

Malpaso is a company that is being very intentionally birthed by one of the great dance producers, out of one of the great pools of dance talent in the Americas. It’s worth going to see them every season.