Mostrar 7685 resultados

Dr. Lillian Manzor (b.1956) is the founding member, developer, and editor of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive, a bilingual cultural heritage site that provides inter-related information on writers, directors, texts, productions, festivals, venues and theater companies and digitized photographs, theater programs, and other resources, including video excerpts of theater productions. She is also a scholar, writer, and educator, currently an Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, and curator of Cuban Culture on the Edge.

Dr. Manzor earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and French from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida in 1977. She then earned an M.A. in 1982 and Ph.D. in 1988 in Spanish from the University of Southern California. She worked as a Visiting Instructor of Spanish from 1983 to 1985 at the University of Notre Dame and from 1985 to 1988 at The University of Notre Dame. In 1988, she became an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine before coming to the University of Miami in 1995. At the University of Miami in addition to being Professor, she has acted as Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department Chair, and Director of Degree Programs in Modern Languages. She has also led numerous study abroad courses to Cuba, Chile, Spain, Panamá, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

She has a manuscript in the works called Marginality Beyond Return: US-Cuban Performances and Politics, which is about Cuban theater in the US. Her published works include: El Ciervo Encantado: An Altar in the Mangroves. With Jaime Gómez Triana. New York: Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics Tome Press, 2015; Teatro venezolano del siglo XX. Edited with Alberto Sarraín. La Habana: Editorial Alarcos, Colección Clásicos del Siglo XX, 2008; Teatro cubano actual: Dramaturgia escrita en Estados Unidos. Edited with Alberto Sarraín. La Habana: Ediciones Alarcos, 2005; Latinas on Stage. Edited with Alicia Arrizón, Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 2000, (the first book on Latina performance artists); and finally, Borges/Escher, Cobra/CoBrA: Un encuentro postmoderno. Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1996. She has also published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles in journals such as The Drama Review, Gestos, Ollantay Theater Magazine, Tablas, and Conjunto, book chapters, book reviews, and newspaper articles about U.S.-Cuba relations, collaboration, and travel. She has curated the exhibits “A Theatrical Thunderbolt. Cuban Playwright Virgilio Piñera in his Centenary” for the University of Miami Richter Library Cuban Heritage Collection, which ran August – December 2012, and “Protagonistas de los 60 en el teatro cubano” at University of Miami Richter Library Cuban Heritage Collection, which ran from March – August 2010. She published a bilingual online exhibit Cuban Theater in Miami: 1960-1980 (with Beatriz Rizk.) In 2013, this exhibit won an honorable mention in the Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Awards in the electronic exhibition category of Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).

Dr. Manzor also works on incorporating GIS in digital humanities projects. She has a research project on performing arts spaces in Spanish in Miami called "Sites that Speak" created using the Scalar platform (http://scalar.usc.edu/hc/sites-that-speak/index) learned during the 2012 NEH Summer Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities on Digital Cultural Mapping.

Dr. Manzor has directed and edited the filmed documentation of over a hundred theatrical performances in major cities in Cuba as well as New York and Miami. She has worked as a dramatist, literary and cultural advisor on productions such as Cartas de amor a Stalin, Contigo, pan y cebolla, Huevos, Anna in the Tropics, Sonia se fue, and Gentefrikation.

She has acted as organizer and curator for countless symposiums, colloquium, and conferences, and given invited talks about her research and work. She has won grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cuban Artist Fund, and Puentes Cubanos to support her research and work.

Her current research is in performance studies and digital humanities, which originated from her work on theater and performance from a literary perspective. She works with many theater companies in Miami and in Cuba and is actively involved in developing US-Cuba cultural dialogues through theater and performance. To this end, in 2004, Dr. Manzor launched the Cuban Theater Digital Archive with support of UML and collaboration Cuban National Council for Performing Arts. At this time, the Archive is the only place in the world collecting written texts and live performances by both communities in Cuba and in the U.S. Manzor says that, “Theater offers the chance for experiences that are completely foreign to us to sink in and take root, and with each live performance the audience forms an ephemeral community for a few hours. Theater’s potential to help us understand new perspectives is at the heart of my work on theater and on Cuba. I see theater as a tool for reconciliation.” (2017)

She notes that, “Fractures create unique challenges for scholarship due to separation between the on island and diaspora communities and the politics that get in the way.” Her work is therefore to “study how theater and digital culture and creativity can help in the reconciliation of exile Cuban communities with their counterparts on the island.” An example that Dr. Manzor gives of this kind of connection was the 2001 Miami Monologue Festival. She says that, “Reconciliation happens at the human level, recognizing pain and building trust. To face the past. Theater is a catalyst for reconciliation.” (2017)

Ana Rosa Velazco was a former Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture member and board member of the AMIGOS of the Cuban Heritage Collection.

Raquel Lázaro was an artist born in Havana, Cuba on November 10, 1917. She received her formal education from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro" in Havana. The school was known for being repressive and archaic in the methodology of art taught there. Lázaro was one of its rebellious students and she developed her own unique form of painting despite the reportedly hostile environment at San Alejandro. Her works invoke the style of Paul Klee and Marc Chagall in the application of color and other aesthetic properties. Her work was featured as part of exhibitions in Havana starting in 1956. She later fled Cuba shortly after the Revolution and moved to Miami, Florida where she continued working as an artist and participated in group exhibitions in South Florida. In 1978, her work was featured in a collective show at the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in Washington, D.C. She refused to have her work displayed in any museums in Cuba. She died on May 13, 2020.

Carmina Benguría Rodríguez was a famous poet and reciter (“declamadora”) of pre revolutionary Cuba. She was born in a sugar cane colony owned by her family in Ciego de Avila, Cuba on January 18th, 1920 to Enrique Benguría Pérez de Corcho and María Elisa Rodríguez Melcón. Soon after her birth, she was moved to Havana where she grew up and spent her youth. Her first performance reciting poetry was in 1937 at the “Círculo de Amigos de la Cultura Francesa” in Havana, which was arranged by the Cuban publicist Conrado Massaguer.

On October 11, 1937 she gave a recital of poetry at Columbia University at the behest of Spanish philologist and Columbia University professor, Federico de Onís, when she accompanied her father there for work-related matters. After her performances at Columbia, Benguría’s mother encouraged her to continue performing as entertainment and took charge of her training and education. While studying for the Baccalaureate, Benguría took ballet classes at the Sociedad Pro-Arte Musical, learned French and English and studied music at various conservatories. Her mother organized a recital at the National Theater in Havana on April 17, 1938. The recital was a great success and this led journalist and poet Ernesto Fernández Arrondo, who was in attendance, to become Benguría’s agent until 1956. He organized additional performances at the Encanto Theater in Havana as well as a tour of all the major Cuban cities. At her second presentation at the National Theater in Havana on October 12, 1938, the Nobel Laureate and Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral was in attendance. She was deeply impressed with Benguría’s performance, calling her a child prodigy to her agent, Fernández Arrondo. Mistral reached out to the prominent Mexican poet Alfonso Reyes, in order to get support for a tour in Mexico, which Benguría made in 1940, performing at Palacio de Bellas Artes and other theaters.

Upon her return to Cuba, Benguría became a household name due to her frequent appearances on the radio, such as radio COCO and the June, 1939 recital that was broadcast live through the CMBZ station from the new Anfiteatro de La Habana, which was met with critical acclaimed. In the 1940’s she continued performing at major venues around Cuba and completed studies of diplomatic and consular law at the University of Havana. In 1947, she was awarded the Cuban Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Order.

Beginning in 1949, Benguría embarked on several international tours, performing in Spain at prominent venues such as the teatro del Ateneo de Madrid. Esta fue la primera de una serie de presentaciones que continuaron en Teatro Lara, el Teatro Español, el Teatro Principal de la Comedia, la Real Academia Española, la Universidad Complutense y el Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación, as well as in Venezuela, México, Honduras, Ecuador, Perú, Panamá, and Colombia. Between 1953 and 1959, she completed a total of 5 tours of the Americas. During these tours, she was met with much esteem and praise from academics and writers, including Melchor Fernández Almagro and Ramón Bernal. On May 8, 1950, the Spanish government awarded her the Civil Order of Alfonso X The Wise with the category of Cross; and in June of that same year she was awarded the Gold Medal from the University of Panama. In 1953, the 100th birthday of José Martí, Benguría went on a tour throughout Cuba exclusively reciting Martí’s works. She was joined by the soprano Iris Burguet, the harpist Margarita Monter and la Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana at a special performance on June 15th, 1953 at the Auditorium Theater in Havana to raise funds for the tour.

In the 1950’s, Benguría was often away from Cuba on tour, or touring the island. Between 1952 and 1956, she made appearances on early Cuban television programs such as the “Hour of Art and Culture,” which aired on Sundays on the CMQ channel. She also recited and discussed poetry on the “La Universidad del Aire,” radio program hosted by Jorge Mañach on Sunday afternoons on CMQ radio.

In 1950, she met the Cuban sculptor and draftsman Roberto Estopiñán Vera (1921-2015.). They married 1958. After the Revolution of 1959, Estopiñán was given the position of cultural attaché of the Cuban embassy in Egypt and Benguría continued her performances and appearances in Cuba. She even performed a rendering of the Marcha triunfal for Che Guevara and the soldiers of the Ejército Rebelde while they were stationed at the La Cabaña Fortress. She also participated in Operation Culture organized by the University Student Federation (FEU) in 1959 and in the Martí recital organized by Jorge Mañach in the Plaza Cadenas of the University of Havana in January 1960. Her last performance in Cuba was a performance of “Cenizas” by Juana de Ibarbourou on CMQ-TV on April 10, 1960. In May of 1960, she followed her husband into exile, joined shortly later by many other of her close friends and associates, including Jorge Mañach, Gastón Baquero, Emeterio Santovenia, José Ángel Buesa and Ernesto Lecuona. First, Benguría went through Honduras, where she was granted citizenship by President Ramón Villeda Morales and then she arrived in Miami in March 1961, joining her family there. She worked cleaning offices, a significant step down from her professional life in Cuba. However, she was unknown in the United States and its public. In 1963, she moved to New York.

In 1972, after struggling in relative obscurity for over a decade and with the help of a group of well-known Cubans, Benguría performed a recital at a rented space at the New York Cultural Center. From there, she began to perform again and garner praise from her audience. During the next two decades she performed at The New York Cultural Center, Hunter College, the Gramercy Arts Theater, the Carnegie Recital Hall, and the Little (Hayes) Theater. She was also a long time collaborator and founding member of the Cuban Cultural Center in New York. In 1993, she made a recording called “Palabras para ti,” which was a compilation of thirty-seven works by the best Latin American poets. In 1994, she narrated the book of poems “Vientre del Trópico” by Alina Galliano.

In 2002, at 82 years old, Benguría and her husband returned to Miami. She continued to perform and participate in cultural events, including various “Cultural Colloquiums” sponsored by Gastón Álvaro’s Ego Group publishing house, which were held at the Books & Books bookstore in Coral Gables. In 2012, the CD “Carmina Benguría, una voz universal,” was released. It features sixteen of Benguría’s interpretations of works by Latin American poets. She also published two books of poems, both of them when she was already over 90 years old. Escúchame La Voz (2012), and a collection of intimate and autobiographical poems titled Desde el Libro del Alma (2015). She presented several of the poems at Books & Books in Coral Gables in 2015, in collaboration with Ego Group and the poet and composer Orlando Coré, who acted as editor of her final book. Benguría passed away in October of 2017 in Miami, Florida.

Margarita Cano is an artist and librarian born in Havana, Cuba on February 27, 1932 to Rafael Fernández Ruenes, an architect, and Margarita Villaurrutia Suarez. Cano attended the Ruston Academy, a bilingual American school in Havana, and earned degrees in physics and chemistry from the University of Havana in 1956. She worked at the Havana National Museum and at the Julio Lobo Napoleon Museum and obtained a Master of Library Science (MLIS) from the University of Havana in 1961. Cano migrated to the U.S. in October of 1962 and settled in Miami, Florida with her family. When she arrived in Miami, she recalled in a 2019 interview, the city was still lacking in cultural events and institutions, that there were only three art museums, and no full seasons of ballet or opera performances. This was all to change in the following decades and Cano played a large role in the city’s cultural development.

Cano worked at the Miami-Dade Public Library as a Community Relations and Art Services Coordinator for 29 years. She organized arts programs that highlighted the work of African-American and Cuban-American artists. Her efforts resulted in the establishment of a substantial, permanent art collection at the library. In 1977, Cano acted as project coordinator and organized the first exhibition of works by the CINTAS fellows at Miami-Dade Public Libraries. The show exhibited 57 pieces by Cuban artists living in the United States, as well as Spain, France, Puerto Rico and Colombia. Cano was also instrumental in organizing the 1983 exhibition “Nine Cuban-American Artists, The Miami Generation,” which traveled to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, while she was serving on the board of directors of the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture. Cano was also part of the group that founded the now renowned Miami Book Fair.

Cano’s son Pablo Cano (b.1961), a prominent Miami-based artist, cites his mother and father Pablo Cano, a musician, as inspiration for his career in the arts. His large post-Byzatine style painting, Saint Sebastiana, was shown at “The Miami Generation'' exhibition. He also was a CINTAS fellow in visual arts from 1983-84. His work is housed in several permanent collections, including at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum.

Upon her retirement in 1993, her art practice became more than just an enjoyable hobby. She began developing a unique art style, painting portraits of family and religious figures like virgins, saints, angels and archangels, memories of Cuba, still life paintings, and landscapes, and creating hundreds of unique artist books based on the medieval Illuminated Manuscripts such as The Book of Hours. She says: "My paintings are a window into a dream world of memories which are unattainable but become alive in my pictorial narratives. With metaphors and allegories I retell the story of Cuba so close to us and yet so far away. I will continue my quest in pursuit of a happy closure to this never ending saga." Her works have also been described as “creating interaction between the sacred and the mundane” and “creating tension between surface ornamentation and three-dimensionality is enhanced by the rich jewel-like finish that belies the presence of the brush, which strengthens the narrative content of the work.” And that, “it is in the storytelling that Cano invites the viewer to partake of her memory and her magic.” Cano’s works have been featured in a number of solo exhibitions including “Dreaming Cuba” at the Gallery of the Eccentric in Coral Gables in 1993, “Visions And Definitions” at Cultural Resource Center in Miami in 1998, “Transcending Exile” at the Coral Gables Library in 2003, “Cuba-Paradise Lost” at Books and Books in Coral Gables and the Connors Rosato Gallery in New York in 2005, “Memories and Metaphors” at Oñate Fine Art in Miami in 2006, “Images and Memories” at Cremata Fine Art in Miami in 2007, “Divine Presence/ Presencia Divina” at Viota Gallery in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2008, and “Explorations” at Miami Dade Public Library Main Library in 2016. Her work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions in South Florida and Puerto Rico including at the University of Miami Libraries. In her artist statement, Cano writes: “My Cuban roots are reflected in my art work. It tells and retells my personal vision of Cuba. Installations of my painting visually narrate the Cuban drama: an island frozen in time surrounded by a seawall where Cubans wait for change. I document this quest for democracy and freedom through allegories and metaphors.”

In 2009, Cano was honored for her role in establishing a permanent, major art collection of Cuban American art for the Miami-Dade Public Library system and for her participation on the Board of CINTAS and commitment to the foundation for more than three decades. Hortensia Sampedro, the President of the CINTAS Board, said: “Margarita Cano has dedicated her life to the arts and has worked selflessly for the benefit of Cuban artists… in promoting the fellowships and the works of art of the fellows in numerous exhibitions.”

She is the author and illustrator of books for children, including Isabel y Su Cama Nueva (2014) and Isabel y Su Gato Coco (2008) and stresses the importance of children’s literacy and creative expression.

Most recently, in 2019 Cano’s artists books have been displayed in exhibitions at LNS Gallery in Miami as part of the “Artful Book 2019” as well as at the “Spheres of Meaning: An Exhibition of Artist Books” at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University.

Zilia Luisa Lage is a fiction writer, publisher, and translator. She was born on February 1, 1941 in Havana, Cuba to Luis B. Lage, a bill collector, and Z. Isabel Bello, a typist. As an adolescent, Lage lived in New York from 1951 to 1957. She worked as an export documentation clerk for Pittsburgh Plate Glass International in Havana from 1959 to1960 and graduated as a commercial accountant from the Escuela Professional de Comercio in Havana in 1961.That same year, she left Cuba for the U.S.

From 1962-1967, Lage worked as the agency secretary for Occidental Life Insurance Company in Miami, Florida. From 1972-1976, she worked as the secretary to vice president and branch manager of the Chicago Title Insurance Company. She then worked as a corporation banking assistant for Southeast Bank (National Association) in Miami Springs, Florida from 1978-1990. In 1989, she earned her Associate of Arts in Business Administration from Miami-Dade Community College

Since writing and translate starting in 1991, Lage has written a number of self-published books including: Genealogía - Laje (Guarina Publishing, 2006), 100 Recetas de cocina tradicionales (Guarina Publishing, 2004), Divagaciones (Guarina Publishing, 2003), Love Letters in the Sand (Guarina Publishing, 2002), Cartas Son Cartas (Guarina Publishing, 2001), The Sugar Cane Curtain (Guarina Publishing, 2000) which won numerous awards, and La cortina de bagazo (Guarina Publishing, 1995). Lage won First Prize of the Octavio Paz International Biography Contest of the "Atenea" Miami Cultural Club, in November 2005 for her biography of Antonio Maceo and she won the Writers' Journal 3rd prize for photography in November 2002.

In an interview, Zilia L. Laje said: "My primary motivation for writing is a pressing need to tell the story I have inside. Betty Smith, Kathleen Winsor, Herman Wouk, Rona Jaffe, and James Joyce have influenced my work. My writing process is to write a short draft with the plot and key dialogue, then research the background extensively and take hundreds of notes, which I incorporate, and finally rewrite the whole story. My writing is inspired by the trauma of migration and an ache that our way of life is disappearing. I want to leave a testimony of our customs. I enjoy using a lot of hidden symbolism that I'm sure goes undetected by the general reader."

Lage is the founder of the Cuban Writers in Miami, a group which gathers at the annual Miami book fair to exhibit their works. She has been an exhibitor at the Miami International Book Fair since 1995. She is also a member of the Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists Association, the Center of Writers in Exile, and a correspondent for the Women's National Book Association. She is a member of the Cuban Genealogical Society, the Alliance Française de Miami, Círculo de Cultura Panamericano, and Miami-Dade Community College Alumni Association.

Clara Luz Niggemann (d.2000) was a poet. She was born in Cuba in 1910 to Enrique and Amelia Niggemann. She lived in Camagüey but later moved to the U.S.

In Cuba, she mentored the writer Severo Sarduy and published his first poems in the newspaper that she was involved with, El Camagüeyano. She and Sarduy called them the "Krishnamurtian ballads."

Her book of poetry, Remolino de fuego: Poemas, was published in 1980 by Ediciones Rondas. Another collection entitled “En este andar febril” was published in 1990 by Indiana University Press. Another of her works, “En la puerta dorada” was published by Valencia. Her poetry was featured in many journals, including Revista Norte and in anthologies such as Poesía cubana contemporánea published by la editorial Catoblepas de Madrid in 1986, and Antología de la poesía cósmica cubana published by Fredo Arias de la Canal pública in México. An essay about her work, “Mágica presencia poética de Clara Niggemann,” was written by Gloria Vega de Alba, and published by Grupo de los 9 (Uruguay) in 1986.