Productive Pleasures

Abstract

As ephemeral as the social effects of dance may be, still more elusive are the embodiments of a critical public. The publics so dear to democratic practice so often appear only metonymically in rules that govern speech. Or they may seem to be inchoate yearnings whose only possible realization lies in formal representation. To attend to actual circuits of participation, one needs to account for the practical capacities that allow bodies to gather in public and move toward desirable ends. The imbrication of state and daily life in Cuba makes study of the affinities between formal and informal political domains particularly robust. Contemporary Cuban dance in a variety of venues—proscenium stages, streets, clubs, and houses—is used to grasp how pleasure meets critique where a social economy for corporeal mobilization is in evidence.