Homage to Yarini to be performed in Havana theatre

Havana, Dec 30 (RHC) The play "Homenaje a Yarini", by the Revolution Company, is presented today at the Martí Theatre to evoke one of the most controversial characters who lived during the early years of the Republic in Cuba.

This staging brings a Yarini who seeks to understand himself with the present.

The Roclan & Ballet Revolution company makes it very clear that everything in this Yarini converges in its now, published the Cubarte website.

It is a very contemporary work, "an event that passes unstoppable, solitary, unnoticed, without nostalgia for what has happened and without fantasy for the future, the website explained.

The very structure that organizes the events - beginning with the funeral parade of the "Gallo de San Isidro" - exerts its action from the fictitious, and this takes shape in the "we", constructed between the audience and the stage, and between dance and language, Cubarte said.

The theatrical story moves with the comings and goings of the character himself, he said.

Life and death, the tragic fatum of the "hero", all elements together as the beginning and end of the choreographic event, concluded the note on the Cubarte site.

To remember Alberto Yarini is to go back to Havana at the end of the 19th century.

In 1900 he turned 18; he was well educated, from a wealthy family and a defender of just causes, handsome, elegant and with fine manners, but death found him at the age of 28 among vices. He became known for importing prostitutes from France, operating in the San Isidro neighborhood.

His persevering work led to the establishment of Mother's Day in Cuba.

He was assassinated on 21 November 1910 by shots fired by rival French pimp Louis Letot and his accomplices, Letot in turn shot dead by Yarini's friend José Basterrechea.

In popular culture, Yarini appears in many plays, musicals and films.

Felipe Henernández wrote the 1960 musical play "Requiem por Yarini" about his life, which was largely based on the film "Dioses rotos" (2009) by Cuban director Ernesto Daranas.