Holding Ground with Malpaso Dance Company

Founded in 2012, the Malpaso Dance Company of Cuba has toured internationally to great acclaim, with its unique mission of showcasing the best of international contemporary dance repertory while nurturing new Cuban choreographic voices. With the Cuban republic now facing a US-imposed oil blockade and sanctions, the company is facing an existential crisis. But, instead of crumbling, they are carrying on, and New York’s 92NY made a film about it.

Malpaso Dance Company in company class, Havana, Cuba. Photograph by Christopher Duggan

But that wasn’t how it started. In the latter part of 2024, Alison Manning, the artistic director of the Harkness Dance Center at 92NY, chose a theme for the 2026/27 season, “Home: Departure and Return,” echoing the historic role of the 92nd Street Y as a safe haven, training ground, and stage for many pioneering artists who were not being presented anywhere else. To open the season this fall on September 19, she had tapped Malpaso Dance Company and commissioned a new work from Cuban-born choreographer and Bessie Award winner Pedro Ruiz.

A couple of weeks before Ruiz was scheduled to travel to Cuba to collaborate on the creation of the new work, sudden barriers to obtaining visas for Cuban nationals traveling to the US made bringing the company to New York for the September premiere impossible. Rather than capitulate in the face of political headwinds, Manning came up with a “Plan B” allowing 92NY to continue to support the project and present a revised iteration of the work for opening night. Manning related:

“I consulted my good friend, dance educator, advocate, and founder of 92NY Dance Education Laboratory, Jody Gottfried Arnhold, whom I often call in important or difficult moments. There were only two options. We could scrap this—we weren’t announcing the season for another two weeks. Or we could do a performance featuring Cuban choreographers and we could make the ballet anyway. Jody said, ‘I vote for the second choice. You should absolutely send Pedro to make this work and pay for Malpaso’s rehearsal time. Plan for us to bring them here whenever the opportunity presents itself—even if it’s in ten years.’ Then we said, ‘Why don’t we make a film about it? And share it opening night with our audience.’”

Manning apprised Ruiz of the evolving situation and asked if he was still committed to going forward with the project. He answered unequivocally, “Yes, I think it’s important. I’m Cuban and I am one hundred percent committed to this.”

Malpaso Dance Company in rehearsal for “The Essence of Us” by Pedro Ruiz. Photograph by Christopher Duggan

Spinning into action, Manning and Arnhold called dance filmmaker Nel Shelby and asked her if she would assemble a team and travel to Cuba. Two weeks later, Shelby, along with cinematographer Ashli Bickford, and photographer Christopher Duggan arrived in Cuba to document Ruiz’s dancemaking process with Malpaso. Shelby confided:

“When I got over there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. We hear about it in the news and think, ‘Oh, they don’t have electricity. That’s interesting.’ I tried so hard in the film to show what this really means. Even in the hostel where I stayed that had solar panels and a generator, I woke up at 5am completely drenched in sweat because we had no power. In fact, they only had power in the Malpaso studio for maybe an hour and a half the whole week we were there. It was hard to get anything done that required power or Wifi.”

“We hired a production company, Vedada Films, who provided and managed all the equipment and powered it up each day. We would not have been able to do that. They had to take the batteries back to their studio [equipped with solar panels and a generator) for recharging each night.”

Ruiz shared: “It’s one thing to read about Cuba in the news, but when I arrived there at the end of May, it was another thing altogether. There are so many emotions, as an artist and as a Cuban, coming back to your country and seeing it in this horrible, degenerated condition—with uncollected garbage everywhere—in contrast to the integrity and energy of these dancers. They came to the studio day after day giving me their full energy, concentration, and inspiration. One of their amazing qualities is that they would not bring anything negative through the door.”

Ruiz went to Cuba with an idea for a piece called “The Essence of Us,” based on transcending the state of chaos enveloping Cuba and the entire world. He explained the title saying, “‘The Essence of Us” asks the question: What happens when everything is taken away from you—when everything is stripped away? The only thing that is left is that thread of humanity that unifies us all—that is ‘the essence of us.’”

Outside Malpaso Dance Company's studios in Havana, Cuba. Photograph by Christopher Duggan

After teaching an initial company ballet class, Ruiz threw away everything he had in mind for the piece except for the title. He sat down with the dancers and said, “I think this piece has to come from you, in your voices.” He gave them each the homework assignment of creating a movement phrase describing “The Essence of Us” in their own voice. Ruiz elaborated:

“Their personal stories were so rich and individual. Some people had to walk for miles to get to work each day and again to return home. Some people had to wake up at 3am in the morning to cook because that was when they had some electricity for a short time. Living with that chaos, stress, and urgency, they still showed up at the studio with open spirits for a whole day of work. Without electricity, the mid-day heat was oppressive, but none of that mattered. We were writing this story together—all of us having the sensibility, sensuality, and the sense of humor that Cubans have despite difficult times.”

The film establishes its own choreography of contrasts, alternating between crumbling exteriors and the elevated activity within the building walls. One of the interiors we come to know is Malpaso’s studio headquarters, housed in the Sephardic Hebrew Center, located in the central Havana neighborhood of El Vedado. With its columned portico, spacious interior, proscenium workspace, and muted stained-glass windows, the space provides a feeling of refuge and belonging the moment one’s eyes and the dancers cross its threshold. The camera lens also hovers over the sea that surrounds this dancing island—its cleansing waters and constant motion a beacon of transformative possibility.

Sáez asserts, “Holding ground means reaffirming every single day that freedom and creation are acts of will, born of existential necessity.” Nowhere is this more apparent than when composer-pianist Aldo López-Gavilán and the all-woman Alma String Quartet (who were also to perform live at the New York premiere) enter the frame. The collective energy soars as the musicians and dancers coordinate their efforts and artistry in a creative process that feeds everyone’s spirit.

The Essence of Us: A Cuban Story will be screened at the Harkness Mainstage Series’ opening night program along with a live performance by Ballet Hispánico New York, featuring work by Cuban-born choreographers Eduardo Vilaro, Marianela Boán, and Pedro Ruiz. Streaming tickets are available to view the full program on September 20th. Ruiz shared, “Making the film as we created the piece showed that dance really can transcend borders even when people can’t. We found a way to bring the essence of these brilliant dancers to the American public.”

Everyone is optimistic about bringing Malpaso to 92NY to premiere “The Essence of Us” in 2027. We are all holding ground with Malpaso until then.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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