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By Steve Wilkinson
THE Tropicana nightclub is to make a tour of Britain starting at the Royal Albert Hall in March before going on to Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow.
The oldest cabaret show of its kind in the world, Club Tropicana is famous for its shimmering chorus line of 30 carefully chosen mixed race women, or mulatas as they are called in Cuba, who form the focus of media interest and publicity.
But promoters Harvey Goldsmith and Bill Curbishly, the manager of the rock band The Who, whose idea it was to bring the show to Britain, are keeping faith with the original show and intend to recreate the whole performance in the Albert Hall.
This will make it something more than a mere spectacle of flesh and sequins and present for the first time in Britain a slice of Cuban culture little known and much less well understood in the Anglo-Saxon world. Steve Wilkinson has been looking at its history.
THE Tropicana nightclub was a mere stripling of twenty in 1959 when Fidel rolled into Havana at the head of the triumphant Revolution. Already well-established as one of the premier night-spots in the western hemisphere the Tropicana landed like a cat on its feet.
For while the Revolution swiftly 'cleaned up' red-light Havana and closed nightclubs, casinos, brothels and sex shows, The Tropicana escaped the crackdown thanks to a demonstration of popular support from the people who worked there and the residents who lived around the club in the Marianao suburb of the capital.
Since then, The Tropicana show has thrived for more than 36 years in revolutionary Cuba without apologising for its ambience of sexual license.
The casinos are no more, but the Tropicana aesthetic lives on and has changed little since the days when crime bosses flew their girlfriends in from New York for a night out at the nightclub 'under the stars.' So-called because the whole show takes place in the open air amid the trees of a tropical garden.
The Tropicana is still one of the most lavish spectacles in the world. Visiting it today is like witnessing a museum piece, for the costumes at first glance seem pure forties and fifties follies, more at home in a Busby Berkely musical than a nationalised communist state industry.
But to the surprise of many who might condemn the show for its sexist exploitation of women and for pandering to the taste of a bourgeois and male audience of tourists, there is another side to the Tropicana experience which is overlooked but which goes deep to the heart of Cuban notions of nationhood and identity and which might explain why, despite its tacky reputation, it is deeply and unashamedly loved by the Cuban people.
FOR the show at the Royal Albert Hall in March, to his credit, promoter Harvey Goldsmith is bringing over the entire show. He has resisted the temptation to put on just the most sexy and easily absorbed 'westernised' bits of the revue.
This means that British audiences will get the chance to see no less than 87 performers, musicians, singers, dancers and the famous chorus line. Together, in a two hour production, this troupe will perform a spectacle that projects not just the North American 'Las Vegas' influence on Cuban life but also an incredible slice of Cuban culture and history.
New York based academic Elizabeth Ruf, who has spent some time studying the spectacle argues that the Tropicana should be appreciated more than it is because it embodies so much of Cuba's identity.
Ironically, this identity is bound up most tightly in the element of the show that is most often targeted by the politically correct as being the most objectionable - the leggy mixed race women who form the figurantes or chorus line.
These sequined bikini clad (though never bare breasted) dancers parade at intervals up and down the aisles of tables sometimes within touching distance of the guests. They are the idealised 'mulatas' as they are called, again a name which arouses objections in the English speaking world. Elizabeth explains:
"Mulata is one of the most frequently repeated words in the in the songs of the Tropicana show. Derived from the Spanish word for a young mule, it often angers progressives because it connotes a dehumanising racial and sexual stereotype. The word simply does not translate. We would never consider calling anyone a 'mulatto' because of what it implies. In Cuba, however, the word does not carry the same significance."
In her study on the issues of race, gender and nationalism in the Tropicana show, Elizabeth, who is currently doing research at New York's Columbia University, asks why it should be a mixed race woman who is given this pivotal role and argues that it is because the mulata embodies Cuban imaginings of their nation.
"The Cuban nation came about as a result of what the Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz called 'transculturation'." She says, " The high status of the mulata in the Tropicana show and the diverse elements of music and dance from Africa and Spain alongside Cuban hybrid forms illustrate this process of transculturation, which basically means a mixing of cultures into a new and different whole."
Elizabeth points out that the Tropicana's antecedents were the Cuban music halls of the 19th Century in which the African derived sexual dance of the rumba was frequently performed by mixed race women. Indeed, many of the show's elements are directly derived from music hall, including the live orchestra, popular dances such as the cha cha cha, guagancó and the rumba, acrobats, jugglers, pantomime. There are also solo singers who sing everything from light opera to boleros and romantic ballads. There are even staged ritual dances from Afro Cuban religions accompanied by drummers.
But it is the mulata figurantes who form the link between all these elements of the show.
For Elizabeth, this is because they are central to the Cuban sense of their nationhood reminding us that in the earliest Cuban literature it is the mulata who is charged with carrying the identity of the emerging nation.
"For example, Cecilia Valdes, the novel by Cirilo Villaverde, first published in 1839 provides the most consequential examination of Cuban national traits in the character of the mulata. Cecilia, the protagonist, is the daughter if rich slave owner and a poor mulata and the book is full of repeated references to the mixed roots of all Cubans."
In addition, she argues the mulata was chosen by poets Luis Palés Matos and Nicolas Guillén to be representative of the island itself;
"For these two, the woman of colour in the Americas functions as an object of desire, a nurturing environment and a patriotic symbol," she says.
Furthermore, not only is the music of African origin but also some of the songs are even sung in African language. Even the colours of the show, predominantly red and yellow are associated with the African goddess of love, Ochún. Thus the figurantes, when they appear in their yellow costumes are the idealised embodiment of a deity. This might help to explain why, though they are undoubtedly sexual, they are not taken merely as 'objects' by the Cuban members of the audience.
Anyone who has seen the Tropicana show will be familiar with the price of entry which seems to increase for tourists with alarming regularity.
But what people perhaps do not know is that still today ten per cent of the seats are reserved for Cubans who can line up on the day to purchase entries for 10 Cuban pesos. This is then subtracted from their consumption bill. In addition, the Cuban trade unions have a number of reservations which they distribute to workers as incentives and rewards, so on any given night at least ten per cent of the Tropicana audience is made up of Cuban nationals.
For them, the spectacular sets and lighting and the extravagant head-dresses (some of them four feet high and illuminated with tiny electric bulbs) must be a sharp contrast to the austerity of the Special Period. But nonetheless they would not deny the fact that the Tropicana is a valuable asset earning over $1.5 million per year and providing more than 500 jobs. Profits from the show are funneled into the Havana social services network providing hard currency support for the circulo infantiles (nursery schools) and health care throughout the city.
For Cubans, the Tropicana is a national institution and the pinnacle of a performance art form that is now practiced throughout the island in local cabarets and nightclubs.
I remember as a member of the 1989 work brigade being taken to a cabaret show which was performed by workers and their children at a community hall in Camaguey, Central Cuba. In this show, adolescent girls provided the chorus line in home made costumes in a manner reminiscent of the kind of end of year shows that dancing schools put on for parents all over Britain, except in this case the tap shoes and leotards were replaced by open fronted colonial style dresses and spangled bikinis.
I have to admit I was among those in the group who didn't quite know how to react to what, to our way of thinking, was a rather sexist spectacle, albeit one which the Cubans, not least the performers themselves, were obviously extremely proud.
Our Cuban hosts were bemused by the discussions that ensued, insisting that such girls were not exploited but highly respected for their abilities.
Indeed, to dance in the Tropicana is a great privilege and carries a high salary in Cuban terms. More than 10,000 hopefuls a year write in for auditions for what is usually 100 free places in the troupe. They practice two hours per day before every show.
Now the show is coming to Britain and will eventually tour Europe, South Africa and Australia before going on to the United States. When I asked Bill Curbishley if he was concerned about the consequences for his business in the States for having invested in the show. He replied that he didn't care: "The American policy is so unjust," he said.
It would be nice to believe that he and Harvey Goldsmith are doing this for that reason and not simply to make money, though I suppose that is extremely wishful thinking. Just as much as it would be to hope that people will go to the Tropicana in London to experience a slice of Cuban culture rather than for lascivious reasons. Still, I afforded myself a wry smile as I contemplated North American audiences clapping along to the songs of the show. The chorus of one of its most popular anthems is:
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