|  Director's Statement:
I did not set out to make this film. Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight found me, seduced and inspired me, haunted me, prodded me, would not let me go. I went to Cuba for the first time expecting to have an interesting time. I had a riveting time.
Why? Everything was at stake each day for so many I met, including dancers rehearsing in low-ceilinged, hot studios whose every arch of the back, bend of a wrist conveyed both a passion and heartbreak that words could not express - in part because words could not be spoken.
What did I, in retrospect, bring to Cuba? Certainly not an ability to speak Spanish. But - a fascination with light; a lifelong love of ballet and more recent interest in using film to bring forward the beauty and power of dance; a belief in families. And a surprising realization that my various endeavors are about consistent human questions, questions laid bare in my experience in Cuba. Who am I and where do I really belong? Am I brave enough to become the person I was meant to be? What about gifted people who are caught in the sweep of history and in fact, influence history? Is transcendence, in the face of loss, possible? All converged as Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight took shape.
As an American working over the past three years in Cuba, with Cubans - while shooting in the United States as well - there have been unrelenting challenges which have tested will and endurance as well as logistical capabilities. And there have been inspiring gifts of human spirit throughout. Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight does not presume to provide absolute answers to complex human and historic questions.
The hope is that complexity of the questions is brought forward.
- Cynthia Newport |
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