Dancing with Cuba

In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba's National School of Dance.

For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever.

In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto—now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America—resurrects a time when dancers and revolutionaries seemed to occupy the same historical stage and even a floor exercise could be a profoundly political act.

Exuberant and elegiac, tender and unsparing, Dancing with Cuba is a triumph of memory and feeling.

From the Trade Paperback edition.