My friend Elena Madan has an employment contract with the National Ballet of Cuba in Guadalupe, a little island in the Caribbean, where she also teaches classes in water ballet and does administrative work at the office of the telephone company. It is a lot of work, and so Elena takes her vacations seriously, but as she has family in Cuba she ends upcoming often. On Saturday Elena invited my sister, my niece and me to a place called Jazz Café.
The first question was what would I wear. I don’t have any clothes, though later I realized this was an unnecessary worry. But we women usually get worked up on that subject. As it turned out, the place was informal and friendly, FRIGID!, nice waiters, and a varied cuisine. I enjoyed seeing live César López’s Havana Ensemble (the poet, not the other one), I shook my bones with the waka-waka, Charanga habanera y Kool and the Gang. At 54, I knew how I could spend a Saturday night with freely convertible money.
September 22, 2010
