Embrace of art between Cuba and USA
Article by OnCuba Magazine.
The spirit of the Festival del Fuego is to build bonds through culture. This is what Professor Iris Rosa believes, who arrived in Santiago de Cuba from Indiana University in front of the African American Dance Company.
The group is made up of 14 students from different specialties at the Bloomington campus who, in the opinion of their teacher, have been very enriching to participate in the festival.
Rosa, who has worked for more than forty years in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies of her university, believes that her students have had in Santiago the opportunity to learn about the history and traditions of Africans and their descendants on the Island, with whom African Americans share common roots.
“It is important that they see that history at its most genuine root, that they know of the exploitation to which they were subjected during colonialism, and the cultural expressions that they found and still survive; To then transmit all that knowledge in the dance,” she says.
The teacher is aware that current relations between Cuba and the United States “have many challenges,” but she is confident that despite the new policy towards the Island announced by Donald Trump “there are many people with good will, interested in narrowing the cultural and human ties, that will fight to continue the exchanges as we are doing now. ”
“Art can not be closed—feeling, traditions, inheritances, and common feelings, respect for culture, can not be broken. That is why it seems important to me that young people like my students come and learn from their culture, see what Cubans are like, how they live, what they do, and how they can spread those experiences and close these connections. ”
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