ABOUT: this site

In the summer of 2001, those who attended the Second Annual Conference and Seminar on Performance and Politics in the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico saw two extraordinary performances by DanzAbierta from Cuba. This project was inspired by those performances, and through these pages we hope to introduce students, scholars, and artists to the sophisticated and multi-layered work of DanzAbierta. We originally intended to work collaboratively with Marianela Bo$aacute;n, the artistic director and founder of DanzAbierta, when she came to New York in the fall of 2002. She had been invited to teach in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. However, in recent months, the US government has stopped giving visas to Cuban artists who want to visit the United States, and Marianela was not able to come to New York. Cuban music and dance has enriched North American culture for decades and it will be a great loss if artist like Marianela continue to be discouraged from presenting their work to North American audiences. This site has been created by a team at New York University including Shanna Lorenz (project manager), Tal Halpern (web design), Alexei Taylor (video tecnician), May Bletz (video, resource links and annotation). The project was supported by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and New York University. Materials were donated by DanzAbierta, Diana Taylor, Lauri Novak and Shanna Lorenz.