Danza Espiral Begins Celebrations for Its 40th Anniversary
With the premiere of «Ancestros» (Ancestors), the Danza Espiral company began the celebrations for its 40th anniversary, to be celebrated next year in 2027. The Maestra Lilian Padrón, director of the Yumurino dance collective and National Dance Prize 2026, dedicated this performance to the percussionists who have worked with them and especially to Ángel Luis Serviá.
«We have prepared this show as part of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of Danza Espiral, which will be celebrated next year. We decided to dedicate it to the percussionists and to Ángel Luis Serviá, a founder of the company with whom I worked before the company even existed.
«In some way, all my contemporary creation that has those connections with our culture I owe to his teachings and his experience within the company with that new vision of working.»
«Many percussionists have passed through the company, and little by little we will be making presentations to remember all those people who, if they had not been there, the path would have been different and would not be what it is now.»
Performing in the dance piece are Helen Gómez Domínguez, Beatriz de Armas Galván, Leyanis Verrier López, Enrique Leyva Brines, Levin Cardoso Junco, and Samuel Morales. With general direction and choreography by Padrón, «Ancestros» highlights the multifaceted performance of the dancers, who also take on the playing of drums and singing.
«We have taken a risk with this show. Apart from recordings — including the first piece used, which is by Reina Portuondo, a dear composer friend, and other recorded effects — the greatest challenge was being able to sing, play, and dance ourselves.
«The experience in contemporary works has emphasized that dancers have played and musicians have danced. That is one of the characteristics that identify the company.»
«Ancestros» joins repertoire pieces of Danza Espiral, such as «The Rite of Spring» and «Olimpo,» to name just two examples, that turn their gaze to our Afro-Cuban roots through dance.
Within a diverse and interesting repertoire, the Danza Espiral company defends and highlights the essence of Afro-Cuban dance, with passionate movements, refined technique, dancers with a high level of execution and interpretation, and percussion that pulses like a warm Caribbean heart.
«It could have had any other title, but its purpose is precisely to validate, expose, and share Cuban culture, which here in Matanzas has an enormous presence. I have always said it: I could not create a contemporary work and isolate myself completely.
«One can mix Stravinsky’s music with batá drums or with Abakuá rhythms, with rumba. That experience I have had in many works is, in some way, what we have put into this show.»
Her choreography and music, full of contagious energy, offer each time a living tribute to roots and the performing arts in works that range from dance versions of world theater classics to national contemporaneity.
Danza Espiral was founded in Matanzas in 1987. It is one of the initiators of the so-called New Wave of Cuban Dance — those collectives that broke with traditional dance formations in Cuba and showed another way of thinking and making dance in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
