Mi Casa es Su Casa: Cubanía in Cyberspace

Abstract

Mi Casa es Su CasaCubanía in Cyberspace Sarah Town (bio) On March 13, 2020, I spent the final evening of my trip to Havana, Cuba with friends at Le Select, a restaurant in Miramar where the organization Proyecto Rueda de Casino hosts a weekly dance social. Rueda de casino is a social dance that emerged in 1950s Cuba and is one of the most popular forms of Cuban social dance both on and off the island today. It is danced in a rueda, or "wheel" formation, in which pairs of dancers form a circle and execute known patterns and combinations in unison. The crowd at Le Select tends to be a mix of older social dancers and younger friends of the Proyecto dancers, but that night the dance floor was rather empty, with just a few regulars stepping out song after song. Over the previous few days, news of the spread of COVID-19 in Europe and the United States had circulated with increasing urgency. Cuba had just announced the first four confirmed cases on its soil, diagnosed in Italian tourists who had been quickly quarantined. Rumors that recreational venues and events would soon be closed gradually became more concrete, and that night at Le Select, we counted ourselves among the lucky ones for having been able to get in "one last dance" before the shutdown. The next day as I waited for my connecting flight at Miami International Airport, notifications of impending travel restrictions and shutdown orders in Europe and the United States flashed persistently across the screen of my cellphone, and I prepared myself mentally to go into isolation for the duration. Over the next week, as this new reality set in, there was a surge of activity on social media. In particular, artists took to these networks to offer an unprecedented number of free and donation-based live shows and classes, to pursue innovative modes of collaboration, and to continue interacting with their audiences in the face of closed venues and canceled tours. Producers and fans of Cuban popular dance culture on the island and around the world contributed to this surge, mobilizing with creativity and resilience. Their goal was to exercise the role of artistic leaders by lifting people's spirits and encouraging people to stay home during the pandemic. On a more personal level, their online activities helped them to stay active, inspired, and positive during a time when generalized [End Page 99] health and financial uncertainty compounded the usual precarity of artistic lives in tangible ways. Decades ago, Fernando Ortiz defined cubanía as "full, felt, conscious, and desired Cubanness; responsible Cubanness, Cubanness with the three virtues […] of faith, hope, and love."1 Cubanía in cyberspace, then, is an extension of in-the-flesh spaces and relationships that have long fostered a global community, which has continued to flourish in recent months, strengthening those ties, producing new experiences for its participants, and gesturing toward a new, translocal kind of soundscape.2 Musicians and dancers have created songs and choreographies explicitly referencing and making sense of COVID-19 realities; existing organizations have curated new online #quedateencasa and #stayathome series, and new networks have sprung up to produce such series; teachers have shifted their teaching to online platforms like Zoom and Facebook; and community leaders have offered informal lectures online in their areas of expertise. At the same time, this burgeoning of online offerings raises a number of critical questions about present-day US society's troubled relationship with the arts, Cuban access to and use of Wi-Fi and internet-related technologies, and the life of the global Cuban dance community. Many COVID-19 inspired offerings have built directly on preexisting practices. For example, dance teachers and choreographers of the Cuban diaspora commonly share brief clips on social media of new choreographies to promote themselves and their work. Early on in the generalized quarantine, Cuban dancer Nano Manuel Hechavarría Ulloa, now based in Ness Ziona, Israel, offered a new choreography called "The Corona Dance."3 Set in a back patio—one imagines it's his—the clip heralded a new, intensified era of home video making by working artists. For music...