CubaCaribe's 19th Annual Festival of Dance & Music Set For March

CubaCaribe – now in its 22nd year – has announced its 19th Annual Festival of Dance & Music entitled A Fire Within, featuring seven Bay Area Dance companies in a celebration of the passion and drive that artists must carry for their art that propels their work out into the world and ultimately moves and inspires us.  Held annually, Cuba Caribe Festival of Dance & Music is devoted to folkloric and contemporary dance and music of the Afro-Caribbean and its Diaspora. The featured companies include Batey Tambó, Batuki, Dimensions Dance Theater, Folklo Ayisyen Lakay, Herencia Guantanamera, Los Lupeños de San José, and Rueda Con Ritmo. Performances are at 8pm on Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29, and at 4pm on Sunday, March 30 at ODC Theater in San Francisco. Special events take place at various locations in San Francisco March 29-April4. 

“The theme for this year’s Festival is A Fire Within, focusing on the passion and drive that artists must carry for their art, how they are inspired, how they propel their work out into the world and ultimately what moves and inspires us. Each artist will delve into when this spark ignited, how it was realized and how the drive to create continues,” explains Jamaica Itule, Executive Director and Co-Founder of CubaCaribe. “Our mission is to celebrate, and with A Fire Within we celebrate that art is a way of surviving.”

The 2025 CubaCaribe featured companies are:

• Batey Tambó, a Bay Area-based, women of color-led cultural group grounded in the centuries-old musical tradition of Afro-Indigenous Puerto Rican Bomba.

• Batuki, a San Francisco based group featuring Brazilian percussion, dance, electronic melodic instruments and vocals performing a fusion of Latin music ranging from such backgrounds as Afro-Caribbean, Hip Hop and Funk.

• Dimensions Dance Theater at 52 is one of the oldest contemporary dance companies in the US and is widely recognized for its presentation of both traditional dances and contemporary choreography drawn from African, Jazz, and Modern dance idioms.

• Herencia Guantanamera, a company rooted in the Afro-Cuban Haitian cultural traditions and artistic heritage of Guantánamo in the eastern part of Cuba.

• Folklo Ayisyen Lakay, which translates in creole to “House of Haitian Folklore,” is a local Haitian dance company led by master dance teacher and choreographer Laurie Fleurentin, a native from Haiti.

• Founded in 1969, Los Lupeños de San José is a trailblazer among Mexican folk dance companies in the U.S., committed to preserving and enriching the vibrant tapestry of Mexican culture through the art of dance.

• Rueda Con Ritmo, founded in San Francisco in 2007 by Sidney Weaverling and Ryan Mead, is a community of dancers offering classes, events, and performances throughout the Bay Area and beyond and paying tribute to or influenced by Cuban Salsa/Rueda.

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