Tounge TWISTERZZZ

 So fun.

Mi mamá me mima,
y yo mimo a mi mamá.

Poquito a poquito Paquito empaca poquitas copitas en pocos paquetes

Camarón, caramelo,
camarón, caramelo,
camarón, caramelo,

No me mires, que miran
que nos miramos,
y verán en tus ojos
que nos amamos.
No nos miremos,
que cuando no nos miren
nos miraremos.

xo Julie

cool article and something you'll judge me for.

Okay, first things first, here's the cool article. I actually got kinda emotional reading it. It's about Pedro Pan kids today:

"Cubans Face Past as Stranded Youths in U.S."

And here's what you're going to judge me for. It's for Billy. (they're dancing to "fix you" and I couldn't help but think of it today):

it's good. i dare you to watch it and disagree.

~Ilanna

great song

i came across this song and fell in love with it. i hope you do too. enjoy. billy.

Santeria

Really cool video on Santeria (also good footage of just walking around Cuba):

aaaand...

some links on Santeria and Cuba in general. funny how...messy...they seem. You wonder who the ideal audience is:

http://www.santeriareligion101.com/ 

this one is just funny (but its not trying to be): 

What Is A Cuban?

and if you click around, can get to other info about history and religion.

A Santeria altar mixing Catholic and Yoruba iconography

a babalao priest uses shells for divination in cuba

~Ilanna

Los Carpinteros

http://www.loscarpinteros.net/index/

This is a link to Los Carpinteros website.  They are a group of artists who create new structures out of basically "found objects".  They are Cuban and they came to Skidmore because they had an exhibit in the Tang last year.  They are super cool, and although they have really nothing to do with the play, I thought I'd post anyway :)
xo Julie

Villa

I was looking into what the Villa Bahia De La Luna could look like and I came across three worn/older looking villas.

This one looks kind of Bed and Breakfasty.

I imagined the villa like this, but maybe higher off the ground.

This villa seem to be on the older side, but a a little to fancy to be the one in the play.


-Zac

Orquesta Aragón

This band has been super popular and influential in Cuba since the 1950's. They seem to play a more "classic" Cuban sound, but from what I can tell their music is still really popular today! 
xo Julie

Ariguanabo River

does dreaming of this bring good luck?

Interestingly, most of the stories and mentions of this river online are not in Santiago de las Vegas, they're in the town next door, San Antonio de los Baños. 

Curiously, this town is known for its International Museum of Humor. coincidence?

~Ilanna

Ibrahim Ferrer (Buena Vista Social Club)- Bruca Maniguá

Rum Rum Rum!

 

 Apparently the original Havana Club Mojito Recipe
(we should make some...)

1 teaspoon powdered sugar
Juice from 1 lime (2 ounces)
4 mint leaves
1 sprig of mint
Havana Club white Rum (2 ounces)
2 ounces club soda

Place the mint leaves into a long mojito glass and squeeze the juice from a cut lime over it. You'll want about two ounces of lime juice, so it may not require all of the juice from a single lime.

Add the powdered sugar, then gently muddle the mint into the lime juice and sugar. Add ice (preferably crushed) then add the rum and stir, and top off with the club soda . Garnish with a mint sprig, and then DRANNNKKK ITTT!!!

Lengthy, but a lot of nice pictures and maybe some interesting history of EL RON
I didn't read it all, but it's fun to just click through and skim
http://www.therumelier.com/id74.html

Love, Zazie

Good Music

...please just watch the first few minutes.

we expect you to know the first three bars for rehearsal tonight :)

~Liz and Ilanna

ps. jk!

boleros!

the whore who plays music in her room might play this!

Nilo Cruz

An interview with our playwright, Nilo Cruz, on his process of creating:

...and the Joseph Cornell boxes he's talking about:

(I feel like we're kinda making one of those with this.)

hehe.

His (super cool) website:

http://www.josephcornellbox.com/ 

And finally, an interview from the NYTimes with Nilo and Maria Irene Fornes. I think some of us read this in Intro to Directing with Alma, but it's fun rereading it again now. (Especially at the end--he's talking about Two Sisters and a Piano, the one we did in collabs last year.):

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/27/theater/spring-theater-visions-of-america-what-it-means-to-be-both-cuban-and-american.html?ref=nilocruz&pagewanted=3

~Ilanna

Bright Colors!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from my research on traditonal Cuban clothing.  Enjoy!!

More pictures coming soon!
xoxo
Alana

Friday afternoon in Centro neighborhood of Havana december 2008.

sweet video
hey guys i was on youtube and i found this really cool video of walking thru the streets of havana. there is so much going on and so much to observe and see. music can be heard in the background as well as loads of other noises. though it is from 2008 this video gave me such a great sense of the atmosphere of havana.

ps. if you have a pandora account, there is a station called "Cuban Radio" which i enjoyed listening to for a few hours today. such a gold mine.
-billyb

Where Delita might live...

Comida Cubana.

huevos. arroz. platanos - I actually ate this combo a lot in Spain and it is surprisingly delicious!

 pollo. platanos. arroz. frijoles.

Sopa de Maíz con puerco.

Cigars?

a page for those of us interested in the tobacco world of Cuba

http://www.my-cuban-cigars.com/cuban-cigar.html

santiago de las vegas

I found some really wonderful information regarding santiago de las vegas, the town in which hortensia and her kids live, most of this information coming from wikipedia.  figgerd i'd save you the trouble!

It's population is around 22,000, as of the year 2000.  For some perspective, saratoga's population is about 4,000 people larger than that.  I'm not sure of the area of the town, but it was founded as a farming community, which i think it probably still is(which, incidentally, is kind of like saratoga's rural population.  think pete's warehouse in the tropics? Schuylerville etc.).  it's 12 miles south of havana.

The town was founded in 1824, when Kind Ferdinand VII of Spain allowed them to build a statue of him there, which i guess allowed them to establish the town.  apparently the town was originally called santiago de compostelo de las vegas, which, according to wikipedia, directly translates to something like

"faithful and very illustrious city council."

i'm not sure about the end of it, but yeah, faithful and illustrious?  i think that makes sense for our playwrights purposes.

Another thing that makes sense is that Italo Calvino was born there, the italian writer of Cosmicomics (among other novels and short story compilations).  Cosmicomics deals with a couple of "alternate" accounts of creation, where a God figure is replaced by scientific principles.  I guess that's how i would sum it up in a sentence... :P  Lots of faith in that guy! :)

It's main source of revenue is transportation (picture of a bus below! :) ).  apparently there is a meteorology center in the city, along with an agricultural experimentation center.... That probably needs a citation though, lol.

http://sdlv.blogspot.com/  santiago de las vegas' blog, recently updated too!  if you copy and paste this webpage into google translate, you can get an english version.

http://wwrn.org/articles/2807/?&place=caribbean&section=catholic  This may be the religious ceremony Hortensia speaks about to the general.

interesting stuff posted before. lovin the blog! See you guys tomorrow night!

-brandon

Waves

This was after Hurricane Paloma.

This reminds me of a lot of places I used to go on vacation when I was little.

This is a U.S. soccer team sitting on the seawall as a wave rushes over them. I thought it was a cool picture.

Throughout the play there is a lot of wave imagery to kind of fuel the changes of scenes. This imagery seems to be especially important to Luciana and Luca so I thought I would post a few pictures of cuban beaches, the Caribbean sea, waves, etc.

- Zac

Rodrigo Y Gabriela- Tamacun

here's the link where you can download the song. just type in the 3 letter/digit code on the right side to dl the song

http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=73913&song=Tamacun

Loíza

So as you all might've heard about a billion times, I was born and still live in Puerto Rico. This winter break, I got to go back home after not having been able to go back for a year. This allowed me the great opportunity to go and see places that are very close to what we are trying to recreate for this show. Puerto Rico is very much modern, and has grown from it's poor beginnings, but there are some towns that still reflect the old pre-American Puerto Rico.

The specific town that I went to is called Loíza, which is the poorest town in Puerto Rico and is the one town that is still connected to our African heritage.

Now, I will apologize for the quality of the pictures, but for some reason my father saw it as a bad idea for me to go walking around unsafe neighborhoods with a camera. Instead, he chose to drive me around so that I could safely take pictures from inside the car. Trust me, in places like these people are not as friendly as they seem in the "Come to Puerto Rico" commercials.

Notice the bars in the windows and patio.

Much like what Andy showed us, this house with the bars on the windows and the patio reminded me of what Delita's place might look like.

Yet another house with an iron gate protecting the patio.

Again, another house with bars, this one with less of a welcoming feeling. Abandoned, even.

Painted mural much like you would see in Havana, Cuba.

As my father and I drove around Loíza, I saw this painted mural on the side of a building and I snapped a picture of it instantly. My father remarked that he had seen a place just like this in one of his travels to Cuba. In the far left you see two men playing "bongos", while to their right a man, with his hat off, dances to the beat. The mural to the right also shows a couple of men playing handheld drums called "pleneros". These are very typical puertorrican instruments, and have nothing to do with Cuba, but still show how music is a pivotal part in both cultures due to our shared African heritage.


I hope this helps!
-Jaime

THE POPE COMES TO CUBA!

Here's an article from the BBC about the Pope's visit to Cuba in 1998. It describes the excitement of the Cuban people and how Castro reacted to his visit.  Be sure to check out the "context section" because it talks about what the Pope requested from Cuba and the US.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/25/newsid_4041000/4041643.stm

-Julie

the havana seawall

i thought that these pictures were important so that we have a visual of the seawall that is so crucial to our setting. Also it seems that the seawall brings people together and inspires love, which is one of the biggest themes in the play. it is no coincidence that Luca and Delita meet at the seawall.
- billy

Danzon

Found two videos that could help us get a feel for the danzon. (Samuel and Basilio will have to know a couple steps.)

This one is just plain adorable:

And this one is a "how-to" thing, but its scratchy and in 

Spanish. At around two minutes they start dancing and you can actually see the steps closely:

See you tonight!

~Ilanna

Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams

Day 1: 

Successful reading. Fantastic cast and design team. And I think we like the script.

Here's space to create our Cuba. So we can prove our "it" (thanks Billy!) and show whoever else stumbles on this what we're doing.

I'm emailing everyone the log-in info and password, so everyone can add to this as much as they want (and ideally no less than twice a week)!

To start it all off, here's an inspirational photo or two from Andrew Moore. He photographed in Cuba in 1998 (coincidence?) and I highly recommend his website, http://www.andrewlmoore.com/view_project.php?project_id=2.

 And if you're feeling up for some reading, check out this really interesting blog:

http://hereishavana.wordpress.com/ 

Here is Havana – A blog written by the gringa next door, conspires to give you a dose of what life is really like across the Straits.

Hasta mañana!

~La Directora