A musico-choreographic analysis of a Cuban dance routine: a performance-informed approach

ABSTRACT McKerrell, in ‘Towards Practice Research in Ethnomusicology’, advocates for performance to be used as ‘a central methodology’, as a ‘translation of artistic performance aesthetics’ and as a ‘research outcome sited in original performance’ (2019). The translational role for performance is demonstrated in this article through a practice-led investigation into the dynamic relationship between improvised music and dance. The research is based on the analysis of a live performance on Cuban television of ‘Los Problemas de Atilana’ by Orquesta Aragón in the early 1960s, where musical gestures are shown to be embodied in the flute and dance solo ‘duet’ performed by Cuban flautist Richard Egües and dancer Rafael Bacallao, revealing the shared memories of a community bound by common cultural experience. Interdisciplinary in nature, analysis is undertaken by a musician-scholar, a film scholar-practitioner and a professional Cuban dancer-animator in order to unearth details of this embodied repertoire, thus translating and making overt culturally implicit knowledge for those outside of the artistic community of practice, and, in some cases, within it. Through re-performance and re-presentation in the form of a recording and animations, the many meanings embodied in the original performance are examined through analytical text, musical notation, visuals, recordings and animation film.