In 1997, the album Buena Vista Social Membership grew to become an surprising hit. Named for a well-liked Cuban music venue that opened within the Nineteen Thirties, it was recorded in Havana in simply seven days by a thrown-together group of Cuban musicians and catapulted Latin music into the highlight. Now, these beloved songs are getting a recent viewers. A brand new musical, additionally known as Buena Vista Social Membership, is opening at Broadway’s Schoenfeld Theatre on March 19 following a profitable off-Broadway run at Atlantic Theater Firm in late 2023.
Married couple Justin Peck and Patricia Delgado, who’s Cuban American, have been part of the inventive crew because the starting. Though the 2 of them have labored collectively on a spread of initiatives, together with Steven Spielberg’s 2021 West Aspect Story, this musical marks their first credit score as co-choreographers.
What have been your relationships to the Buena Vista Social Membership album earlier than this manufacturing?
Patricia Delgado: I all the time related the album with household gatherings. Listening to it on the radio within the automotive rising up, I didn’t suppose, Oh, it’s Buena Vista Social Membership. It was extra like that is simply my household’s music. Cuban individuals’s music.
Justin Peck: It’s an album we each grew up listening to. For us, it’s very private. At our wedding ceremony, it was the music for our first dance.
Patricia, on West Aspect Story, you have been Justin’s affiliate choreographer. Now, you’re co-choreographers. How have these new roles modified your course of?
PD: Engaged on so many initiatives within the supporting position to Justin has given me such an understanding of his type and his tempo. I used to be so grateful to get the prospect to do a co-choreographic course of, but it surely doesn’t really feel that totally different. If something, it’s simply given me extra inventive company within the room. To have an concept, and never sit again, however problem myself to not depend on Justin to step on the gasoline.
JP: The choreography within the present is primarily social dancing. So, what’s totally different about this course of is that there’s a lot involving two individuals transferring in relation to at least one one other. It’s lots of the 2 of us attempting one thing, throwing out an concept, after which the opposite particular person responding.
Do you shut off from the undertaking whenever you’re at dwelling?
JP: You possibly can by no means clock out and in with this sort of work. It’s so all-consuming. It’s a fixed dialogue, but it surely by no means appears like work.
PD: It appears like we’re dwelling it, and it’s a present to get to be on it collectively.
For the present, you’re mixing an array of dance types, together with ballet, social dance, and Afro-Cuban types. What sort of research have you ever executed to arrange?
PD: One of many factors of flight for us was the thought of ballet in Cuba. It’s ingrained of their social dance. Individuals in Cuba do ballet prefer it’s consuming.
JP: We’ve executed a number of journeys to Cuba, and dance is a lot a part of the each day life there. Individuals are dancing in every single place. And music is in every single place. It’s nearly like incense burning on a regular basis.
PD: There’s additionally a time-period ingredient to it, as a result of lots of the dance within the present is from the Fifties. There’s no video footage of the Buena Vista Social Membership, which was very liberating for us, as a result of we get to dream and picture what dance was like in that membership at the moment. There’s mambo and salsa, but it surely wasn’t like types have been codified. They have been simply dancing at a membership.
Patricia, you’re first-generation Cuban American. Engaged on Buena Vista, how does it really feel to have the ability to meld your Cuban and dance identities?
PD: It’ll make me cry instantly. I by no means imagined having the ability to use this music on this manner. It’s the Cuban story that I didn’t dwell as a result of I grew up in america, and my dad and mom didn’t actually dwell as a result of they have been immigrants. How fortunate am I to get to share my private fact and my household’s fact?
Justin, how did engaged on Illinoise—your final Broadway present—change the way you’re eager about utilizing dance to inform tales?
JP: Illinoise was distinctive in that it was type of like one large dream dance, nearly just like the dream ballets in Rodgers and Hammerstein exhibits. I don’t suppose each present could be like that. However I discovered loads from making it. Buena Vista has to honor the historical past and the dance types, in addition to, hopefully, having some creative novelty to the choreography. It’s a unique project. However I’m all the time impressed to work on musicals and theater initiatives. It simply appears like dwelling for me.
PD: I’ve been eager about Balanchine and Robbins, and the way they went forwards and backwards from the ballet world to theater. Sure, we will trip. But it surely’s not likely forwards and backwards, it’s simply this coexisting material of utilizing dance to inform a narrative, or utilizing dance in a extra summary manner. They feed one another.
What do you hope audiences get out of the present?
PD: My mother got here when she was 5 to america, and she or he’s by no means been again to Cuba. After the opening night time on the Atlantic, she mentioned in tears, “Even when I needed to return to Cuba in the present day, I wouldn’t return to the Cuba that I left. And also you introduced Cuba to us.” I believe it’s like a time capsule. Individuals can get a bit little bit of understanding of the human expertise as an artist in Cuba at the moment.