The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Cuban national ballet defectors in Miami seeking to advance careers Posted: 05 Apr 2013 06:12 AM PDT
"They are so talented and we are thrilled to see them," said Pedro Pablo Pena, founder of the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami, a nonprofit dance organisation. After an intense two-hour workout, the dancers explained that they were looking to advance their careers outside communist-led Cuba, where dancers enjoy privileged lives but earn modest salaries of US$10 (RM31) to US$30 (RM92) a month plus bonuses for foreign tours. "Our goal is to train hard to achieve our dream of dancing and helping our families economically in Cuba," said Annie Ruiz Diaz, 24, who began dancing in Cuba at age 6 and had been with the National Ballet for almost seven years. The defectors are staying with friends and relatives in Miami until they can find work. "We expect to put on some events with them for the community here, but I don't have the budget to employ them full-time, unfortunately," said Pena, the host of the audition. "But they are talented and I imagine they will find spaces in companies here in the United States," said Pena, a former dancer who came to Miami from Cuba in 1980. The National Ballet of Cuba confirmed on Wednesday that seven members of the group had abandoned the company while touring in Mexico last month.
One of the dancers stayed behind in Mexico with friends, they said. Cuba criticises US law There was no mention of the defections in the state-run media in Cuba, which has seen periodic defections of artists and athletes since Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959. Speaking at an event in Washington, the chief of the Cuba Interests Section, Jose Cabanas, blamed the defections on the Cuban Adjustment Act because he said it made it easy for any Cuban to enter the United States. "The press is going after the defections — but the real questions are related to those pieces of legislation that create those situations that are nice for the cameras and the microphones," he said. The dancers — five men and two women between the ages of 20 and 24 — quit the company at the end of a nine-day tour performing "Giselle" in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. After a night of emotional farewells with fellow dancers, they said they left their hotel before dawn on March 25 and headed by bus and car to the US border.
She said she was paid US$225 for the Yucatan tour. The Cuban national ballet, known for its classical style and for producing world-class dancers, regularly makes international tours. Over the years, many of its dancers have defected and joined other companies abroad, often saying they want to explore contemporary dance forms and build more lucrative careers outside Cuba. Others have been allowed to leave Cuba on contract to foreign ballet companies. They include Carlos Acosta with the Royal Ballet in London and Jose Manuel Carreno, who retired in 2011 as a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre in New York. "Artistically I felt stagnant and economically I couldn't help my family," said Martin.
"So many dancers leave, and I think the company understands that's part of the risk of our touring abroad," she said. Alicia Alonso's ballet Cuban ballet legend Alicia Alonso founded the National Ballet of Cuba in 1948 and, at the age of 91, despite being nearly blind, continues as its artistic director. Cuba provides free training to thousands of young dancers around the country from the age of 9, with the elite graduating to the National Ballet. The company has struggled financially in recent years and now accepts fee-paying dance students from abroad. The school's Havana headquarters, located in a colonial-era former palace, is also undergoing expensive repairs after parts of the ceiling collapsed. The 120-strong company was likely to overcome the loss of seven members, said Octavio Roca, a Cuban-American philosophy teacher and author of the book, Cuban Ballet. "It hurts them of course, but they have a great farm system, so much young talent coming up. It's an incredible programme," he said. — Reuters |
| New-look Rijksmuseum puts Dutch masterpieces into context Posted: 05 Apr 2013 03:16 AM PDT
Rembrandt van Rijn's "The Night Watch" will be the only work still hanging in the same place when Queen Beatrix officially opens the Rijksmuseum on April 13 after a €375 million (RM1.5 billion) renovation to a treasure trove of Dutch art.
Rembrandt's large masterpiece shows Amsterdam's civic guard setting off on a march and is approached along a "hall of fame" hung with works such as Johannes Vermeer's "Woman Reading a Letter", and "The Merry Drinker" by Frans Hals, as well as opulent displays of fruit and flowers. The opening will be one of the queen's last official duties before she abdicates, showing off the country's art, its rich history as a naval power and society of merchants. Many of the prize pieces in the collection of 8,000 works are now displayed in broader context, with related paintings, furniture, silver and ceramics arranged in close proximity to each other as part of the museum's new layout.
Nearby are works by another friend the silversmith Johannes Lutma and an oak cupboard inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl by Herman Doomer, whose work Rembrandt admired and whose portrait he painted.
"You create the world in which they lived and give a feeling of the times." Likewise, a room devoted to the country's history as a naval power contains an enormous model of the Dutch warship "Willem Rex" and a trophy of war — the stern carving from King Charles II of England's flagship "Royal Charles" that was captured by Dutch forces in 1667.
The building itself has also had an extensive renovation. Designed by Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers, a Catholic, the museum opened to the public in 1885 but was deemed too showy by Protestant critics. So gradually, many of the interior decorations, from murals to mosaics, were covered up or removed. Those have now been restored. "Cuypers's building was not well-received by the Protestants of Amsterdam because it looked like a cathedral, so they slowly covered up part of it," said Antonio Ortiz, one of the architects who worked on the renovation. "It was dark, dim, sad, a labyrinth. We have brought the building as close as possible to its original splendour." The museum hopes the overhaul will help catapult it up the rankings for visitors, and attract as many as two million visitors a year, up from about 1.2 million just before the renovation work started. That's a far cry from the 10 million people who visit the Louvre in Paris each year. — Reuters |
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