EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 25 March 2024 — With a tour of Europe included, the director of the Cuban dance company Lizt Alfonso faces 2024 full of energy and projects, despite the difficult situation in which her country is immersed, or precisely because of it. In an interview with EFE, the dancer and choreographer explains how “exciting” she finds it to return to Barcelona and Madrid, talks about dance as her “life mission” and explains why she sees it necessary to continue making art in the midst of the crisis.
“(Now) is when it makes the most sense. Man does not live on bread alone. Bread is fundamental, but so is the spirit. The spirit must be fed and, if you do not feed it, it has no way of resisting the vicissitudes of life in general and this (the current crisis in Cuba) is one and it is very big,” she reasons.
She recalls that she founded the company in the middle of the Special Period (the crisis that followed the collapse of the Europe’s Soviet bloc), when “there was absolutely nothing” in Cuba, neither food nor electricity. Looking back over the past few decades, she says her country has become accustomed to “permanent resilience.” “I don’t think we’ve ever had really good times,” she notes.
Faced with difficu
