#la-cha-cha-cha

#la-cha-cha-cha

The ballroom design features impractical elements like a stairway to nowhere and fake windows, emphasizing a focus on flashiness over functionality.

Eliades Ochoa's aura is so powerful that under the generous rays of sunlight streaming through the large window on this March morning, he evokes a Western film.

Eshu's proverb tells both a story of reparation and of ancestrality by joyfully bending spacetime conventions and accessing subjects from the past with present actions.

She explained that she was facing bureaucratic hurdles in obtaining her degree to qualify as a senior technician in dental prosthetics. And, even with the diploma, it would be difficult to survive on a monthly salary of 3,000 pesos (about $6). In Cuba, she said, you have to be a magician to survive the nonexistent transportation, the inflation, the corruption, [or] the fact that the country is operating with a currency that not everyone can access.

Pianist Dr. Gabriela Calderón and violinist Dr. Catalina Barraza celebrate the rich musical heritage of Latin America.

L.A.'s Spaghetti Cumbia, a five-piece party band that combines cumbia, punk rock, ska and their love for spaghetti western soundtracks a la Ennio Morricone.

It is a dance tradition, but it's very much culturally rooted. It's also for many, if not all, the people involved, a spiritual practice. But even in different (dance) groups that hold to different ways of being, we still collaborate together - we still work together to uplift the culture.

This is an absolute beginners course on the foundations of classical ballet and, a single catastrophic line dance lesson aside, it is also the first dance class I have ever attended. I am in the minority. As we take the barre, it quickly becomes apparent that not being able to tell my left from my right will be a significant deficit over the next 16 weeks. This, however, is a tertiary concern.

Then López entered, dancing. Wearing a Popeye shirt, he raised one hand above his head and bounced like a pogo stick. Rocking through some b-boy footwork, he added Latin flavor, shimmying his shoulders. The official weighing (139.6 pounds) seemed merely an interruption to his dance as he continued prowling the stage. Stevenson was forced to walk over to him, so that the two could perform the next part of the ritual and stare at each other, eye to eye.

But instead, they find their way to a small studio, where they join 27 others in strapping on a pair of high heels and throwing themselves into two hours of dance moves. This is the beginners heels class at Vibe Dance Studio, which was started by Izzy Gonzales and her dad Ed four years ago. It's a place where people can show up exhausted, but end up with so much energy they don't want to go home.

The rumours have been swirling for over a week now, but the official word has come down from the Toronto Blue Jays: right-hander Yariel Rodriguez will be pitching for Team Cuba at the World Baseball Classic later this spring. Rodriguez is no stranger to the WBC stage, making two starts for the national squad at the 2023 tournament. Across 7 1/3 innings, Rodriguez allowed just five hits and two earned runs with 10 strikeouts.

The artists José Parlá and Claudia Hilda, his wife, live in a former fire station in Fort Greene surrounded by memories of Cuba, which Parlá's family fled in 1970 and where Hilda lived until recently. "There's a lot of magical realism here, a big mix of Cuban traditions and religion," says Parlá, pointing to an icon of la Caridad del Cobre, the island's patron saint, in the kitchen. "We cannot move her!"

Cuba has long been under the effects of a perfect storm that shows no signs of abating. In addition to constant power outages, the high cost of living, persistent unsanitary conditions in the streets, and a tangled economic crisis that Cuban authorities seem incapable of resolving, there are now direct threats from Donald Trump's administration, aimed at the Castro regime which has been in power for nearly 70 years.

The artists José Parlá and Claudia Hilda, his wife, live in a former fire station in Fort Greene surrounded by memories of Cuba, which Parlá's ­family fled in 1970 and where ­Hilda lived until recently. "There's a lot of magical realism here, a big mix of Cuban traditions and religion," says Parlá, pointing to an icon of la Caridad del Cobre, the island's patron saint, in the kitchen. "We cannot move her!"

Michelle Paulin dances while instructing youth at the Dulce Tricolor Venezolano dance group at the Ariel Dance Studio in Campbell on Jan. 25, 2026. Dulce Tricolor, a Bay Area Venezuelan dance group founded in 2019, teaches children traditional folk dances while preserving culture, building community and offering a sense of home amid Venezuela's ongoing political and economic crisis. (Josie Lepe for KQED)

In the just-named Grammy Album of the Year, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS-which Bad Bunny has declared his " most Puerto Rican album " to date-the supernova reggaetonero painted an evocative portrait of the Caribbean island, while declaring to a whopping 8.6 million listeners: "VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR" (I'm going to bring you to Puerto Rico). And he did. Last year, a record-breaking number of tourists-7,486,000 to be exact-visited Puerto Rico's tropical shores.

A few blocks from Revolution Square, in a former shantytown in Havana, Dr. Omitsa Valdes holds her consultations. It's a dusty, dilapidated place where she tells patients they must bring their own syringe and medication from home. But if a general checkup is needed, including urine and blood tests, Dr. Valdes is even more direct: If you can get it done yourself, I'll write the order.