Cuba - Day 4
More tours, more food, more ballet! Tours included Karlos Perez studio, University of Arts of Cuba, and the Casa Fuster tile/mosaic installation. Happy Halloween!
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Visit to Havana studio of Cuban artist Karlos Perez. See http://karlosperez.com/ for more. Perez is a graduate of the University of Arts of Cuba / Instituto Superior de Arte... |
Perez says he has a collection of some 100,000 photosgraphs that he uses as inspiration for his paintings. |
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Another Perez painting... there was another one on display at our hotel. Amazing but true - if you look at his painting through the camera on you iPhone they look like photographs... |
University of Arts of Cuba / Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) |
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Prints table at ISA visual arts studio. Some of these came home with members of our tour...  |
More prints at ISA... Some of the ISA students were in the studio, we got to meet and talk with them a bit. Noticed a few textbooks in Cyrillic... |
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Another studio in the Visual arts department, this one focused on ceramics... |
Angela and one of the ceramics instructors. We brought the blue rose home with us... |
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A visit to the Fuster art district, hard to describe but wonderful! Click here for more on this fascinating place... |
Casa Fuster. Virtually every wall, floor, roof, ceiling covered in incredible mosaics or sculptures. |
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Intrepid John in front of a porthole window framed by a giant tile heart... Guide mentioned that the artist gets most of their tiles from Central America as they cannot import from the US. |
Angela and I in front of another Fuster mosaic. On the boat with Fidel and Che? |
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Lunch at the La Ferminia Restaurant with Debra Goldstein. Note multiple mohitos on the table - these appeared by magic almost everywhere we went, perhaps the national cocktail of Cuba. Our tour guide opined that in Cuba we all need our vitamin "R"... |
Angela with our usher at the Gran Teatro de La Habana. She did not speak a lick of English but they both spoke ballet... Seats for this performance were in the front row of the first balcony. There are FIVE balconies in the theater, the top-most is called "Paradise." |
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Chandelier and ceiling in the Gran Teatro de La Habana... |
Woman bowing in the front row is the one and only Alicia Alonso, Cuban prima ballerina and artistic director of the National Ballet of Cuba. Revered in Cuba, the theater we were in is named for her... |
Evening ballet performances. Another mixed repertoire included:
- Lilac Garden (National Ballet of Cuba);
- Errand into the Maze (Martha Graham Dance Company);
- Flames of Paris (Dutch National Ballet); and
- Act III of Coppelia (National Ballet of Cuba).