Centro de Promoción de la Danza In Havana, Cuba

Watching Ballet

This is the fourth in a series of posts on my first visit to Cuba.  Click these links for parts onetwo and three.

We had a chance to visit the Centro de Promoción del la Danza in Havana.  The school was started back in 1931 by Alicia Alonso and continues to this day under the direction of Laura Alonso, Alicia’s daughter.  I was eager to visit the school partially because of Alicia Alonso’s history of vision problems, specifically a detached retina.  It is because of my study of vision that photography has become so important to me, so people’s stories as they’ve overcome visual deficits inspire me.

Alecia formed the company in Havana that would eventually become the Escuela Nacional Cubana de Ballet in 1948 and then going on to dance in Moscow and Paris.  After the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s claim to power, Alecia returned to Havana to to create the ballet school and to this day, in her 90’s and partially blind, continues to work with the Centro de Promoción del la Danza in Havana.

The introductory image of a ballerina in training at the top was made while she watched others rehearse for a performance.  I loved the intimacy of the image as the ballerina stretched and watched the other dancers perform and rehearse.

 

Watching 2

Watching in layers

Instruction

Instruction layers

To get these shots, I was shooting through an open window at a mirrored wall with a 70-300 zoom lens so that I was looking at reflections in a rehearsal mirror (see the outtakes below).  Dave Kile got some similar images shooting from inside the room as shown in the outtakes at the bottom of this entry and here.

 

Ballet

This shot was a bit of a pirate shot, capitalizing on a couple of other photographers posing of one of the ballerinas.  I was quite a bit behind Matteo and Mark Heaps and poached this shot.

 

Stretching

Walking around the school, I came across this dancer stretching.  I am thinking that this could be considered a stress position in “enhanced interrogation” if anyone other than a dancer were to experience this.  I loved the pose as a rather matter of fact, every day kind of thing even though this position would have snapped every tendon in my body.

 

Ballet shoes

The performances and rehearsals that we got to see were amazing.  These feet belong to a husband and wife team who were on stage when we showed up.  They were amazing and this was the best I came up with from their performance.  Duncan managed a proper portrait of them in his post, Bridging The Gap.

 

Outtakes:

The Crowd

Self portrait on ledge

Erik Couse at ballet school

 

 

 

Many thanks to Jorge Victor Gavilondo Cowley on some of the finer points of the history of Prodanza.

17 Replies to “Centro de Promoción de la Danza In Havana, Cuba”

  1. Correct. Centro Pro Danza is Laura Alonso school. I recognize the facility very well…Marinao. The National Ballet is located of of the Prado…marble entrance…elite studios

    1. Hey Paul, I believe people of other nationalities can enroll in the school or program as there were a couple of students who were not Cubans in the class. I don’t know any more than that…

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