CubaCaribe Festival 16th annual offers 3 shows @ Z space // SF
The CubaCaribe Festival is back for its 16th year, celebrating the movement, rhythms and music of Cuba and the Caribbean!
This year’s festival features the world premiere of She Who is Queen, choreographed & directed by Susana Arenas Pedroso and performed by Arenas Dance Company.
The piece explores, through dance, music and spoken word that the world cannot be without women, their work, wisdom and hearts.
3 shows!
Friday, June 10th at 8pm
Saturday, June 11th at 8pm
Sunday, June 12th at 2pm
$30, advance tickets only
Z Space Theater, SF
Get tickets: www.zspace.org
See video!
About show:
The new work delves into the complex role of Cuban women today in both Cuba and in the United States, underlining the physical, artistic and intellectual contributions they make to society. Although much of their work is not recognized, women often carry the weight—literally and metaphorically—of their communities and their countries. Cuban women understand the centrality of their roles in society and joyfully and proudly embrace their work in spite of it being undervalued. With their labor, creativity and ability to bring on social and political change, they embody different forms of strength and build powerful networks of womanhood.
Standing in sharp contrast to the modern American woman who has made more advances toward independence, Cuban women are still extremely limited in their possibilities. The new work looks at the ways in which women artists leaving Cuba for the U.S. maintain their culture while moving forward in their adopted homeland. It presents their personal struggles in a different economic system and artistic scene and highlights their shared experience of learning another language, system, food, climate and culture. With the growing media coverage of issues facing women in the workplace (equal pay, opportunity for advancement, sexual harassment, etc.), Ms. Pedroso’s work highlighting the important work of women and the brilliance in their minds and bodies is potently relevant.
Featuring an all-female ensemble of approximately seventeen dancers and three soloists, four drummers and five singers, ADA ARA reflects the choreographer’s specialty in Afro-Cuban folkloric sacred dance, ceremonial and folklore Yoruba traditions brought by West African enslaved men and women to Cuba and other countries during the Spanish Empire. The piece will also include secular Cuban popular dance forms such as the rumba, which grew out of urban Havana in the late 1800s as an expression of the underclass.
