Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight.

Dance Cuba: Dreams of Flight is an epic that sweeps across modern US-Cuban history as it intertwines riveting personal stories that are as steeped in romance, tragedy and drama as the great ballets.

Produced and directed by Cynthia Newport, Dance Cuba brings together an accomplished production team that includes Academy Award-winning Americans and internationally acclaimed Cubans. With remarkable access to individuals and institutions in both countries and utilizing 24p High Definition photography, the film is suffused with a poignant score composed and performed by multi- GRAMMY winner Chucho Valdes. Dance Cuba had its world premiere on February 5th, 2004 at the Miami International Film Festival.

Dance Cuba begins with the historic coming-together of two dance companies — one Cuban, one American– in Havana. But it is the human stories orbiting around this coming-together that are the heart and soul of the film. A meditation on the intense loves and conflicted passions that mark the difficult journey toward identity for individuals and nations, Dance Cuba tells personal stories of exile and return, loss and redemption, tradition and innovation.

In Dance Cuba, the expressive human body – the longing conveyed by the particular turn of a dancer’s wrist, the electricity of an extended leg slashing through the air – says what cannot be conveyed otherwise: the anguish of exile, the comfort of family rituals, the exhilaration of creating something new. The fervor of performance as counterpoint to the difficulty and melancholy of day-to-day life. Rich cinematography brings audiences into what, for many, is the mystery of Cuba.

For more information at http://www.emergingpictures.com/dance_cuba.htm