Embodied Knowledge as Revolutionary Dance: Representations of Cuban Modern Dance in Alma Guillermoprieto's Dancing with Cuba

Abstract

This article examines Alma Guillermoprieto's use of embodied knowledge in her memoir Dancing with Cuba. Descriptions of embodiment reveal her struggle to reconcile the values of modern dance with Ernesto Guevara's symbolic New Man—the ideal revolutionary used to promote physical labor as the means to a socialist utopia. I argue that Guillermoprieto solves this crisis by turning toward language, in particular language that activates the kinesthetic imagination—an archive of embodied experiences dancers rely on to engage choreography. An emphasis on embodied knowledge in the memoir shows how crucial dancing bodies are to the literary archive of the Revolution.