Enjoy the mastery of Camagua at the National Theater of Cuba
The Folklore Company Camagua, with a great deal of will and talent, invites Havana audiences to the season it is presenting this Thursday at the National Theater of Cuba.
In the Covarrubias Hall, until Sunday 16th April, it will offer two different shows, an expression of the defense of Cuban identity and the fruit of the research carried out by its founder and director, Maestro Fernando Medrano Vireya, and the members of this renowned dance company.
The group will dedicate its first performances to the 45th anniversary of the National System of Cultural Houses: Congos Trinitarios, Cubanísimo, and Homenaje are the works scheduled for Thursday, the 13th and Friday 14th April, both at 8:30 pm.
Traditional dances from the Congo, such as makuta, garabato, rumbas, and tunes from the region of Trinidad, will be included in the opening piece, recreating the culture of the royal Congos of the third village founded by the Spaniards, a sample of the members of the San Antonio Town Council.
This is followed by a music and dance show with the most important ballroom dances, in tribute to the composer, pianist, arranger, and orchestra director Adalberto Álvarez, an innovator of son. Cubanísimo also includes hawking and culminates with the «chancleta», a dance of skills for the dancers, who form polyrhythmic cells.
The show closes with a new window that Camagua opens to the Caribbean, Homenaje, an example of a culture with a strong presence among us, the second Haitian immigration to Cuba in the first quarter of the 20th century.
For the invitation on April 15 and 16, Saturday at 8:30 pm and Sunday at 5:00 pm, the concert program includes four pieces: Awán, a full stage projection of one of the most important ritual ceremonies in the Regla Arará of Cuba. With Arará music, the choreography belongs to maestro Bárbara Balbuena.
The Fiesta de los Bandos de Majagua is a beautiful celebration where dance and music unfold as a fan of our peasant dances just from this festivity comes the work clave, cuateque y son, the next in the repertoire.
The values of the rumba as a cultural heritage of the Cuban nation are recreated in the following title: Rumbeando, choreographed by Bárbara Balbuena and Fernando Medrano.
And finally, Caribe soy, which, based on a folkloric fact, due to the significant migration of Jamaicans to Cuba in the first decades of the last century, artistically recreates the cultural and spiritual life that continues to be practiced today by the Cuban descendants in Baraguá municipality, in the province of Ciego de Ávila.
The Folkloric Company Camagua, with a very unique visual aesthetics, maintains a systematic and rigorous research, an art of high values, and its scenic projection invites us to enjoy its mastery of the folkloric, traditional, and popular dances of Cuba.
Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez.