…the neon hub blog…

Neon went to watch Danza Contemporanea de Cuba on Friday evening. The world famous troupe celebrated their 50th anniversary with the first ever major UK tour throughout February and March 2010. Their style is a mix of contemporary, classical and Caribbean dance styles.

The performance was at Sadlers Wells in Farringdon. Neon had not been to this theatre before and can highly recommend it, a big open modern space with excellent views for a large capacity. We will be keeping our eye out for future performances.

There were two ‘acts’ either side of an interval. The first was Casi-Casa by Mats Ek, former Artistic Director of Cullberg Ballet and former choreographer with Nederlands Dans Theatre, Hamburg Ballet and Paris Opéra Ballet. This was full of solos and duets and showed off the dancer’s fluidity. Their feet hardly made a sound while jumping and bounding around which was quite incredible.

Mamba 3XXI proceeded the interval and Neon found this act more entertaining. This opened with 21 dancers in strict formation, all performing rigid little dance moves as if they were a military drill. The strength of a large group of synchronised dancers was impressive.

This ‘behind the scenes’ clip gives some insight to their training and history:

DANZA CONTEMPORÁNEA DE CUBA / Miguel Iglesias’ interview

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There will be a bit of Havana at this year’s Worldwide Music Awards from special guest Danay, flying direct from Cuba and presented by Havana Cultura.

Gilles Peterson discovered Danay when he recently teamed up with Havana Cultura to produce an album of up and coming musical talent from the Cuban capital.

Peterson said of Danay:

“A remarkable new voice whom I met whilst interviewing artists for my BBC Radio 1 documentary. She played me some of her original songs and I immediately knew that she had to take part in this project. Lagrimas de Soledad was the song from her demo’s that I loved the most and it is on this where her work with Roberto is the most magical moment of the album”.

Watch Roberto Fonseca and Danay in action here. It is not hard to agree with Gilles, they form an impressive collaboration.

CD 1 – Lagrimas de soledad (No existen palabras) / Lagrimas de soledad

Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Music Awards are on being held on Saturday at The Garage in Islington. Tickets are £25 and it runs from 7pm until 4am or post 11pm tickets are £15 on door.

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To help build awareness of the site Havana Cultura launched a Twitter Treasure Hunt this week and the prize is for two VIP tickets to Gilles Peterson’s Havana Cultura album launch party in Paris on 26th November. The winner will travel to Paris with a friend via Eurostar and spend three nights at The Hotel Amour – NEON wants to enter just for the name of the hotel.

The treasure hunt will run for two weeks via the Havana Cultura Twitter profile. On the Monday, Wednesday and Friday 2 clues will be posted, the first at 1pm and the second at 5pm. The ‘clues’ hope to encourage participants to have a good look round the site while searching for the answers.

How to enter – follow Twitter account @_HavanaCultura_
Find the clues via the site
Reply with your answer
To catch up the hashtag is #havanatreasurehunt

The winner will have to answer each question and then submit a final tie breaker – the winner will then be chosen at random.

NEON has recently spent a lot of time browsing Havana Cultura – a site that has been developed to give modern Cuban artists from the city of Havana a platform to showcase their work through videos. The featured artists present video clips demonstrating creativity that there is a thriving artistic scene beyond Buena Vista Social Club, introducing themselves through their favourite spot in Havana explaining how the area has influenced their careers.

NEON’s fave video is from composer William Vivanco reflects on the Malecón – the huge walled walkway between the sea and the city when, at high tide, kids play and Cubans wait for the huge sprays to cool them down.

As well as launching the site Gilles Peterson has collaborated with Havana Cultura to produce a 2-disk album that is the culmination of a year long project that saw Peterson travel to Cuba to find the very best new talent in Havana. The album features over 20 musicians and artists recorded across 28 tracks to celebrate Cuba’s freshest sounds that range from Latin, Afro-Jazz and Fusion to Hip Hop, Funk, Reggaeton and Pop. The album also includes a number of traditional Cuban classics re-recorded by Peterson.

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NEON had the pleasure of spending Friday evening in the city of Leeds to meet local bloggers. The meeting was held at Azucar, a South American inspired tapas and cantina bar in Brewery Wharf. The bar is partly owned by Howard Marks who lives nearby but evidently does not blog as all we saw of him were publicity shots on the walls.

The meeting was hosted by Havana Cultura – the cultural initiative from Havana Club. We all checked out the impressive website, discussed their Twitter campaign (launches October 19th), the Gilles Peterson/Havana Cultura CD launch (October 26th) and upcoming Havana Club parties planned for Leeds and Manchester.

During the evening NEON met a wonderful group of people, discovered an amazing array of blogs and had a real insight into localised blogging. In the big smoke blogging is prolific; industries are created such as The Underground Restaurant thanks to ease of communication, bloggers are recognised, respected and remunerated such as the Dos Hermanos with their book deal and what started life as the Slutty Fringe music blog has now turned into a go-to culture and lifestyle site. It’s exciting and fast moving and possibilities are endless – we all know the Belle Du Jour story and next in line for blogger exploitation is fashion (just)teen Tavi.

It was obvious from speaking to local bloggers that the unique magic of localised blogging was the desire to nurture community rather than their respective sites. As well as producing excellent blogs with great content there is a overriding communal pride for Leeds and the surrounding area.

NEON hopes that this will not be left behind when these blogs will inevitably be swept up and pushed into the limelight as it is this pride that produces such honest and entertaining reads accessible to all, whether you live in Leeds or not. See our previous post for the hot list.

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