DANZ QUARTERLY No 7 April 2007
Cubanos on Queen Street…
By Jennifer Little
Jennifer Little investigates how a little bit of Havana has come to Auckland.
When you climb the spiral staircase of worn concrete, peeling paint and wrought iron railings up several flights through the exotic shadows cast by patterned lamps, you could almost fancy you’re hanging out in Havana.
There are no clouds of cigar smoke here though.
You’re in upper Queen Street, central Auckland, where The Cuban Groove nights - organised monthly at the Khuja bar by renowned Cuban dancers Isbert (Vivio) Ramos and Greydis Montero - have become legendary.
Salsa amateurs – or salseros - of all ages and ethnicities come here to practice their steps and moves in a Latino ambience to a live South American band. But most of all they’re here to witness their mentors – ex-Lady Salsa dance musical stars - in spectacular action. Vivio and Greydis are, quite simply, spellbinding.
The crowd clears the dance floor as they appear from a side door out of the darkness. In a partly choreographed, partly improvised frenzy of sinuous limbs, gleaming skin, ringlety hair, they leap onto the bar to cheers and applause. Clad in skin-tight white pants and string tops, they unleash their dazzling, gravity and biology-defying moves to the gutsy rhythms of Los Van Van and other contemporary Cuban big band recordings.
Strutting, spinning and swirling in a hip-swivelling, pelvis-grinding, muscle-quivering vortex of raw energy, their style is nuanced with a distinctive African influence unique to Cuban salsa. The crowd gasps in awe and delight.
With each performance comes a colourful costume change to bring out the characteristics of the particular dance - from sassy red, fringed Spanish-style to romantic retro 1950s Havana outfits - as well as props and accessories including hats, scarves, blindfold, flowers, a bottle of Vodka. Every dance is as flirtatiously fun and exquisitely executed as the next.
Combining passion and professionalism, the couple are not only technically impressive but convey an infectious joy that’s all part of the spirit of Cuban dance.
Their moves resonate with words from the international Club Salsa website; “For some unknown genetic reasons, Cubans seem to be born with super flexible joints to do all these difficult manoeuvres. Somehow many of their body turns seem to defy body geometry. Just as you think that a particular move is impossible, they’ll come up with something that’s even more complex…”
There are officially just 36 Cubans living in New Zealand (according to the latest Statistics New Zealand figures from the 2006 census). Most Cuban emigrants – over a million since 1959 when Communist leader Fidel Castro took power – headed to Miami, Florida.
Unlike those who’ve chosen exile, the pair never intended to leave their homeland long-term. Although they face difficulties should they want to return home, they’re as proudly, vibrantly Cuban as you can get. They’ve have been spreading and sharing the joys of Cuban salsa ever since they arrived four years ago as choreographers and principal dancers with the touringdance musical Lady Salsa.
Call it the spell of salsa. As one who’d spotted the half-sized A4 poster at Devonport’s local supermarket, featuring “Vivio & Greydis – two of the most highly accredited Cuban dancers in the world. Together they have over 35 years experience, both in performing and teaching”, I was struck by this alluring incongruity.
Authentic, gorgeous Cuban dancers here in the heart of New Zealand suburbia?
Later on that Tuesday evening, curious, I trekked down to the local community hall – commonly the venue for weekend craft markets, yoga classes or toddler play groups.
Tonight though, the place is pulsating uncharacteristically with the irresistible beat and blare of Cuban salsa music, and Greydis’ voice chanting the Spanish names of the steps that were to become deliciously familiar: “sombrero ! la prima ! la prima doble ! pasesala ! la abuela ! enchufla ! enchufla doble y quedate! - now he goes ! now she goes !”
The hall, full of men and women aged from 20s to 50s, is in full swing. No one has a show of making their hips, hands, torsos, arms, feet, legs, heads, necks, move as fluidly, seamlessly and sensuously as Vivio, and his partner in dance and life, Greydis. But it’s a buzz trying. And as everyone will attest, you get a sweat-inducing work-out that is much more fun yet just as taxing as a stint at the gym.
Salsa is in their genes. They’ve been moving their hips to the salsabeat since they could walk – he back in Guantanamo where as a youngster he was as keen on boxing and baseball as dancing, and she in Havana – an irrepressible performer from a young age who loved inventing her own routines.
When in the Philippines several years ago – where they made the front page of the Manila Times as salsa celebrities because Filipinos adore the salsa – a journalist asked Greydis how it felt to be Cuban. She replied that “from as far back as I can remember – any excuse to move your hips and you do.”
Albeit years apart, they were both selected – he from age 11 and she from age eight - from hundreds of ambitious dancers to train at the prestigious and highly competitive National School of Arts in Havana where they studied ballet, contemporary, national and international folk dance, jazz, gymnastics, music, rhythms and composition, history of art and of course, salsa.
Highly-ranked dancers in Cuba; Vivio was the star turn as principal dancer of the National Company of Contemporary Dance of Cuba for 14 years, following three years with the esteemed Ballet de Camaguey, while Greydis – undergoing the same rigorous, six-year training – has won many awards whilst with the company Danzart, for flamenco, Afro-Cuban and contemporary styles. Her exquisite looks put her in demand as a model too.
Far from home, where the locals famously dance in the street or at the kitchen sink any old time of the day or night, the couple’s teaching skills and passion have encouraged stiff-limbed Antipodeans to loosen up.
Sharing not just the steps, moves and grooves but the intoxicating son music and breathless bliss that comes from practising Cuban salsa (there are other derivations such as LA salsa, Miami salsa, Peruvian salsa and many more but the Cubans invented it) has become something of a mission for this lithe couple.
And salsa is only the beginning. As well as teaching salsa steps to individuals and couples, many of their students are enjoying the Rueda de Casino – a group form of the Cuban salsa whereby couples move in a circle in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.
“It’s a really exciting and fun style of dance where couples execute new moves randomly called by the ‘leader’,” Greydis explains.
They are also exponents of a rich, diverse repertoire of African dance styles – many little or unknown here yet – that have evolved in Cuba.
Grouped under three general categories of Popular Cuban Rhythm, Latin and Afro-Cuban, they are starting to introduce students to some of the exotic-sounding dances they specialize in, including Danza, Contra Danza, Son, Mambo, Cha Cha Cha, Pilon, Mozambique, Merengue, Bachata and Reggaeton.
Then when you’ve mastered those, there is a host of Afro-Cuban dances to add, from the Congo series to the Yoruba and Rumba series. Indeed, the couple like to see themselves as taking their students on an exhilarating cultural journey via these dance styles.
Dancing, they feel, “is a blessing, a passion, something to be shared.”
They are at the cutting edge of a new wave of salsa dance sweeping Latin-themed bars and cafes, community halls and after-school classes across New Zealand. There are over 600 kids learning the salsa at salsa champion Stayz Raukawa’s four Star Dance Academies in Blenheim, Nelson, Motueka and Havelock, including a team of youngsters whose talents have caused a sensation at world salsa congresses in Los Angeles, Japan and Sydney in the past two years.
It was here in the South Island that Vivio and Greydis were first invited to teach salsa workshops by a Blenheim-based Latin dance teacher and salsa enthusiast Ann Giles.
At her invitation, they made a hasty decision to stay on for a week or two, even have a holiday after an exhausting six-and-a-half month Lady Salsa tour of 32 Australian cities which ended here in 2002. Prior to that, they’d toured Europe with the company, and spent two years performing and teaching in London’s West End.
“At the beginning it sounded like a big, crazy idea to stay, ” says Greydis . “When you come from Cuba and you’re travelling, you can’t organise things in a week.”
Four years on, having fallen in love with the land and the freedoms they have here, the couple have not only continued teaching salsa all over New Zealand – including a four-day salsa extravaganza in Raglan in January but have found unexpected work and performance opportunities here in dance workshops, film, theatre, television commercials and radio.
And with regular classes in central Auckland and on the North Shore, performing in numerous festivals such as WOMAD, Jambalaya International Festivals in New Zealand as well as judging salsa dance competitions here and in the United States, performing and teaching at this year’s New Zealand Pacific Salsa Congress in Wellington, they have brought an exuberant slice of Cuban culture to New Zealand.
It’s all very well to romanticize the infectious music, dance and seemingly carefree Cuban lifestyle it evokes in popular culture. But there’s a darker side to life they left behind under the rule of the now aged, ailing president Fidel Castro, who has led the communist dictatorship since 1959.
Like many of their compatriots, Greydis and Vivio resent the degree of control their government has over their lives.
“We had to ask permission to stay away,” says Greydis. “After two years they said it’s time to come home and we’re not giving you a permit to be out of Cuba anymore. We weren’t ready to come home because we’d signed contracts with Whale Rider (the stage show). So they said ‘no, you’re not Cuban anymore.’”
“We don’t get angry,” adds Vivio. “But we realize it’s not fair and we hope someday they (the Cuban authorities) will realize the situation has to change.”
On the other hand, it’s a blessing to be born in a country like Cuba, with such a strong culture,” says Greydis. “We’ve been fortunate to be able to study professionally, but it’s something you can’t keep to yourself. You need to share it (dance) with people and that’s when teaching comes alive.”
It may be a way off yet, but Greydis envisages a time when many more Kiwis will catch the salsa bug, inspired to leap out of bed in the morning, turn on the music and indulge in a bout of salsa before they start their day.
The couple want to take salsa and other Cuban dances to Auckland’s outer suburbs where people haven’t yet had the chance to attend classes in their own neighbourhood. And they hope one day to have their own school here to teach the plethora of Latin and Afro-Cuban dance styles they know.
“Salsa”, says Greydis, “is such a good way to live life. You don’t have to be born Cuban to enjoy the music, to change your life, be happy, to dance !…”
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