The National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) will start a tour of six cities of Canada on February 3, with a repertoire in which different choreographic tendencies and styles will merge, announced the ballet company sources.
This will be the first performance of the company in Canada this year.
The company, led by Alicia Alonso, will perform in Victoria, Nanaimo, Banff, Kelowna, and Chilliwack, where it will present classic ballets such as Don Quijote, Nutcracker and the Swam Lake Act II Adagio. 
The performances also include in the Shades of a Vals, a choreography by Alonso with the music of Josef Strauss, Dialogue to 4, in which the prima ballerina absolute pays tribute to Cuban musician Ignacio Cervantes. 
Among the leading ballet dancers will be Sadaise Arencibia, Anette Delgado, Dani Hernandez, Yanela Piñera, Viengsay Valdés, Jessie Dominguez, Ernesto Diaz, Osiel Gounod and Jose Losada, supported by soloists and the company ballet dancers. 
The tour of the BNC will conclude February 18 in Vancouver with the complete version of Don Quijote.
Cuban essayist Zuleica Romay, who won the special 2012 Casa de las Americas Literature Award on black presence in the contemporary Americas and the Caribbean, called for cultural policies to face today's stereotypes and racist behaviors.
After receiving the award, the author of "Elogio de la Altea o las Paradojas de la Racialidad" (Altea Praise and Racial Paradoxes), told Prensa Latina that the the work allows her to appreciate racial prejudices through socio-cultural processes that are often covert.
"I tried to understand why, despite the social transformation process of the Cuban Revolution, lower stereotypes still remain. I think the systematization of our experiences through social sciences will benefit all Latin American and Caribbean countries," the researcher stated.
This is not an autobiographical book, it tells personal stories to support her thesis: "I think that about those issues, in which society seeks responses to its more complex problems, exchange is essential," said Romay, current president of the Cuban Book Institute.
She noted that in order to write the book, she had to collect the largest quantity of possible systematizations: History of Cuba and the classics of Cuba's social thought, especially anthropologist Fernando Ortiz,
but also reflections from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and reports from international news agencies. The academic, who described the special Casa Award as the most relevant prize in her short literary career, told the press about her interest to unravel the common denominators that determine prejudice and racial discrimination in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Cuban cast of Chico and Rita, an animated feature-length film directed by Spanish director Fernando Trueba, celebrated with joy the Oscar nomination for this work, in which the filmmaker pays tribute to the music of the island.
The actress Blanca Rosa Blanco, who lent her voice to a character, she thanked the Director for paying homage to Cuban culture.
Blanco recalled those days when Trueba invited her to join the cast, which is also made up of other Cuban actors such as Limara Meneses, Eman Xor Ona, Mario Guerra and Reni Arozarena, among others.
More than 70 artists and musicians of various generations are involved in this film, among whom are Rolando Luna, Rodney Barreto, Carlos Sarduy and Dafnis Prieto, Horacio "el Negro Hernandez," Amadito Valdes, Idania Valdes and Pedrito Martinez, among others.
As Trueba said in December 2010, during its premiere at the film festival in Havana, Chico and Rita is a romantic story, a bolero.
Chico and Rita, which was also directed by Trueba's brother Tono Errando and designer and artist Javier Mariscal, had the support of the students of the International School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba.
Sexo, amor y Erotismo, palabras que provocan (Sex, love and eroticism, provocative words) is a book designed for teenagers and young adults, but that can also be useful to parents and teachers, said its author, the Cuban journalist Aloyma Ravelo. "Adolescence is a complex stage, well known throughout the world, for the teens, the family, and the experts on the subject, as it is a time of life filled with new experiences, when the body and the psyche suffer too many changes, and we have so much to learn," said Ravelo.The need for proximity of the opposite or the same sex is settled, and sometimes they do not know how to negotiate, what to do with the sudden discovery of love and eroticism, and how to turn them into something rewarding."I wrote this book to help with suggestions, ideas, clarification of these issues, in which many letters also appear and may serve to illustrate things," Ravelo said. The book, published by the women-oriented publishing house, will be launched at the 21st International Book Fair of Havana, to be held from February 9 to 19.
Aloyma Ravelo works in various print and digital publications, is a writer of radio and television programs and has written other popular books such as "Enigmas de la Sexualidad Femenina" (Enigmas of Female Sexuality), in two editions (2008 and 2010), "40 Preguntas sobre Sexo" (40 Questions about Sex), (2009), "Como Educar a los Hijos sin Equivocarse Tanto" (How to Educate Children without Making Too Much Mistakes) (2010), among others.
A new museum will be opened in the archaeological site called Los Buchillones, considered the largest in Cuba and the Caribbean islands, because of the number of wooden pieces found, among them nearly entire houses.
The unit was built close to the Center of Archaeological Investigations located in the same area where the discoveries were made, in the northern coast of the central province of Ciego de Avila.
In Los Buchillones were found more than 1,500 pieces, 1,000 wooden and the rest carved in bones, stone, ceramic and shells, belonging to a group that lived here between 1220 and 1620.
Adrian Garcia, director of the Office of Monuments and Historical Places in the territory, specified that the area, located in the town of Punta Alegre, was discovered in 1940, but it was not until the 1980s that the first scientific investigations were carried out.
Garcia added that the results of the studies indicated that the community settled in the place survived the impact of the conquest and colonization, a new finding for national history that has assumed the quick and almost total disappearance of the indigenous presence in Cuba.
Some of the discovered objects seem to have been made at a time when the natives were thought to have been extinguished already, and other objects present distinctive features of the Hispanic culture, according to the specialist.
The museum has a large exhibit room to preserve the archaeological heritage, because of the significance that the evidence has for local and national culture and its impact on the level of the population's knowledge, Garcia said.
"For the first time in Cuba, a great collection of original wooden objects and remains of houses contributing to the new knowledge of the Cuban native culture, is put to the disposition of investigators and the public in general," specified Lisandra Martinez, a specialist in Museology.
Los Buchillones was declared a National Monument because of its relevance for the cultural and historical patrimony of the island, and for preserving exceptional values highlighting it as the most important native area in the Caribbean islands.
The National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) will start a tour of six cities of Canada on February 3, with a repertoire in which different choreographic tendencies and styles will merge, announced the ballet company sources. 
The company, led by Alicia Alonso, will perform in Victoria, Nanaimo, Banff, Kelowna, and Chilliwack, where it will present classic ballets such as Don Quijote, Nutcracker and the Swam Lake Act II Adagio. 
