Echoes of My Barrio by Tania Vergara Dance Theater

Tania Vergara Dance-Theater will premiere a segment of Echoes of My Barrio on Friday, May 8, 7:30 PM at the HAT (Historic Asolo Theater), as part of the Ringling MicroWIP (works-in-progress) program.

Tania Vergara Dance-Theater is a Sarasota-based company that represents the rebirth of Cuba’s first contemporary ballet company. Choreographer Tania Vergara will be using recordings she made of street vendors in Cuba and fragments of Cuban music to “create a landscape where survival becomes rhythm, and necessity becomes dance.”
In August 2025, in Camagüey, Cuba, she recorded the everyday sounds of her neighborhood, where street vendors selling bread, medicines, or household goods create a living soundtrack. The calls of the vendors—pregoneros—are musical, rhythmic, compelling: “¡Tamales!” “¡Medicamentos!” “¡Aguacates!”
Vergara says, “Echoes of My Barrio will portray the sensory memories of my city and the reality of today’s Cuba. The unique calls of the pregoneros are humble voices born from necessity; but they also reveal something deeper: the resilience of a people who endure. What seems to relate only to subsistence can transform into a greater cry: a call for freedom, for respect, for dignity. The score will include dancers expressing their own pregones. My dream is to see a Cuba where these pregones no longer arise due to scarcity, but rise as hymns of hope and plenty. A free Cuba, where every voice can be heard without fear, where life itself becomes the greatest pregón.”
Tickets: https://www.ringling.org/event/microwip-thehat-2/