Dancing

Jose Fernandez* is a 25 year old dancer in a local dance company  in Havana. Tonight, he sits calmly along the Malecón and tells me of his love for dance. His voice is quiet but as he begins to talk it’s clear that his voice surfaces through his body and he moves gestures vividly with as much energy and motion as the crashing waves. 

If I couldn’t dance, I would die. It’s in my blood.

When I was little, like four of or five years old, my cousin began to teach me to dance. He was a professional dancer and I was always interested in what he was doing. He began by teaching me the music and then over time I learned the steps. I’ve been dancing ever since. Now I dance every day. I have classes five days a week but if I’m not dancing with my company, I’m dancing in my house, on the streets, anywhere I can move.

I’m not very interested in politics. That’s what everyone who comes to Cuba asks me. I don’t support the government, there’s no way I could, but I’ve had to learn to live under it. It doesn’t define me, it doesn’t define my friends and it doesn’t define my family. We’ve made our own communities and we have our own fun. That’s why I love dance. When you dance you are human and when you don't have your freedom you have to find a way to be human. My mother died 12 years ago and I moved in with my uncle and my grandmother. It was then that I really began to realize that it is my relationships that matter. One can complain all they

I would never want to live anywhere except Cuba. I’ve traveled through South America and the Caribbean with my company but nowhere has compared to here. I would like to go to the U.S. at some point but I would never want to live there. Kids there are so caught up in drugs and violence: there is no youth, there is no fun. The people of Cuba are so vibrant, and so fun; here there is music on the streets. In the U.S. there are gangs on the streets. It’s something I can’t imagine.

PS: The majority of this narrative was taken from a conversation that I had with Andy one night. Andy is a young Cuban student who is learning English and was able to help me with most of the translation errors or questions. As we began talking we talked a little more about family and favorite music but I chose to include the above parts both for sensitivity purposes and interest to the reader.