The flavor of Cuban movement and the deliciousness of embodied skills

ABSTRACT This article explores the Cuban sensorium as revealed through children’s baseball practice. The development of physical skills in any sport are painstakingly learned through repetitive practice. The enskillment of such movements are tasted by coaches, athletes and others through a combination of sensory information. In Cuba, the sensing of movement is understood and evaluated through the flavor of movement. How these children develop the requisite “techniques of the body” are only part of the enskillment process; coaches emphasize and evaluate the flavor of children’s movements rather than correctness of their techniques as indicators of enskillment. Thus, the article focuses on the sensorial frame by which learning to move is encouraged, critiqued, and evaluated. Drawing attention to these sensorial frames thereby highlights cultural specificity for sensing oneself and one’s world and the nature of the development of such sensoria.