Dancing with Cuba

In her memoir, Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution, Alma Guillermoprieto shares her recollections of the revolution when she traveled to Havana to teach dance. After working with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham in 1969, Guillermoprieto was offered a teaching position in a country undergoing massive change. Guillermoprieto wasn't particularly interested in politics or in going to Cuba—she had traveled from Mexico to New York specifically to become a dancer—but she took the opportunity, and in the process was transformed from a modern dancer into a journalist and award-winning author.

The story begins in New York City, where 20-year-old Guillermoprieto has been working with some of the best modern dancers in the world in the hope of becoming famous. Born in Mexico, she traveled to New York to study under Martha Graham; after completing her time with Graham, however, she works with Merce Cunningham, who makes it clear that she should focus her efforts on teaching, not performing. This is a shot to the heart for Guillermoprieto, who dreams of a career in dance. Still, she is intrigued by Cunningham's offer to secure her a six-month teaching position in Havana.

Guillermoprieto interviews with the director of the National School of the Arts in Havana, Elfriede Mahler, a difficult and stodgy artist. Despite her sadness at Cunningham's back-handed decision about her trajectory as a performer and Mahler's prickly attitude, Guillermoprieto decides to spend six months in Cuba. It is 1969, and on the island, the revolution is moving toward its peak.



Guillermoprieto arrives in Havana so feverish that she is immediately transferred to the hospital, where she claims that she received the most thoughtful and proactive medical care of her life. Healed, and with a good perspective on her temporary home, Guillermoprieto makes her way to the National School of the Arts, to meet her students. When she arrives, she is startled; the school is so horribly underfunded that there are no decent practice clothes, little in the way of food to eat, and no money for mirrors. Despite being located in an architecturally stunning building, the school is barely making ends meet. Guillermoprieto's students, Antonia, Jose, and Orlando, are sweet, serious, and charming young people, but are so physically and artistically untrained that Guillermoprieto is not entirely sure where to begin.

As she struggles to work with her students, who are much more interested in the fairy-tale-like qualities of Martha Graham's dance than the abstract modern dance that Guillermoprieto has been hired to teach, Guillermoprieto is also struggling to understand the world into which she has been placed. Cuba is confused and riotous—Che Guevera has just been martyred, and the nation is struggling to harvest one million tons of sugar in an attempt to get out from under the Soviet thumb. Fidel Castro and his new government have no respect for the arts, but Guillermoprieto's favorite guides to the island are her openly gay, artsy friends—theatre directors, writers, and dancers.

As Guillermoprieto spends more time on the island, working in a hostile environment and trying to understand the Fidelists around her, including her good friend Boris, she comes close to a nervous breakdown. She even contemplates suicide as the zafra, or One Million Ton plan, fails, and Cuba is thrown into even more chaos. In the midst of it all, Guillermoprieto is forced to consider not only her artistic interests and the importance of dance, but also the political world around her—inspiring her, ultimately, to take up writing, and begin her career as a journalist.



A journalist and former professional dancer from Mexico, Guillermoprieto writes extensively about Latin America for both British and American news outlets. She was a professional dancer from 1962-1973, after which she began a career as a journalist for The Guardian and The Washington Post. She has written a number of books in English and Spanish, including Samba, a memoir about studying dance in Rio de Janeiro, The Heart that Bleeds, Looking for History, and Dancing with Cuba.