Ampliar

An attractive binational project, created for the scene by artists from Cuba and Mexico, culminated with the premiere of Yo soy el rey del mambo, the work of Cuban Ulises Rodríguez Febles who directed Dana Stella Aguilar at the head of the Mexican group Conjuro Teatro and the matanceros musicians of Atenas Brass Ensemble. The premiere opened ten presentations on the island, in the context of the International Colloquium for the centenary of Dámaso Pérez Prado.
It all started when playwright Ulises Rodríguez and writer and editor Yanira Marimón completed an investigation about the creator of mambo, and found that his birth, of an imprecise and controversial date because the musician often changed the dates, had indeed been in 1917.
By then, Ulysses was already infected with the mambo fever and began to spread it. A dialogue with Israel Rodríguez, a Cuban designer living in Mexico, was the decisive point of departure to undertake the writing of the piece, with the expectation that the Mexican group would perform it with the excellent quintet of its city. And there he got me involved so that I could accompany him as a dramaturgical adviser.
The collective enthusiasm crowned the setting. Two weeks before the premiere in Matanzas, the troop arrived, joined the musicians and polished a show in which Gerardo Trejo shone, accompanied by Fabiana Perzabal, Ernesto Álvarez, Héctor Hugo Peña, Omar Godínez, Julio Olivares and Colombian Luz Marina Arcos. Emiliano González de León, a Mexican trained at the Higher Institute of Art in Havana, assumed the musical co-direction with the quintet leader, Rodolfo Jorge Horta.
The secrets of mambo and the discussion about its authorship combined with the imprint of the artist are covered by the plot, along with his passion for women. And music, the sonority that shakes bodies and makes them move. Theater and mambo in an explosive league.
In April, Yo soy el rey del mambo will be on at the Esperanza Iris City Theater, in the Mexican capital. And the Cuban will shine again in the body and the rhythm of the cultists of their legacy.