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Archive and Memory in Cuban Dances: The Performance of Memory and the Dancing Body as Archive in the Making

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Cultural Memory and Popular Dance

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

Based on an anthropological study of Cuban archives related to popular dances, from danzón to salsa via Afro-Cuban dances, the chapter questions the issues raised by the political and ideological use of the dancing body as a vehicle for cultural memory in Cuba. Different types of archives regarding Cuban dances are examined: the “classical” archives preserved in the Havanese libraries and documentation centres produced under Fidel Castro’s government; the “post-archives” (Franco, Dance Research Journal, 47, 3–22, 2015) of the audiovisual recordings made by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional created in 1962; the body of the dancer as site of recollection and potential archive in the making. The chapter then investigates the temporalities of the archive of the body and the body as archive as well as the political dimensions of such processes in the particular context of Fidel Castro’s socialist regime.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All translations from Spanish and French to English are mine.

  2. 2.

    https://www.roh.org.uk/news/dance-essentials-carlos-acostas-cubania.

  3. 3.

    I carried out this research in the frame of my postdoctoral research position at King’s College London within the ERC-funded project Modern Moves (2013–2018). I am therefore grateful to the project’s director Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir and the ERC for having enabled this research.

  4. 4.

    León Argeliers, Urfé Odilio, La rumba, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, La Habana, Ediciones del Consejo Nacional de Cultura, ante 1979, 14 p.

  5. 5.

    Música Cubana, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, Centro de Documentación, 1975.

  6. 6.

    Centenario del danzón, Ministerio de Cultura, Dirección de Patrimonio Cultural, Museo Nacional de la Música, 1979, 42 p.

  7. 7.

    Interview, Havana, 10 December 2014.

  8. 8.

    Although I did not mention “salsa” but my interest in Cuban dances at large, the dancer assumed that I was interested in salsa. Interestingly she precisely employed this term instead of “casino” which is more commonly used among Cuban dancers. The term “salsa” spread in the 1970s as a commercial label linked to the development of Fania records to describe a genre of Latin dance music initially performed in New York City. It was much later used in Cuba to designate casino/timba dancing, especially with regard to a foreign audience.

  9. 9.

    Anteproyecto del plan de cultura de 1963, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963; Proyecto. Plan para 1964, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963, 43 p.; Seminario Preparatorio del Congreso Cultural de la Habana, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, Dorticos Torrado, Osvaldo, 1967.

  10. 10.

    La Cultura en Cuba Socialista, Ministerio de Cultura, 1982.

  11. 11.

    Conjunto Folklórico Nacional, Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1963; Apuntes sobre el Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba, XV aniversario, Ministerio de Cultura, 1962–1977.

  12. 12.

    The Ballet Nacional de Cuba is actually based on the existing Alonsos’ ballet dance company created in Cuba in 1940 (Vessely 2008: 243).

  13. 13.

    Various dance genres form the Conjunto’s repertoire, from Afro-Cuban genres such as rumba to contradanza such as tumba francesa.

  14. 14.

    In the words of Fernando Ortiz, “cubanidad” designates the “generic condition of being Cuban” while “cubanía” is rather a “complete, felt, conscious, and desired cubanidad.” Lecture given at the University of Havana on 28 November 1939, in Revista Bimestre Cubana, vol. V, XLV, no. 2, 1940: 161–86.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paris Nanterre University, Nanterre, France

    Elina Djebbari

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  1. Elina Djebbari
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Correspondence to Elina Djebbari .

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  1. University of Chichester, Chichester, West Sussex, UK

    Clare Parfitt

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Djebbari, E. (2021). Archive and Memory in Cuban Dances: The Performance of Memory and the Dancing Body as Archive in the Making. In: Parfitt, C. (eds) Cultural Memory and Popular Dance. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71083-5_11

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