The Enchanted Shrimp: Cuba's National Ballet

Cuba's National Ballet will celebrate International Children's Day with a presentation of The Enchanted Shrimp (El Camaron Encantado), performed by about 500 children and young dancers.

Under the direction of prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, the piece, with choreography by Eduardo Blanco, will be performed at the Karl Marx theater in a gala sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).

Inspired by a Jose Marti version of the story by French writer Laboulaye, El Camaron Encantado, published in the book La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), also features the music of Giaccomo Rossini, Benjamin Britten, Serguei Prokofiev, Joseph Luigini, Jules Massenet, and Leo Delibes.

Set design is by Eduardo Romero and Luis Carlos Benvenuto.

Young ballet dancers Monica Gomez (the enchanted shrimp) Dayesi Torrintes (Masicas), and Josue Justiz (Loppi) will dance the main roles, backed by a ballet group of children 5 to 14 years old who will play mice, bats, butterflies, birds, rabbits, deers, bears, among others.

The Enchanted Shrimp premiered in June 2002. The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, attended the second show and recommended that it be presented nationwide.

Next CUBADISCO Fair Will Be Dedicated to the Guitar

Eliades Ochoa, a living legend of Cuban music, praised the 15th edition of the Cubadisco Fair in the eastern city Santiago de Cuba, where he justly started his career over 50 years ago.

Ochoa, who won a Grammy with the legendary Buena Vista Social Club, has been an inspiration for this fair, the most important of this kind in Cuba, and whose Honorary Award was conferred on him.

Ochoa praised Cubadisco´s organization and professionalism, saying that the "son" genre and traditional popular music have been the protagonists, with gala shows that have brought together renowned artists of this city.

Regarding the impact of "son" music worldwide, the musician talked of his meetings with "son" musicians in the different countries where he and his group Cuarteto Patria have toured.

The CUBADISCO 2012 International Fair will be dedicated to the guitar as an instrument in various performance aspects, said Ciro Benemelis, president of the Organizing Committee.

CUBADISCO 2012 will be dubbed "The City of a Thousand Strings," referring to a piece by the maestro Leo Brouwer, and activities in the provinces, Benemelis added.

At the closing show of the 15th CUBADISCO, Benemelis thanked the authorities and people of Santiago de Cuba for the success of the event, which was held outside Havana for the first time and honored the genre of son.

Since its foundaing in 1997, CUBADISCO has been the largest annual contest of Cuban music and has become an essential event in making known the most outstanding music, while awarding albums in dozens of categories.

Casa de las Americas Announces 2011 Literature Contest

This year, the annual Casa Award will include two prizes for investigative writing: one for essays on Latino studies in the United States, and another for essays on the black presence in Latin America and the Caribbean today.

Authors of any nationality with a book of essays published between 2009 and 2011 on literary/artistic and social/historical topics will be able to compete in these two new contests, and even to participate with books published in Spanish or English during the same period.

The other genres for the Casa Award are: literature for children and young people, theater, Caribbean literature -with works published between 2008 and 2011- and Brazilian literature (nonfiction) in Portuguese language with texts published between 2008 and 2011.

The jury will meet in Havana in January 2012.

Cuban People Remember Jose Marti

The validity of Cuban national hero Jose Marti's work acquires new dimensions now, when millions of Cubans mark his fall in combat against Spanish colonialism 116 years ago.

The tribute began in Granma province, where children walked to the memorial built to mark the site where the main organizer of what is known as the Necessary War died.

The son of Spaniards Mariano Marti and Leonor Perez, Marti was born on January 28, 1853, and was the main chief architect of the renewal of the independence war in Cuba.

Marti brought the majority of Cubans together, explained the historic continuity of the Revolution, and showed that his country's independence was necessary to prevent Our America from being absorbed by the United States, and to attain global equilibrium.

His premature death at the age of 42 deprived Cuba of one of its best sons. Brilliant ideas, many with an enormous validity, remain alive in his poetry, literature, speeches, letters, articles, and diverse documents.

Caribbean Literature and Languages in Symposium

Caribbean literature and its development in the last few years is the main focus this Tuesday on the agenda of the International Symposium on Cultural Diversity in the Caribbean, with participating scholars and artists from 10 countries.

Called by Casa de las Americas and co-sponsored by the UNESCO Regional Office of Culture for Latin America and the Caribbean, the second day of the event will feature a panel headed by Cubans Nancy Morejon, Roberto Fernandez Retamar and Pablo Amando Fernandez, to pay tribute to the recently deceased Martinican poet Edouard Glissant.

The teaching of languages in the region is also be discussed in a round table with Dominican Pedro Ureña and Cuban Ariel Camejo, among others.

The afternoon session is dedicated to literature for children with panels and talks on writing styles in the area, with Martinican Nicole Café, Moise Benjamín from Guadalupe y Cuban Denia García Ronda.

There will also be a workshop entitled "I Paint, Write and Make a Book", with fourth grade students from the primary school Juan A. Triana and the support of teachers from Havana University.

The symposium was opened on Monday by the director of the UNESCO Regional Office of Culture for Latin America and the Caribbean, Herman Van Hooff, and will be held until May 20.

Museum of Fine Arts Free on May 18

Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts' director announced that the admission to the institution will be free May 18 to celebrate the International Museum Day.

The visitors to the buildings of Cuban Art and Universal Art on the date aforementioned will be able to enjoy the pieces of art treasured by the center for free and noted that guided visits will not be charged either.

The topic for this year’s International Museum Day is museums and memory. For such reason, the institution will open an exhibition, also on May 18, of photographs, documents, catalogues and other materials making up the history of the Museum since 1970 to the present.

The display will be at the lobby of the Cuban Art building, which houses the most representative works of Cuban art since colonial times to the present.

The materials on the exhibit are patrimony of the Antonio Rodríguez Morey Information Center, where the documentary memory of the institution is preserved.

Founded on February 23, 1913, by presidential decree as National Museum, the center has built its collection from donations made by cultural personalities and friends of Cuba.

Oldest Lady Wishes All Mothers Peace

Cuba’s oldest person, Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez, 126, wished all mothers on the planet peace from the rural neighborhood of Santa Rosa, in the municipality of Campechuela.

On the occasion of Mother’s Day on Sunday, the elderly woman spoke at the farm where she was born on February 2, 1885.

With admirable clarity and energy for her age, Candulia, as close family and friends call her, asked for “all the good” and “a lot of health” for all mothers, and expressed her wish for wars to end.

She declared herself to be a happy mother, for the love she receives from her son Eleduvildo, her six grandchildren, and the rest of her descendants.

Last year, while speaking about her family, Candulia explained that Eleduvildo became a widower when his children were little, and that she helped him bring them up.

She pointed out that she receives visitors every day and that when he was hospitalized her five grandsons asked for vacation to take care of her.

Juana Bautista, a black woman, was born in the hamlet of Santa Rosa, in the neighborhood of Ceiba Hueca Arriba, in today’s Granma province, according to Volume I, page 35 of the Register of Births of Campechuela, where her name was written on the 27th of that month.

He aged was certified by way of a biomedical and psychosocial study in 2007, carried out by a team of the Cuban Public Health Ministry and the Latin American Center for the Third Age.

This super-longevous woman had 12 siblings; her mother died a centenarian and her father at 96.

According to reports found on the Internet, Antisa Khvichava, from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, was born on July 8, 1880, being the most long-lived person on the planet.