Malpaso Dance Company brings Cuban energy, verve to Pittsburgh

Chosen names can reveal a lot. Take the Malpaso Dance Company of Havana, Cuba, which is now on tour and coming to Pittsburgh.

Malpaso is a funny name for a dance company because it means misstep in Spanish. It’s the opposite of what dancers try to do.

On one level, the name reflects the warnings that two of the three founders heard from friends that leaving secure jobs as dancers to found their own troupe could be a misstep for them.

Malpaso is also a rejection of the pretentious names some performing groups take – Lords of this or Kings of that.

But as they founders considered the name they would take, they realized malpaso conveyed something important. “We learn nothing from success. We learn from failing. We cannot grow without digesting our failed experiences,” says executive director Fernando Saez.

Pittsburgh Dance Council will present the Malpaso Dance Company on Feb. 22 at Pittsburgh’s Byham Theater.

Malpaso was founded in 2012 by two dancers in Cuba’s Danza Contemporanea, Osnel Delgado and Daileidys Carranzo, and Saez, whose theatrical profession was acting. They were motivated by personal and artistic ambitions. Finding one’s choreographic voice was part of it. So, too, was promoting and elevating Cuban choreography by bringing prominent, international choreographers to Havana.

“One of our goals was to narrow the gap between the high standards of Cuban dancers and generally poor standards of Cuban choreography,” he ways. Exposure to the highest standards of any artform can help creative people develop by expanding their realization of what’s possible.

The company founders drew on their own savings to start Malpaso, which remains the only independent contemporary dance group in Cuba. It receives no government funds. Instead, it relies on a network of friends in Cuba and others countries. Support from The Ludwig Foundation in Havana provided more than money. It also legitimized the young troupe’s aspirations. Another important step in its growing strength was becoming an associated company with the producing arm of The Joyce Theater in New York City.

The program will open with “Face the Torrent” by Sonya Tayeh, who is based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Created two years ago, the piece conveys “the obsessions and frustrations that is connected to the state of her soul and the state of the world,” according to Saez. To find the source of the torrent of fears, he says, its useful to know that “she’s half Palestinian and half Lebanese and a minority in many other ways.”

“Ocaso” (Twilight) by Osnel Delgado was the first piece to enter Malpaso’s repertoire. The troupe concentrated on solos and duets in its early years because there were only two dancers. Saez says he wouldn’t call “Ocaso” a romantic piece, exactly. “It is like the journey of a couple in a day in their life at a transitioning moment. Twilight is a good metaphor for the complexity of the relationship – from tenderness to confrontation to tension – facing it all together.”

The program will close with “Tabula rasa” by Israeli choreographer Ohan Naharin. “We like to have creative conversations when we work with guest choreographers, and Naharin is one of the world’s most influential. ‘Tabula rasa’ is such a classic we wanted to confront ourselves with it sense of beauty. When he revisited the work on a visit to Havana, he focused on what we have in common, rather than our differences. The piece is in some ways new, new lighting, for example. He made some changes to the choreography but using essentially the same patterns. We are proud to bring it to Pittsburgh, the birthplace of this amazing work.” Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre gave the world premiere in 1986.