Author of Dancing with Cuba — one of the most insightful books ever written about Cuban body culture, by a journalist and dancer who lived inside it as a young woman.
Alma Guillermoprieto is a Mexican journalist who went on to become one of Latin America's most celebrated writers for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Before her journalism career, she was a modern dance student who in 1970 was invited to teach at Cuba's Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana.
Her memoir Dancing with Cuba (Pantheon Books, 2004) recounts that year: the Cuban students she taught, the politics of revolutionary Cuba, the music everywhere, and — most importantly — the way Cuban bodies relate to rhythm in a way that her Western concert dance training had not prepared her for. The book is the best account in any language of what it means to be inside Cuban dance culture, and essential reading for anyone learning Cuban dance outside Cuba.