THE HEART OF Cuba
By Melissa Walsh
I
t’s been close to a decade since Christina Monneron has visited the bayside suburb of Frankston, let alone dance on the waterfront. This year, the wise and worldly Afro-Cuban dance teacher is thrilled to perform at the opening of the Ventana Fiesta with a traditional Santería Cuban beach ceremony to celebrate the beauty of the environment through ritualistic chanting and drumming.
“I was actually living in Melbourne and started the Cuban Dance Academy in 1999, performing in the first Ventana Latina Fiesta in Frankston,” said Christina, who has since made her home on the Gold Coast. Mauritian-born Christina studied with a principal artist of Cuba’s National Folkloric Dance Group in Sweden in 1996, beginning a journey that included participation in an intensive Afro-Cuban workshop held in Denmark and joining a dance troupe and dancing Afro-Cuban and Popular Cuban rhythms (salsa, cha cha chá, mambo, conga) all over Scandinavia. continued next page...
E ssence
24 | PENINSULA
March 2019
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