Learning to Dance

It's said the national pastime in Cuba is seduction. Seduction is a language and a way of life on the island. It's in the walk, the scant clothes and sweaty glow in the tropical heat, the waves crashing around the couples kissing on the MalËcon at dusk. It's even part of the religion. The Virgin del Caribe del Cobre is Cuba's national patroness, but in the magical Santeria religion, she is Ochún, the Cuban Aphrodite. She's a black, voluptuous, rumba dancing goddess who can be generous or ruthless. She's no virgin. She has many lovers, and her favorite is Changó – the Santeria Orisha – or god--who is a skirt chaser, irresistible to women, his domain virility, passion and dancing. Before I left for Cuba, a santero in Brooklyn warned me, "You're going to be swept off your feet by a son of Changó. Be careful."

* * *

I left a cold, gray New York, and just four hours later arrived in Havana where flamboyant trees created umbrellas of bright orange flowers shading the streets from the sun burning in the open blue sky. Billboards with portraits of a young Che Guevara, the handsome face of the revolution, lined the road that led to the center of the city.

Perhaps because it has been off limits for so long and because of its reputation for vice and revolution, this city is not only decrepitly beautiful, it is also infinitely alluring. Driving through Havana, I didn't see the interiors, the crowding, the frustration and poverty, but rather the gorgeous facades, the orchids dripping from trees, the banana and mango fruit ripening in the side yards. When something is dangerous or sexy, Cubans use the word candela to describe it, literally it means fire, but it's used as a warning, or as a stand in for a long, low whistle. Havana is la candela.

The men in Cuba know a thousand ways to tell a woman she's beautiful. Rica, guapisima, lindisima, sabrosa. Delicious, the prettiest, the most beautiful, the tastiest woman in the world. They look you up and down like they are starving. It doesn't matter who they are. Bus drivers, the soldiers on the corner, the man selling oranges, the fish monger, the family man, the professor, the artist, the immigration officers. If you are a woman in Cuba, you are an object of their veneration and desire.

One afternoon, I caught a cab and my driver, a middle aged woman with sparkly brown eyes asked me where I was from, then paused for a just a moment and asked.
"Are you married?"
"No."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No."
"Have you met a Cuban man yet?"
"No."

"No me digas," she yelled, (you don't say). She immediately pulled a U-turn, eyes darting between the road and me in the back seat. She explained that she was taking me to her house to meet her son. She went on to list how handsome, nice, reliable he was. And he can dance. Oh, can he dance.

Startled, but charmed at the same time, I finally talked her out of it, and explained that I was running to late meet friends at Casa de la Musica in Miramar to go dancing. Most mothers want grandchildren and a family around them. If they happen to be a pipeline to American dollars, all the better. Unfortunately, the suspicion that a Cuban man's interest might be due to money or a way to the U.S. never really leaves. She eventually agreed to take me there, all the while expounding on her son's virtues.

This music venue, along with the other Casa de la Musica in Centro is considered the best place in Havana to dance to salsa, but at night the prices to enter run between $10.00 to $20.00 dollars apiece. Cubans can't afford this, unless they're out with foreigners, so the lines at night look like some bizarre Father's Day outing, as the couples all tend to be young Cuban women and much older European and Canadian men.

But during the afternoons, the crowd was all Cuban, gyrating their hips in the popular dance move known as "la batidora" or the blender, and shimming their shoulders, known as "el tembleque" or "the shake". Before the band started hip-hop music piped through the large hall. Soon the aisle ways filled with dancers and the musicians had the entire room on their feet. When the band started playing, the whole place swung into motion, the dance floor filled and Cubans jumped up to dance on their chairs. Women had jumped on stage and grinded their hips with the musicians while they played.

I was mesmerized with the frenzy taking place around me. As if in that moment, the last remnants of my repressed upbringing were mocked, and trampled. I realized that this unabashed dancing is how life was meant to be lived. Here, sexual inhibitions, shyness, shame had no place. I excused myself from the people I had come with and started dancing with the Cubans, feeling like I had arrived.

* * * *

The favorite Orishas — those who granted money, love, power, wisdom had been painted in bold colorsócerulean blue, crimson red, sunflower yellow on the white washed alley walls of Callejon de Hamel along with portraits of poet and revolutionary Jose Marti. At the end of the alley a crowd hovered around the rumba performers. We all strained to see as the musicians played the drums and gourds, the singers sang songs of the countryside, romance and the nature gods, and the rumba dancers started their coquettish movements toward and away from each other, rolling their shoulders, lowering their upper bodies down to the ground. A woman glided away from a man, when he feigned disinterest, she moved closer, rolling her shoulders to beckon him, until he responded and started circling her again. The dance had all the primitive elements of mating, and the complex ones of seduction.
Along with virility and womanizing, Changó's domain is dancing. I noticed several men wearing the red and black beads of Changó and watched them dance, their hips and shoulders rolling, working up to the crescendo in the music like a storm brewing.

And in this concentration of men, the piropos, or compliments flew:
" Why are you walking alone when you could be walking with me?"
"If you cook the way you walk, I'll even eat what sticks to the pan."
"If beauty were a crime, you would deserve life in prison.
"There's going to be a lottery tonight and you have all the tickets."
Cuba is a nation of sons of Changó.

* * *

My first salsa lessons were at Angel Navarro's Mambo Unico in New York. Early on, attempting to follow the instructor's directions and trying to move my hips and shoulders at the same time made me look like I had some sort of nerve disorder. I stood behind the other dancers, avoiding the mirror while concentrating on the instructor's feet, and counting to myself, "One, two, three, pause, five six, seven, pause." Eventually I added a styling class where our instructor showed us exactly how to extend our fingers, shift weight from one hip to the other for a hip roll, and then hold our arms stiff and shake one shoulder and then the other into a shimmy.

The instructor's steps, her grace and utter control were not so much taught to us, as would be the case with trained dancers, but rather we imitated them, standing behind her in rows, counting, repeating, mimicking over and over. With time, my dancing became a little more certain, a little smoother. I realized, each time I learned one of these provocative movesóa hip roll, a shimmy, a body roll, I was shedding some of the shame I acquired growing up in my Catholic community, where women's sexuality was not celebratedóquite the opposite. I learned from the women who danced salsa a new kind of sexyónot a size four, but a showing what you got; of being seen and loving the eyes on you, of wearing tighter clothes regardless of your size, and knowing that dancing well is the most seductive thing in the world.

Out at the salsa clubs in New York, every dance with a partner was like a 12 minute relationship, and you can tell a lot about a man from one danceówhether he watches out for the other couples on the floor and doesn't spin you into people, if he makes you feel good, touches your back in a way that is respectful, but firm, so you know to trust your lead. An excellent lead can make you feel so goodóbeautiful, desired, protected, importantóthat you forget it's a merely an activity, a metaphor at best, two people creating an illusion. Sometimes I wanted this feeling so badly, I pursued it off the dance floor, and into places much less safe.

* * *

While open to having fun in Cuba, I was determined not to fall in love. I had a bad habit of getting involved in complicated, long distance relationships, or choosing men who aren't fully available in one way or another — those in love with their art, their expeditions, their ex-girlfriends, their own pain. The last thing I needed, I reminded myself, was a relationship with a Cuban, and to have Fidel Castro, the U.S. government, and Miami's exile community between us. I wasn't going to do it. Maybe some dancing, but really, I was just going to have fun.

Then I met Rafael. He drove a taxi particulare, a black-market car that helped supplement the meager rations and pay he got for his official job as an industrial mechanic. When I first met him, he ushered me towards his blue Lada with a cracked windshield.

We haggled over the price for a ride. He started at five dollars, but countered with I three. I hadn't been able to find a book of matches or a lighter since arriving in Cuba, so we agreed on four bucks and he'd throw in a box of matches. I had plans to meet people from school at a concert of trovadores, scheduled to play that night. I had it in my head that they were performing at La Casa de las Trova, in Centro Havana.

In illegal taxi's, the rider always has to sit in the front seat, apparently so the police won't know we're a fare. I always chatted with my cab drivers, but with the young men who gave me rides from my neighborhood, this seating arrangement always made the ride feel like a quasi date. Rafael and I made polite conversation. He asked, in rapid, blurred Spanish, where I was from. I told him New York, and I was teaching a class in Cuba for three weeks. He looked young, so I asked if he was a student.

"Ya," he answered with a wave of his arm.

This meant he had finished school already. Potholes in Havana are formidable, and I sucked my breath in a few times as he jerked the steering wheel to miss them.

"Tranquilo," he said. "I'm a good driver."

He spoke Spanish so difficult to follow that I had to ask him to repeat things a few times, and then just gave up and pretended that I understood what he was saying. He told me that he had a very intelligent dog, and when I asked why he thought the so dog intelligent, he explained, but I couldn't follow his Spanish and ended up just nodding. He seemed to be making sideways glances at me on occasion, which also somehow made him seem young, particularly in a country where men will stare you down in the most shameless manners.

Rafael stopped to ask directions several times, and I got the sense that had no idea where we were going.

"Do you have a map?" I asked him.
He clutched his steering wheel.
"There are no maps in Cuba," He said. "Tranquilo."

We finally found the club down a dark cobblestone street. The locked door and silent block made me apprehensive. It appeared closed and I didn't want to get left there alone. I didn't know what to do.
Rafael got out of the car and knocked on the door for me. He yelled to see if anyone was inside. No one answered, so he asked if I needed to go back.

I shrugged and said, "I guess so. How much?" I hoped the ride back would be free.
"Four dollars," he answered. He opened the passenger door for me.
I looked down the empty, dark street. I had lost all negotiating power.

Rafael drove me back to my apartment, pointing out that I didn't have to walk up the hill, implying this was some sort of bonus.

He stopped in front of my house and as I prepared to get out of the car, he asked, "You want to go dancing tomorrow night?"

He seemed shy and confident, young and worldly at the same time. He didn't have the aggressive swagger and stare many Cuban men use on women as a form of seduction. He was also gorgeous. Over six feet tall, broad shoulders and light brown skin, a chisled handsome face with a child's easy smile. I would come to learn that he had Chinese, African and Spanish ancestors. He had a gentle courtesy about him, a casual way of opening doors. He was sexy, but also safe, I thought. And he'd probably make a good dance partner.

"Sure," I said.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Maria."
"That's a beautiful name. It's my favorite," he said. "It's my mom's name."

I looked at my calendar. I was supposed to meet people at The National Theater. Since they were a group of trovadores, I assumed the venue to be Casa de la Trova. At first I just thought this a misfortunate mix-up on my part, but later I came to think of it as serendipitousóor fate.

The next night I was nervous heading off into the night with a cab driver. I wondered if it was safe, and I suspected he was just inviting me so that I'd pay his way into an expensive disco. If things went bad, he knew where I lived; he could stalk me. But motivated by the thought of a great night of dancing, I took a deep breath, put on sundress and my dancing heels, and walked down the hillside to his blue Lada.

We drove down the main artery, calle 23, where the young people cruised and transvestites in tight skirts and high heels kissed the cheeks of gorgeous young mulattas. Then through Centro Havana, where salsa and rumba spilled from the apartments, over balconies down to the streets where children played baseball with rocks and men gathered around dominoes. Then finally we drove along the Malecon, tasting sprays of salt water as they crashed against the seawall and splashed through the car's windows. Couples lounged here at duskósome sat next to each other looking out over the water, others faced traffic, holding hands and staring in silence, some laid on their sides, heads up on elbows, almost touching.

We finally arrived at a beautiful spot just below the old Spanish fort, El Morro that sits on the bluff across the bay from the port of Havana. The beam from the lighthouse reflected off the ocean, and waves splashed the old cannons still standing guard over the city. Inside the small, cement bar, Cubans danced to salsa, hip-hop, reggae, and American pop. We found a table in the corner and Rafael wiped off a seat for me to sit on, then went and bought a few rum and sodas. I tried to give him money, but he refused it. This made me feel a little guilty about my earlier worries, but it also made me less suspicious of him.

I watched the dancers gyrate, mesmerized by the way they moved: they could isolate two different body parts and move them both differentlyóone to the clave, the other to the drums, carrying on two conversations at once, as if their bones were fluid. Partner dancing here was not about counting steps and executing complicated turns. A woman wedged between two men, butt thrust out, was grinding, simultaneously, with both; one woman balanced herself over a man in a chair, performing something akin to a lap dance; I saw a man swivel down to the ground, his head level with the crotch of his partner.

We sat at the table sipping our rum and colas, the music too loud to talk much. I tapped my foot and swayed a little to the music, sending off the signal that I would like to be asked to dance. I had a feeling he worried about my dancing. Here, as in New York, having an inept dance partner made you look bad, and nobody likes that on the dance floor. I could almost sense him mulling this over. Foreigners dancing in Cuba aren't a pretty sight. There's usually this sort of bouncing we do that has no connection whatsoever with the music.

When Rafael finally asked me to dance, in a smooth maneuver he tucked us into a corner where we wouldn't be noticed. We started dancing, a little awkwardly at first, then found the music.
"You can dance," Rafael said, and we moved to the center of the dance floor. "Que rica."

He smelled nice, like soap and aftershave. He put a hand in the small of my back, and we joined our other hands. He was a perfect lead. Gentle yet in control. He had an excellent sense of rhythm; he kept the beat, and wasn't boring. He changed from stepping to turn patterns in response to the music. He maintained a polite distance and at first, it was just about the dancing.

We danced the casino to Cuban son, then a meringue, and as the night wore on we were less reserved. The dj switched to reggaton, and we started grinding our hips like the rest of the bar, my back to him, his hands on my hips, then facing each other; then we were back to more demure stepping and turning in sync with one another from a distance.

We danced on, a film of sweat covering both of us, stopping just to swallow mouthfuls of sweet rum and cola. Cuba's sexual freedom was exhilarating. And while our verbal conversations had been difficult due to language, this one was perfect. We had our own private conversation, humorous, amorous, bold and then timid, expressed with our hips, shoulders, and feet.

At 4 am, the bartenders herded us out onto the old stone patio, where the spray from the sea cooled us and the few lights still glowing in Old Havana sparkled in the distance. Leaning against the damp rock wall, under the rustling palm trees and starry skies we kissed for the first time.