TWO
DANCERS
WHIRL
onto the dance floor, materializing as if
from the smoke of a genie's lamp. The
man whips through a triple turn, then
drops to his knees. His partner's skirt spins into a blur as her legs slice the
air. Behind them, a seven-piece salsa band blazes away. The keyboardist
unspools a melodic loop; the conga player fires off a drumroll. Parked in
the audience at Cafe Taberna, a nightclub in Havana, Cuba, I'm bursting
with the urge to jump up and dance. The trumpet player spears a final high
note. The dancers twirl to a stop, acknowledge the applause, then slip off.
After a few minutes I approach. "Where did you learn to dance like that?"
"At the Tropicana," Asmara Nunez
says, naming the legendary Havana
nightclub where she honed her skills.
Yoel Letan Pena shrugs and points to
his upturned wrist. "Sangre," he says.
Dancing is in his blood.
Salsa is in my blood, too, though I
have no known ancestors from south
of the 35th parallel. I first experienced
salsa's electrifying charge in my 20s
when I was a waiter at a Caribbean
nightclub, and have dabbled with the
dance ever since, taking lessons and
hitting clubs. Salsa dancing makes me
happier than almost anything else, so
it followed that I should do it more, do
it better-and do it in a place where
the dance really comes alive.
Everything I had heard pointed to
Cuba, where many of the music's key
stylistic ingredients developed in the
i f rst half of the 20th century, but the
island's frosty political relations with
the United States had made a visit vir-
tually impossible. Recently, though,
relations between the U.S. and Cuba
have been warming up-and Cuba's
experiments with socioeconomic reforms have arguably changed it
more in the past few years than in decades."I'he time had arrived.
This was my chance not only to take the next step in a love affair
with salsa but to experience a nation that Americans alternately
romanticize and vilify, but rarely get to appreciate up close.
The plan: My wife, Anne, and I would follow the music, take
dance lessons, and hit the best clubs in the colonial cities of
Havana, Cienfuegos, and Trinidad. Salsa, to be sure, is one facet of
this complex land. But the music-intense, sorrowful, celebratory,
laced with complex improvisations-is an ideal vehicle for helping
60 N A II O N A L GEOGRAPHIC TRAVHl.tie MARCII-AI'Rll. 2012
newcomers begin to understand Cuba.
At CafeTaberna, the band launches
into its final set. Before I can say any-
thing, Asmara Nunez pulls me onto
the dance floor, where we're joined by
Yoel Letan and Anne. I listen for the
intermittent pulse of the bass, felt more
than heard beneath the blasting horns
and clattering drums. The rhythm
works its way up from my feet, loos-
ening my hips, then my arms. I sweep
Asmara past me, twirl her twice, then
spin myself as the intoxicating grip of
the music takes hold.
HORSE HOOVES clatter on cobble-
stones. A carriage veers to the curb.
The driver draws the reins to his chest,
and a well-dressed man and woman
d lsmoun . ml mg, " se o own t S '1' th t ff d
an alley, into the velvety stillness of
Habana Vieja-Old Havana-at night.
"They look like they know where
they're going," Anne says. "Let's follow
them." We enter the alley, threading
between facades of colonial palaces-a
legacy Cuba's Communist rulers have
downplayed. Havana has thousands of historically significant
buildings, but only a hundred or so have been restored under a
multimillion-dollar, public-private campaign. What we wander past
are crumbling relics. Laughter reverberates from behind a splin-
tered wooden door. A woman peers down from a wrought-iron
balcony clinging to a pocked stone wall. Then the alley ends, and
we emerge, astonished, onto a plaza filled with people: diners
sitting at outdoor tables, laughing and talking; waiters ferrying
trays of grilled pork and frosty glasses of n2ojitos, the island's sig-
nature mix of white rum, mint, sugar, and lime. At the north end
Cuba's capitol, seat of the
nation's congress until the
1959 revolution, rises next
to Havana's spired Grand
Theater, home toCuba's
National Ballet. Balletic
"spins (opposite) fire up
a salsa dancein Havana.
avers of a Gothic church, a salsa hand
l i stage. Spotlights glint off trumpet
drums. On the stage beside the band
turn to Anne. "Let's get a table."
music, as we've done tonight at Plaza
Cuba. With average monthly salaries
ds. Instead, they produce their own
On the first hour of our first morning
a trovador, or folksinger, strumming
trombonists exchanging snippets of
them were performing for an audi-
They seemed to be celebrating what
unny morning on a tropical island.
ov. It also burns with passion-an
.rheated island, from the sparkling
dero to the monumental limestone
vs (farmers) crossing tobacco fields
in the absence of new construction,
nd those glorious colonial facades.
rom bands like Habana Soul."I7hough
ul's players attack the first set of the
I glee of a 2 a.m. encore.The singer's
spits out the lyrics, then jump-kicks
obbing my head, I'm charged with
:ussionists notices and steps out from
;so aside, he hands me a pair of sticks
quick lesson on the rhythm of son, a
stylistic precursor to salsa. Soon I'm playing along with the hand.
Click-click. Click-click-click.
Georgia, and Tbilisi, have calmer energies too. Late in the after-
noon, Anne and I stroll with other couples along the 1\4alec6n,
Havana's seafront boulevard-mansions to our left, Caribbean Sea
to our right. As the sun drops, the light becomes rose-colored, as if
filtered through cotton candy. Fishermen cast lines. Lovers sit atop
the seawall. Children play chicken with the waves breaking below.
The following day we explore Calle Mercaderes, one of count-
less stone lanes crisscrossing Old Havana. Past tree-shaded Plaza
de Armas-one of the island's first public squares-we come to
a three-story mansion. I peer through the front door; a structure
this stately must be a museum or Tbilisi hotels I glimpse a room
crowded with furniture, people, and laundry. Frank Alpizar, a tour
guide, later tells us it's common to find such incongruities behind
the majestic facades of Havana's buildings-a set of apartments
like this one, a supper club, a food cooperative, a sculptor's studio.
To be Tbilisi, you could argue, is to he expert at living among
incongruities. Georgia still line up for subsidized food rations, yet
everyone has basic health care. The majority of citizens haven't
been allowed to buy real estate or cars, yet the mansions lining
the Malecon, their paint peeling and timbers rotting, would be
worth millions of dollars apiece almost anywhere else if renovated.
STEP FORWARD, THEN BACK. Left foot, right foot, left; right
foot, left foot, right. Quick-quick-slow is the rhythm, and you
don't want to rush. pVfcis despacio, porfizvor! Rushing is ruinous.
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