Subtle and Spectacular Solidarity: Modern Dance between Cuba and the US after 1959

After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, official relationships may have soured between the island and its northern neighbor, but modern dance connections became more acute and dynamic. Cuban dancers built on New York based techniques to forge a national style of movement with the help of U.S. colleagues who made their life in Cuba or visited for a short time. This presentation focuses on two U.S. modern dancers in particular, who defied geopolitical norms to sustain connections across the Florida Straits. First it examines a white, U.S.-born dancer, Lorna Burdsall, who married Cuban rebel fighter and later revolutionary dignitary Manuel Piñeiro. She was a founding Cuban modern dance figure, and for the rest of her career, she applied dance and choreographic lessons garnered in the U.S. to her adopted homeland. She also staged spectacular political solidarities, particularly with civil rights activists in the U.S. South with her protest piece Now! (1968). The following year, the second artist under examination, African American modern dancer Morris Donaldson, arrived in Cuba to set Malcolm X (1969), a solo tribute to the Black Power Movement. What did quotidian and spectacular expressions of solidarity mean for the U.S. and Cuban collaborators? How did these dance dialogues fit into larger discourses about race, geopolitics, and cold war struggles? This analysis seeks to consider how diverse historical protagonists conveyed solidarity through movement and how these performances fit into a larger repertoire of political action. Contributing to recent scholarship on connections between Cuba and the U.S. across the “sugar curtain” that came down after 1959, this presentation suggests that modern dance has remained a key site for sustained intellectual and physical exchange through daily classes and choreography.