RAIN MAIDEN
Danza Contempo­ránea de Cuba

Danza Contemporánea de Cuba looks back on more than 50 years of history. Founded in 1959, the year of the Cuban revolution, in many respects it can be seen as an image of the island state and its people.

 

Rain Maiden is inspired by Die Regentrude by Theodor Storm and reimagines the story within the reality of contemporary Cuba. The drought at the center of Storm’s tale becomes a metaphor for the current crisis on the island—a state of material, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion that affects everyday life and the way people relate to one another.
On stage, this condition is embodied through movement. Bodies become heavy, fragmented, and depleted, while the desire for human connection is constantly challenged by external forces. The "Feuermann" appears as a consuming energy that accelerates, pressures, and drains, reflecting the forces that intensify this state of exhaustion.
In contrast, the Regentrude is transformed from an individual character into a collective . Connected to ancestral memory and Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions, she emerges through voice, breath, rhythm, movement, and the gathering of bodies.
The work moves from drought to invocation, and from crisis toward the possibility of transformation. Rain does not arrive as an external miracle, but is summoned collectively through bodies that resist, remember, and support one another.

Created by Julio César Iglesias Ungo and George Enrique Céspedes Aguilera, in collaboration with Ben Frost, Jördis Richter, and Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, Rain Maiden reflects on resilience and regeneration in a moment of profound crisis, asking how community, memory, nature, and collective action
can create the possibility of a future.