by the SOAS Office of Development and Alumni Relations and the SOAS Food Studies Center. I am Harry West, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Food Studies Center here at SOAS. Before we introduce our speaker, I'd like to say just a few words about the center. The SOAS Food Studies Center is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to the study of the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of food historically and in the present. The center's primary purposes are to promote research and teaching in the field of food studies at SOAS and to facilitate links between SOAS and other individuals and institutions with an academic interest in the study of food. The center fosters the teaching of food-related courses in the school and facilitates the supervision of food-related MA dissertations and PhD theses. Principle among food-related course offerings is the MA in the Anthropology of Food, which is a one-year taught master's degree, offering students the opportunity to explore historically and culturally viable foodways from foraging to industrial agriculture from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The program traces the passage of food from plant to pallet and examines who benefits and who suffers from contemporary modes of food production, exchange, preparation, and consumption. The center also supports individual and collaborative research on food-related topics undertaken by SOAS, staff, and students through the establishment of research networks, the hosting of national and international workshops, and conferences on food-related issues, and also the facilitation of fundraising efforts to support such events, or such initiatives, rather. Additionally, the center organizes the SOAS Food Forum, which includes a weekly seminar series in terms one and two, and also distinguished lectures. Tonight's lecture comes under the banner of the SOAS Food Forum. Last summer, in my role as chair of the center, I had the great privilege of delivering the citation for the award of honorary fellow of the school to tonight's speaker, Claudia Rodin. Rather than introducing her again tonight, I've asked someone far more qualified than myself to do so. Sammy Zuveda is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College and Professorial Research Associate of the SOAS Food Studies Center. He's a renowned authority on Middle Eastern politics, nationalism, and religion and law, author of Law and Power in the Islamic World, Islam, the People in the State, and Beyond Islam. And he's also co-editor, along with Richard Tapper, of A Taste of Time, Culinary Cultures of the Middle East. And it's because of his extensive knowledge of food and food ways in the Middle East that I've asked him to introduce tonight's speaker. But just before I hand over the podium to Sammy, I just want to remind you that there'll be a reception after tonight's event to which you are all invited. It will be on the ground floor of this building in the Brunei Gallery Suite. I'll say a bit more about that at the end of Claudia's lecture. So, Sammy. Well, it's my great pleasure and honor to introduce Claudia Rodin to this wonderful turn out, I see her fame is obviously well-established and I don't need to emphasize it here. And I'm happy to introduce her as someone who's an old friend and sharing common interest in food cultures and Middle Eastern food in particular. Claudia is the doyen of Middle East food writing and a most renowned and honored figure in the world of food writing and broadcasting. Author of numerous books, many of them are on display and sell out in the foyer. All best sellers, starting with the now canonical book of Middle Eastern food, first published in 1968, followed by many editions, then books on picnic, coffee, Italian food, then the much celebrated book of Jewish food in 1997 and just now the food of Spain, widely acclaimed. She also had many TV program, press articles, lectures and demonstrations, widely appreciated and she's the recipient of many prizes and honors, including the prestigious James Beard Award. What distinguishes Claudia's writing, in addition to the meticulous recipes and ideas, is the cultural, historical and human frame that she provides. These are intermingled with her autobiographical memoirs and reminiscences. One reviewer remarked that Claudia's life reads like a Graham Greene novel. From her original home in Cairo to exile and education in Paris to London, her ultimate home. These contexts and locations have provided the background and inspiration for her writing. I shall always recall the passage in the introduction to the 1968 Middle East book in which she describes so vividly a meal among other Egyptians in Paris of full mudammas, which is a stewed father beans, a kind of Egyptian national dish, very simple eaten by poor and rich alike, dressed in oil and topped with a boiled egg, eaten with silent reverence to the last crumb, nostalgia and appetite combined. This longing of exile is a stimulus for much cultural and historical research and gathering of recipes facilitated by her engaging and sympathetic manner. The book of Middle East food, for instance, is introduced by 60 pages of memoir, history, ethnography and many anecdotes. The Jewish book includes extensive accounts of the history and culture of Jewish diaspora communities in different parts of Eskinazim, of Sephardim and of Oriental Jews. And apart from being an excellent food book, it's a substantial contribution on Jewish communities. The book on Spain is similarly imbued with history and culture. So together with you, I now look forward to hearing Claudia talk about tales of these contexts and encounters. Thank you, Claudia. Thank you very much, Harry, for inviting me to come. Well, for inviting me, well, for the fellowship and for tonight. And thank you very much, Sami, for inviting me. By the way, Sami, a lot of his thoughts and his even recipes are in the books because he's also one of the people who keeps me on my toes by being critical. Well, and thank you all for coming. People always ask me, well, I was asked to talk about my life, which is always a little bit embarrassing. But then, as my brother said, he said, well, you talk about your life anyhow in your book. So there's no need to be embarrassing. But I was thinking on coming, well, that people always ask me, why did I start writing about food? And so I looked at my introduction, an introduction that I wrote almost half a century ago. And it was part of it says that the book, that is the Middle Eastern book, was the joint creation of numerous Middle Easterners who, like myself, were in exile. That it was the fruit of the nostalgic longings for and delighted savorings of a food that was the constant joy of life in a world so different from the Western one. Now, you can laugh if you want. But, well, I began collecting recipes in the late 50s in London. I was here studying art. I had come after boarding school in Paris. And I was sharing a flat with my two brothers. At that time, there were no Lebanese restaurants, no Turkish restaurants. We used to frequent the black cat. Any of you know the black cat in Charlotte Street, where we used to have kebabs and vine leaves and hummus, and the kind of things that we now have everywhere in all our supermarkets. I had to go and do my shopping in Camden Town. There was a Mrs. Harrell, also a Cypriot grocer, to buy things like bulgur, vine leaves, tahina, rose water. And in Kentish Town, there was a place where you could buy phyllo and kadai that was homemade by them. Or rather, they were artisans. And we would go and we would stand there while they pulled out the phyllo pastry over a kind of table with a heat source underneath. So they would pull the dough and it would set right away.  Well, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it was. And it was by 19... I came to London actually, it was 1954. And in 1956, after the Swiss crisis, when the Jews had to leave in a hurry, my parents followed us in London. And this is when my mother, who had a cook, she had a nanny, I had an Italian nanny who would cook for us children Italian dishes when we were very small. But somehow, even though my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, they all had cooks, they also, of course, had to know how to cook because they taught the cooks how to cook because the cooks were all people from the villages, from Upper Egypt, from different parts who would come, who didn't have really any knowledge of cooking. And so the people, the employed, taught them how to cook and they stayed. They stayed, actually, in my case, they stayed until we had to leave or my parents had to leave because I had left before to go to school in Paris. So when my mother came, she was at a loss of what to do with herself because in Egypt, we had this very big extended family and they could always go out and play cards and do petit-poins, meet each other. They were always out. But so all of a sudden to arrive in England with nothing much to do, she threw herself into cooking and to my father's delight. And so it was somehow with a great passion that she would somehow bring out dishes, even some that the cook didn't make. But it also inspired me in that she was always telling me every day I was working at Al Italia by then, but we discussed everything she was making. It was a big deal and I was taking notes. Well, for about 10, almost 20 years, I was living at first with my parents in London and then I had my own family nearby. We were all living, my brothers and myself, just a few minutes from each other in my paints in gold as green, myself in Hampstead Garden suburb. But for a long time, we kept receiving waves of Jews from Egypt, Jews from Egypt who just arrived, who just arrived and they had just a few weeks to leave. And also over time, people who hadn't decided where to settle and were stopping in London. So I felt for quite a while that I thought I had left behind a lot of people and then in the end, they came back to me and that I had little Egypt, little Cairo in gold as green and the smells of the cooking and the talking. My parents went on talking about everybody in Egypt that they knew and they would retell the stories every day in a different way. So we knew all the sides, the different size of everybody's life. And I suppose that's something that, in a way I'm telling stories because I missed all this storytelling that they weren't the only ones to do that everybody else did as well because Gossip was one of the interesting entertainments there. But what happened then that all these people that came over to England where I found exchanging recipes. Even men who before would never talk about food, they wanted good food and they kept their wives on their toes. They kept telling me that they didn't give too many, well, they didn't encourage them too much because they wanted them to keep trying harder. They never told them something was perfect. But here all of a sudden they were telling me, you know, I was in Switzerland, I was in this club, I met this man who knew how to make lahmabeh gene. I was in the queue of the cinema and somebody gave me this recipe. So for me at that time all these, it was like gold dust that people were finding recipes and they were exchanged in a kind of desperation almost. It was as because we were never going to see each other, perhaps, and we might never see Egypt again but at least we'll have something to remember each other by if we give each other recipes. And so some of them came out with little notebooks because the recipes were family notebooks, recipes were handed down in the family, people were jealous and didn't give them to others but now we were not in competition anymore. So we wanted to record really. We wrote to our Muslim friends in Egypt saying, is there any cookbook that you could send us? And the only one that came, I got a very big paperback and I couldn't read it easily. And so my father started reading and what it was, it was actually a book that was translation of an English book that the British army had left behind. And you know, it was macaroni cheese, cauliflower cheese, roly-poly a la castarda. So you see, well, so I really had somehow my, I just felt, no, we have to find. Now I became an obsessed collector of recipes and cooking tips and I just, everybody that I met, I just couldn't miss the occasion to say, what do you cook? And then how do you salt your aubergines? Do you sprinkle them with salt, put them, do you put them in salted water? Do you put them, and do you fry or bake your sambusak? And people who were giving me recipes somewhere saying, you know, because they weren't food writers and they didn't have correct measures, they would say, you put as much flour as it takes and I would say, how could you know how much it takes? And so one person told me, look, while you're doing the dough, you keep adding flour and working it and at the same time touch the lobe of your ear. When it feels like the lobe of the ear, it's how it should take. So that was the thing. Now, for me also collecting was a way of keeping in touch with people and I was asking everybody, who do you know who makes a good natif? Who makes a good melochella? Who makes the best? I was always trying to find the best kibbeh. And so I was asking, where are they? Any addresses? Any phone numbers? And so I was writing all these letters all over the world asking them, how do you make butarga? How do you make natif? But actually it was not just to get a recipe but it was also a way of keeping in touch. Finding out who they are, where are they? And in a way, because we were wrenched all of a sudden from people who had been, we thought part of our, going to be part of our lives forever and somehow it was a way of keeping some contact. But years later, when I went on a book tour to the United States in the days when they sent you all over the country, I would do book signings in bookshops or sometimes in Jewish community centers. But in this case it was in bookshops and I went with somebody from the publishers and after a while we realized that or almost everywhere I went, there was always somebody there who smiled too much from the start. Even there was no reason to smile. And then at the end, somebody, they would come up and from the thing they say, don't you remember me? I'm your aunt. And you see? And then or else I sent you the recipe for butarga. Don't you remember? But you see it was a long time ago and we were all gray, gray before we started dyeing our hair. But what was I, but what I was collecting was a mixed bag. In Egypt, in my time, it was a mixed cosmopolitan society. It was the time of King Farooq and I saw in Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution. We even had his little book by the door in case somebody came in, which showed them. And one of my uncles had his, had a bust of Gamal in his, he had a wholesale place in the bazaar and it was there at the door. And well, Egypt was, I suppose now everybody does know, they had long established communities of Syrians and Lebanese, Greeks, Italians, Armenian, as well as the French and British expatriates. And living amongst the Muslim and Coptic population. The royal family was an Ottoman Albanian dynasty. The aristocracy was Turkish and the Jewish community itself was a mosaic of people from Syria, Turkey, the Balkans, North Africa, Greece, Iraq, Iran. They had all been attracted to Egypt at the time of the building of the Suez Canal soon after and when Egypt was the El Dorado of the Middle East or the Dubai, I would say, of the Middle East, I don't know that. But so three of my grandparents came from Aleppo and they came and settled in an area where all the Jews from Syria settled. And it was a new district called Sakakini and that it had been a marshland that had been drained and they all came and lived there. And one of my grandmother's, my maternal grandmother came from Istanbul. Now everyone had their special repertoire of dishes. We had some relatives who were from North Africa and we had, we married into other families. So we did get to eat the different kinds of food when we visited and in a way that is why I ended up covering much of the Middle East and also North Africa because a lot of people tell me, why didn't you just do, if you were nostalgic, why didn't you do just Egyptian food? Because that's not what we were. We were quite a big mixture. And yes, somebody complained, I don't know if he's here today, but he complained, I think where it was, I'm not quite sure. But he complained that I was responsible for this mess of people calling Middle Eastern food because there's no such thing, you know? But actually it was, as Sami said, a genre. But the fact is that for us, that's what we had. We had all of this. Now, most of the people who gave me recipes at the time were my mother's age, which was 45. Seemed like a lot to me at the time. But they all told me that the recipes came from their mothers or their grandmother or their mother-in-law. And that tells you how old the recipes are. And they still are the way people cook today. I don't know for how long, still more. Now, a lot of men in my family also gave me, wanted me to write things down. And they were telling me stories. My uncle, Musadouac, came from Egypt. He stayed on much longer than the other people. And he made a big collection of proverbs.  And I wrote down everything. I've got all these notes in French. Well, we were very Europeanized. We spoke French at home. And we spoke Italian with our Slovene Italian nanny. And the English school Cairo where we were, we studied English history and geography. But generations of my family had lived always, as far as we know, in the Arab and Ottoman worlds. And something of their experience, of their knowledge, of their enthusiasm, filtered down. One of my cousins who lives in Paris, he told me, why did you write about food? Or the Middle East, where you're Europeanized? And he said, is it because you love your father so much? Well, well, I don't know. But somehow it was their world, my father's world, and their world that I hardly knew because we were so Europeanized, that fascinated me. And that's what I was trying to capture together with the recipes. Now, the project grew bigger and bigger. I didn't just ask family and friends. I went on collecting. I hung around carpet warehouses, well, Iraqi carpet warehouses, and to meet people. So I had a whole long career of meeting people. And I would go there and they say, do you want to buy a carpet? No, can I meet your wife to ask for recipes? And I would go to embassies, Syrian embassy, Iranian embassy, and they would say, are you here for a visa? I said, no, I'm looking for recipes. So I think now I don't know what the situation is, but at the time it was very peculiar. I hear now that people are going to street, they go to abroad, and all the street vendors are costed by people asking them for recipes. So now maybe recipe collecting has become something. Now, I wanted to look for an Arab cookbook. And so I went to the British Library. I spent a lot of time at the British Library. And I asked for help in finding books on Arab cooking. And the librarian at the time, I wish I had his name because I keep wishing I could thank him properly, but I never did. But he wrote down a list of publications for me to look at. And they were nothing contemporary. One was a 13th century culinary manual found in Baghdad and translated in 1939 by Professor Arbery. It was accompanied by poems of the time celebrating food. Another was a 1949 analysis in a publication of a culinary manuscript, an analysis, the culinary manuscript of the same period by the French Marxist orientalist Maxime Rodinçon. He had found the manuscript in a library in Damascus and he was there during the war. He was in the French army and because they found themselves in Syria because France was occupied, they were made to stay out there. And so he decided to use it for his PhD. And he did this incredible to me analysis where he used the recipes to explain a society that existed more than 700 years ago. So for me, there was also another book that was Maghreb and Elanda Loos. And it was a Spanish translation by Wichimi Randa. Now I was really enthralled by the fact that now I was really enthralled to find all this. For months I entertained my friends to medieval banquets. We were eating medieval foods the whole time. And I found that it was very, very appealing to eat all historic dishes and to know that is how things tasted and smelled and in the past. But for me, also what was particularly exciting was that some of these medieval recipes had the same name or similar names, similar combinations of ingredients and flavorings and similar techniques to those I had been hearing from all those people who were giving me recipes. So that is how I became interested in the history and origins of dishes. I started to look for references, stuffed vine leaves were mentioned in ancient Persia, baklava in Ottoman times. I found elements from ancient Persia like meat cooked with fruit, for instance, in the odd cuisine of the Middle East in our grand dishes and the Jewish grand dishes as well, and especially in North Africa. Well, I spent, so I went out to read about the history of these areas. And I have to say a great deal to the SOAS Library. I don't know how I managed to get books out of the library. I wasn't a member and I wasn't a student, but I kept taking books home. I don't know if anybody now will be able to take books home. But so I have very, very soft spot for SOAS. But for me to read the historical bits and to be able to understand that you can find a dish and the dish is there for a reason in this place. So it was very, for me, a wonderful period. Also, my parents hadn't wanted me to go to university. They would just say, il n'est pas question. Il n'est pas question, you have to be married. Well, they tried, since I was 15, I was engaged. But so it's not just the Indian who tried to get their children married off very early. But well, when I decided after a while to turn all the recipes into a book, and I was telling people and they looked embarrassed and they looked pettingly and they fled. They didn't want to hear anymore. I mean, some people said, because at the time it really wasn't the hot subject it is now. And some people would say, why don't you paint? And then somebody more than once people would say, is it about sheep size and testicles? So I just felt, oh wow, we've got to tell them a bit more. And I did look up at that time what explorers, what people, travelers would say about Middle Eastern food. And I found that the explorer Charles Montague Doughty who traveled in Arabia in 1876, he wrote that lambs sitting on mountains of rice in a sea of fat were what was a food. And he said also that Arabs were better at making love than food. So other British travelers would do the same, would say the same kind of thing. So I think that is the impression that somehow have stayed on into the 1950s and 60s. Well, also the expats, the people who lived in the countries for a while, they always managed not to eat the local food if they possibly could. For instance, I read that Lord, or rather I didn't read, I was told by somebody at the British Library, one of the Egyptologists there, that Lord Carnavan famously had samples, hampers sent to him from Harrods. And that Flinders Petrie was another archeology who couldn't afford Harrods. He lived on tin foods he brought with him. And because the heat, they were dangerous after a while. So it is said that he would throw the tins at the wall and if it exploded, he wouldn't eat it. But so, and in my case, I was very well aware that English people didn't want local food because when, well, the Egyptian cooks in my school, the English school Cairo, Heliopolis, would only make English food. And when I had my friends for tea, I told my mother, please just make scones and jellies. You know, little sandwiches all right. But so this is in a way, because of all this lack of sympathy for that food, I hoped that all the proverbs, riddles, the folk tales, the stories of Goha, by putting them in amongst the recipes, it might make people feel the recipes were more appealing. And that they would see them as part of a civilization that was interesting. Well, that's how I started writing about food, but then it became my way of, well, it became, I never wanted it to be a career, but that's what it's been. And it's been a way of supporting my family. But when my three children, I have three children, when they grew up, while they were at home, we were eating recipes that I was trying the whole time. And one day, I always remember this because I didn't realize what it did to them, but when the two older ones went away to France to stay with relatives, to go with relatives on a holiday, the little one stayed with me and I said, now you're the only one, you tell me what you want to eat. I was a single mother then, quite early on, and she said, please, fish fingers and spaghetti and tins. So I mentioned I bought all the fish fingers and put them in the freezer and there. And, but when the three of them left home, they all left home on the same day because two of them who were older stayed at home during their university years. And when the youngest one went to university in Manchester, the two older ones went to New York for a year. And so, well, I decided the day they leave, I leave too. And I left to travel, I decided around the Mediterranean. And so writing about food, which had been a way of supporting my family, became also a way of discovering the world. And it gave me a reason for traveling alone because, well, as a woman, I was often asked because in a few of the countries in the Mediterranean, people always ask you, where is your husband? Where are your children? And, well, it also allowed me because I had a mission to ask, to accost people and to say, I'm researching food. Can you tell me some things about what you eat? Well, how you do it and all that. Of course, if men accosted me, I would say, in some countries, I've got five children and grandchildren. And that gave me respect on the train in Morocco, for instance, but it didn't always, in Italy, it worked very well. And I would start, it would be a whole, I would start, for instance, I would take a car most of the time, but that's later when I was researching Italy, but I would go on a train and I would quickly look around and I'd just say, I've come to research the food. What do you eat?  And gradually, the whole of the carriage was drawn into talking about food. And that for me was, you know, it was a wonderful thing. And I'm sure if I did it here on the tube or on the train somewhere, how would I be seen as somebody totally crazy? But I asked her, well, sometimes people invited me to eat and they'd say, well, what about coming home with me? And you can watch me cook and you can eat, which I did. When my children, I was worried about my children saying to them, you know, I'm worried about where you go.  They'd say, don't you think we're worried about where you go? You know, but of course it didn't always work those techniques of asking people about food. But for instance, in Sardinia, I was at a hunting lodge and the owner was just very suspicious of me. And when I was in the kitchen, because I always asked in places if I could go in the kitchen and watch them cook. And when suddenly she rushed in the kitchen, I hadn't asked her because she wasn't about. And she came in, she said, get out, get out. And then in the dining room, I was the only woman in the dining room, there was a very, very long table of hunters. And the hunters were there to hunt, what do you call it? Wild boar? Yes, wild boar. I was going to say the wild pig, no, the wild boar. And they were singing hunting songs. And after one or two songs, they called me and said, do you want to join us? So I went and she came straight back in and she said, go back to your table and leave tomorrow. So I did go into many kitchens and I love that. And I want to tell you that if you invite people in the kitchen, if you come, it's a place of intimacy where you can open up. It's unlike if they invite you in the living room, it's formal. In the kitchen, they tell you also their problems and you're asked to give advice. They think you're so far away that you can give proper advice. You're not somebody from next door or your relative who has a particular interest in. So for me, part of the pleasure of researching food was to get to know people and to enjoy the special conviviality that is around food because that is what you find. Now, they say that if you are part of the Mediterranean, you're never a stranger on its shores. And yes, I felt at home. Although every country has its own cuisine and the cooking can vary from one city to another, I found the same ingredients, the same utensils, the same techniques, similar dishes, similar sounding names. Now, if you look into the history of the area, you see that it's not surprising at all. And they have an incestuous shared history with the same empires, the same occupiers spreading across the region, the same influences and of course the age-old trading across the sea. Now, in the 1970s, everyone interested in health and food became aware of the research of the American Anselpies who found that Mediterranean diet was healthy. So when the BBC TV director, with whom I had worked on a series on healthy food, heard of my travels, she said, she asked me if I would be involved in the series on the Mediterranean and in writing the book. And they could use, that is how they use the context that I had made in my travels, including going to being there for a wedding in Tetuan. And they realized only after they started filming that they saw only women dancing, eating, cooking. And then they went there to watch them cook first, they were cooking. And then it's only when they, at the end of the wedding they said, where are the men? The men were celebrating in another house. But so well, things happened like that. Now, with Italy, I'm just looking, I'm okay. Oh no, I've spoken too much about that. Well, I have to say with Italy, I was very lucky. And I suppose for me everything was always a matter of chance and of luck. I was asked by The Sunday Times to do a series on, for their magazine, for The Sunday Time Magazine, a series which men too would like to read. So men would like to read if you talk about the history, the background, and the product. And they thought that Italy was the next big thing. And I did go à l'aventure to make my discoveries by chance, but I was very lucky because the first place that I went to was at the great banquet at the Gritti Palace. And we ate on the terrace, overlooking the canal. And the dinner, this great banquet was for chefs who were committed to serving traditional dishes. And the chef next to me had explained to me that Goimio, the guide, the food guide, had decided that they would only mention and put in their books restaurants that did nuvel cuisine, nuova cucina. And so all of a sudden everybody was coming out with risotto tricolore, with strawberries and kiwi and things like that. But so they were, this group of Italian chefs were doing what they call il recupero, la riscoperta creativa. And they were preserving traditional dishes. One of the teachers there, because they always had, they also had cookery teachers, she told me, I'm going to phone somebody and send you to this man in Venice. When you go to Venice, well, I was in Venice, but I had been with her to Friuli because she offered to accompany me on the first trip. And because this was the thing also that people decided to come with me when I was researching. And she phoned this man and he was the president of an association of food lovers called il appassionati di cucina. And so I went to, he met me at the station and he gave me the list of appassionati in every region. They weren't chefs, they were all just ordinary people. In, then I found when I went to, I would call them, he actually called them and said, look after her. And I would go, for instance, when I went to Emilia Romagna, somebody called and I heard that they were part of a confraternity. They were confraternity that was looking after a few dishes or rather some dishes, they would go to restaurants to make sure that they are done in the absolutely perfect way that for instance the golden globules are still on the broth. And very often they weren't because the health and diet brigades were there before and they had asked them to blot them out. But anyway, I found there was 100 such confraternities only in Emilia Romagna. Well, I'll go and say, I'm wondering whether to talk about Egypt, to talk about Jewish food, my experience with Jewish food or about Spain now? Carry on as you are. Anything? Okay, so well in Egypt, Egypt was one of my happiest assignments and I was invited by the Chef's Association to give seminars. And when I asked them what you want the seminars about, they said my brief was what was typical Egyptian food? What was Middle Eastern food? What was the history of Egyptian food? And what should the chefs be cooking for tourists? Now, I realized that when I was there I did travel along the Nile, not on a boat but on trains to stop in different places to also rediscover village foods and street foods and any foods, middle class foods that people could give them ideas about what to serve in restaurants. But so, well, the seminar, just to say in a village in Egypt, I would just walk through and a woman just opened the door and she said, what are you doing? And I said, oh, I'm just walking around. Would you like some tea? And I went inside and I told her I was looking for a recipe. She was making a lentil soup. And then she asked me, where's your husband? I said, he's gone. And I said, where's yours? And with a very big smile, she said, mine died. So, you know, we were during question time. So, I did, the seminar was in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel in Zamaalik that used to be a palace. What's it called? I used to live nearby in Zamaalik and I used to pass it every day going to the park. But anyhow, when someone, after the talk, someone asked in the questions or rather said, there is, we don't have any food that is truly ours. We not, it's either Arab or Syrian or Lebanese or Turkish. The only food we ever had was pharyonic times. And they asked me, do I know any pharyonic food? And luckily I had done some finding out before I came. And many of the most popular foods today were common in the times of the pharaohs. They're featured in tomb paintings, in temple reliefs. They're documented in some of them. I found documents in Greco-Roman times. And in the Bible, in the Exodus. The Exodus was talking about the foods that they used to eat when they were slaves in Egypt. If, now also there was, they found some full medames, beans in clay jars, in the funeral offerings, in the tombs. But now they also have, through the DNA, they've identified particles of food stops. Food stops in the mummies of things they had just, that had eaten. And they did find melochella seeds. Melochella is the great love of Egypt, the national food, this green leaf that is made into a soup with chicken or rabbit or duck. And also full medames. They all had it all along the Nile. And so I just looked at them and said, look melochella. And then somebody said, but the tourists don't like melochella. So what shall we do? Now I did meet somebody doing Newvel cuisine, Egyptian Newvel cuisine. And he was a Lebanese and he had a restaurant in Zamale called Aubergine. And he did a special dinner for myself and a whole lot of people who were there. And it was all a big laugh. I thought we could laugh because I had told him, please don't do Egyptian Newvel cuisine. Actually, maybe if your Tam Otolenghi went, he could do it well. But the kind of things he did, he did a shoe pastry filled with full medames. So I just said no, please. And then I said, but whatever you do, don't do a pyramid. Yes, he did a pyramid. I must say I could laugh because he's one of the richest people in Egypt. I wouldn't do it for somebody who, you know, it wouldn't matter if his restaurant failed. But anyhow it didn't fail. And people did want to go and eat his shoe with full medames, but he probably does. Now Jewish food is a food of vanished wealth, a food without a terroir. It's dishes that people carry in their minds. It's the thing they take as a baggage from one homeland to another. And they adapt the dishes to their quotient laws and they make them part of their rituals and festivities. They are sometimes the result of the fusion of the cooking of two or more homelands. I'd just like to quote a French writer, Edgar Morin, who wrote his also a politician as well as a writer. He was. But he explains in his book, Vidal les Siens, about his Jewish community of Salonica. He explains it, and he says he wrote that gastronomy is the kernel of a culture. And for Salonicans, pastelicos is the kernel of the kernel. For some, he said, pastelicos is all that is left of their culture. So in a way, when I was in New York, in some of the delis where people go and eat and what people call, they are gastronomic Jews now. Now I worked for 16 years on a book on Jewish food. It wasn't easy to look for Jews in old communities. I got a lot of information in London and in Paris. Sami provided a lot of information about the cooking of the Jews of Iraq. And he kept telling me there's no such thing as Jewish food. And then he kept giving me recipes and then saying, I said, did the Muslims eat it? No. And so I was lucky enough that the telegraph sent me to 15 cities to write about the cities and the food there. And I told him, when I told him, no, you know, I've got to finish this book, write this book. And he said, well, take a day, extra day and go and look for Jews. And so well I did. But of course, I embarrassed my relatives. I embarrassed my friends. But I did get contacts before going sometimes. But when I didn't have contacts, well, I would go to the synagogue. In Venice, for instance, I went to the synagogue in the old Jewish quarter in the ghetto. And when I went there, the synagogue, they said, well, go to the old people's home. There are the ladies there who cook for Shabbat. It was about to be Shabbat. And they cook. And he said, look, when I went there, I saw the ladies. And I said, what kind of cooking are you doing? Venetian, Jewish. And they said, well, you know, there are four synagogues in the Jewish ghetto of different denominations. One is German. One is Spanish. One is, what are the synagogues in the ghetto in Venice? There are four different denominations. And there are four different Jewish cuisines in Venice. Now, there were many, many different Jewish cuisines. And so that's one reason why it took so long. But I still went around wanting to find them in their old communities. But for instance, I met a Jewish doctor in London, or he happened at the very end when the day they were leaving, I realized they were Jewish. He was called Henri Boccarat. And he came, he was a neighbor. They rented a house for the Sam holiday. And at the end, I asked his son, about, I think, 12 or 13, and I said, what do you eat? And he said, he said, la cuisine juive, okay. So I took their phone number and all that. And I went to Marrakesh. In fact, they invited me to stay. We exchanged houses at one time. And he had a clinic at the Place de Malphna in Marrakesh. And when I was there, I said, who can you send me to collect recipes? He said, I'll send you to this magic man. When I finished, I can't do anything more to people. I send them to him. And he was in the Medina. So I went to him and I spent three days cooking with the family. They were cooking for Shabbat. And they were making the food. And I went with them on the day to the public bath and well, first to the public oven, because although they had an oven, they never used it. They just covered it with a, I don't know why they got it. And they had a picture on it of Abu Hasira, who was a saintly rabbi buried in Egypt. And there's a pilgrimage there. But they brought all their food to be done in the public oven. But so for me, going about and meeting people, like Denise Kandioti, who is a professor here, gave me her addresses of her relatives in Turkey. And I went and the first place I went to at one of her aunts, they were, I phoned up and they said, come, come, we're playing cards. And I went and they were playing cards, but they were also discussing a play that they were performing of My Fair Lady in Judeo-Spanish. And there was always one extra person in the two card table. And that extra person would come and sit next to me and I would write down the recipes. And there was this recipe from Ismir, a different recipe. There were different recipes from different towns. But when I couldn't have a contact, well, sometimes I was lucky. For instance, I was in the Spice Bazaar and I saw somebody with blue eyes. And I asked him the way in English and he replied to me in French. And it turned out he was Jewish. I could tell from his way of speaking. And so he took me to a restaurant that was called Levy. And it was at the Bazaar. But it wasn't in the Bazaar. You had to go all kinds of places. It's the people from the Bazaar who went there. And when I went there, I knew that Mr. Levy wasn't there. Mr. Levy had died. It was his cook who took over. He still called it restaurant Levy. And I asked him, is it cashier? He said, half cashier. So this is how things happened by chance. And it happened by chance in all kinds of places. And for me that was the great fun of it, the excitement. But when I was at the Jewish Museum in New York, after my book came out, and I was describing my encounters, it was all about the encounters where the recipes had come from. And then at the end somebody just said, well, that wasn't just after the book came out. It was more recent. Because somebody just said, do you realize that you could get all the recipes on the Internet without moving from your desk? Well, now you can. But anyhow, part of the pleasure for me was doing that. Now, when I was in America, one rabbi was quite shocked who was writing for a Jewish paper. He was also a journalist. He was quite shocked that Jews ate Arab foods. And at the same time I was giving a talk, or not at the same time, a few years difference, when my new book of Middle Eastern food came out, more recently there. It was more recent than the new book of Middle Eastern food here. So somebody there went to... I was on New York radio, and the person who was interviewing me went next door to ask the Arab Department if they could lend us some music to start... to start the program. And she gave my book. And the woman who was Palestinian was upset, terribly upset. And she said, the Jews have even stolen even our food. Now, you see, somehow the way the Jews cook reflects, and the way everybody cooks in the Middle East, reflects the shared history and culture between all the peoples there. Now, if I have time, I will say something about Spanish food. Well, if we're to have... No time. If we're to have questions before the reception. So maybe just a couple of minutes. Okay. Well, just to say that for me, Spanish food was almost the most exciting... It was the most exciting time to research Spanish food. It was a time when Spain was transforming itself into the world's greatest centre of gastronomic creativity. At the same time, the catering schools were teaching French cuisine from Escoffier's guide culinaire, even in Saint-Sébastien. But all the young men in the catering schools, all they wanted was to learn how to do sous vide, how to use syringes, how to freeze dry, caramelise, create mousses, foams, vapours, explosions. But at the same time, people were celebrating their regional cuisines and local products with enormous passion. So for me, I was researching traditional food. And so this... Well, that somehow it is such a complex cuisine, so regional. And it isn't just regional. It doesn't stick to its borders. It goes all over the place because of the history. So for me to be able to study the history of Spain through its food was very, very exciting. And the history of Spain is... Unfortunately, I haven't got time to say anything, but it was just gripping. It is gripping, but I found in Spain it is also a very sensitive subject that arises strong emotions because, like cooking, it touches on identity. And the great drama was the Muslim occupation for almost 800 years' struggle of the Christian kings to reconquer the land. Of course, there was the glory, the glory of the conquest of the Americas. But I think I'll stop now, or... One of the reasons I'm so conscious of time is because in the reception we will...


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Puppets and the Green Mountains, walking to the border, our ground bag lunch. We're starting this morning with a dialogue of Rubén Darío Salazar, the director of Teatro de Desespecial Performance in Cuba. We have only one official interview this morning, as Rubén will be speaking in Spanish, and the translation will take some time. But that will hopefully just deepen the conversation. Brown Bag Lunch interview, or a post-Breakfast interview, as you'd like, with Kimi Maeda and Julie Lickenburg about generations of otherness in the United States for the first of art as well. So, I turn the program over right now to here's, he hates it when I do it, here's John Potter. Here for this very exciting conversation. I'm John Potter. Many of you may know me as the former arts editor of the Brattleboro Reformer. I'm now the executive director of The Latches, and I'm very pleased and honored to have been asked by Sandglass to host these conversations, which have proven to be, I think, very enriching and enjoyable and stimulating. And I hope this continues. Rubén Dario Salazar, who is an author and a performer, artistic director of Teatro de las Astaciones, and his translator is Omar Perez, who is also an actor and a director as well. And I'll just, the conversation or the general shape of the conversation is the state of the theatrical life in Cuba. I'll preface this by saying that probably many of you did not see their performances at The Latches the other day, but I have seldom received more feedback from parents and children than I got. I got calls at home from parents and grateful calls saying thank you, thank you for having them here, but the credit goes to Sandglass. So I think that's a measure of how, what an impression Rubén and his troupe made, and we're grateful for them. So I'll start with a comment I found from a journalist about theater in Cuba, and we'll examine whether you can trust journalists and what they say. But this person said theater and Cuban arts and culture, there has been no equivalent of the Buena Vista Social Club that has been able to take the world by storm. And I'm not sure how true that is either, but I'd like to start by asking Rubén to describe the state of theater. And by theater we mean not just puppetry, but performing arts and theater in a very broad sense. What are the challenges? How is it doing? I think that in any place in the world theater is representative of the time it lives in. In terms of technology, in terms of any culture, Cuba is the theater that is happening right now. The theater of Cuba right now has that same sort of sentiment. It's a theater of a lot of, it's very potent. And just like in any other, some people understood, it can be also like any other theater, sometimes stale or boring. Other theaters politically correct. Everything fits in the theater of Cuba. Would you consider this a time of renaissance or great burgeoning of theater? I know it reflects the times, but what are the times saying and how is it being renaissance? Cuba is a bridge between the world, North America, Europe, America. Cuba is sort of a bridge between North America, Latin America, and things go sort of over the island. They go through the island, they go on the sides of the island. There's Eastern European influences that have come to the island. Specifically German influences, Norwegian influences, and Irish in the capital, in Havana. Being from an island, it makes you sort of grasp at all that information. In the same vein, we can applaud the Royal Ballet of London. Master Thomas is a famous Sasha Balls, a company of dance. The global Shakespeare theater as well, or two years ago the American Ballet Theater. So there's not a lack of a global conversation for theater artists in Cuba. You said the responsibility of the theater artist is that exchange that's being given. So I can't really give a very clear definition of what is a Cuban artist right now because they are cocktail of influences. Because I don't like to define anything. Because also Americans I think know very little about life outdated and misinformed. Can you and like to say everything that you want to say? Has been censored or self censored, but I have always spoken my mind. It has parallel thoughts and actions and so I coexist with both of those. Very young. And it's not in Cuba or outside. So I try to be like I'm being right now. Thank you. For those of you who have gone to performances here at the festival and says that ticket sales account for only 20% of what's needed to sustain the festival. And we're grateful for sponsors who make it possible. I'm curious as to how you finance your work. Is there a lot of state sponsorship or what are the rules of funding? There's been a big socialist funding from Eastern Europe. Like it is now. The now. There's a second movement. That I love that. Karthensia falta. Maghlinia material. The lack have been Einstein Kelvino del Broderico. The true artist just finds a way to invent with whatever they have. Through collaborations. Through the use of recycled materials, the last thing that you could imagine that would work for what you need, you find. If there's an artist that has lived in the ideal world, I don't know them. The job, the responsibility of the artist is to create their ideal world. Over the base of the fact that the ideal world doesn't exist. So that way we dedicate ourselves to create the theater, so that we can create those ideal worlds that we all need and that the public appreciates or not. Can you give an example of a moment when you created with very little resources, can you give us a specific example so we can understand how that works? In 99, an amazing designer, which is Sena Encalero, who is with us today. The only thing that we had, the only meters of sky, a design for a show, the blue hat, the hat of blue sky color, so the whole set, as you can imagine, was blue. But Sena Encalero decided to light it in a way that you could see the whiteness of the moon shining on it. And for that job, he got awards for the scenic design, the design, and puppet, the day of the award. He said, how? And it's just a blue show. It was a sensation. That's the life of the artist. Almost always. So there we have created sort of an artisanal approach. The result of that is the immense love that you put into the project and the desire to change the world. With what we just heard and that of the Mexican artists, particularly with their appreciation for a paper, works of paper, in the sense that everybody can have a piece of paper and create a show or something. Could you tell us a little bit about the history of puppetry in Cuba and how you came to puppetry? It's one of those questions where you find your life in the question. I was born in front of the puppet theater in Santiago. When a kid is born that way, I don't understand why do I have to stop? Why do I have to grow up and leave the... I never did it. Going to the puppet theater in secret. There was no puppetry program. And my peers would ask, where is he going with this? So if he's not going to see theater with us, where is he going? So I knew that was my passion. The two things at the same time. Since I graduated from the University of the Arts as an actor, I knew I wanted to work in puppet theater, theater of objects. So I joined the company that I felt had the most attractive work to me in Cuba. And it was in Matanzas, Cuba. So it was called Kite Theater. And it still exists today. And I was there for 12 years, preparing to make my leap to have the history of my country. But while I was there, I dedicated myself to research the history of puppetry in my country. You don't think you can be involved in creating puppetry if you don't know... Who are the giants that you're standing on the shoulders of, dead or alive? The strength that allows you to not take anyone for granted. Because they're different. Or to make distinctions because they're different, because of the color, because of light. You start learning to love the length of time, the space in bunraku, a Japanese form. The magic of shadow puppetry of China. Karagos? Karagos, yes. Karagos. The meaning of the punch and judy in English. Punch and judy in an American form. Cultures that have brought to the theater a world identity. And all of the cultures that have identity. When you find all this love and these feel very powerful, you have a faith and a vision. And you feel like what I'm talking a little bit about puppetry and your slideshow is working. If I can talk a little bit about the history of the theater, we know that you had a photo of me and... How do you find yourself inside? Who came before and who came after you? My first trip to the United States had a very special mission. It was to find myself again. To find myself with the living root of my history. I was here in New York. In 49. In 49. There's an amazing family. And we have some slides that we'll show as well. We have a group of titers called the Guignol of the brothers. Guignol of the brothers. Guignol of the brothers. For 20 years. They made the best Cuban puppetry available. If you notice the history of Cuban puppetry. If you notice the history of Cuban puppetry has to do with influences like like Howdy Doody or the Disney figures that we know. You can see they're all brothers, family members. She is one of the authors of Howdy Doody. The ears, the mouth, the mouth, the cheeks. The story that starts in 49 and then it's on TV. So it goes in the 50's that starts to appear on television. Street theater. The revolution happens in Cuba. And that group decides to expand into the world. But what do they do? William Butler Yeats. It's an American influence by William Butler Yeats. Am I saying that correct? Yeats, thank you. They would do Little Red Riding Hood with influence by Mondrian. In the 60's. They would do The Wizard of Oz. Barilla. They would do Spanish text like Don Juan. Classical text. Other golden era classic Spanish text. Alfred Jerry. They would do African Tales as well. And we leave it there for now. So this is a group from the 70's in Cuba. They disappear. There's a dark moment in the cultural history in Cuba there. We have to say it existed. There was a law in Cuba called Parametras. They set the parameters and if you didn't fit in those parameters you were not allowed to practice your art. You had to leave the profession. They all came to the United States. This is a photo in Miami. This is a photo in Miami. This is a photo in Miami. This is a photo in Miami. This is a photo in Miami. This is a photo in Miami. I was afraid to record this. But there's times in life where you just can't salvage that. It just dies in your country of origin. Because the interests in the United States were others. I didn't know this until I traveled to France. I didn't know this until I traveled to France. And Margarita Nicolesco, a Romanian artist, asked me. Ruben, what do you know about this group? What do you know, what's happened? And I didn't know anything. There was a decade of silence over a decade in time since the best of puppeteering that I love existed. There was a complete silence in my country. And I dedicated myself for those ten years to find the origin of puppeteering in Cuba. There's an immense and rich story. Lovely story. And sad. This is a stage over where they are already recognized in Cuba. So now that that time has passed, we've recovered that, and they're appreciated in Cuba. So I came to the United States and I brought, ¿Cómo el nombre? Carucha Camejo, back to Cuba. Unima, an international organization of puppetry. We made a huge presentation for her. She was the only one that was left that was alive. And we made a book. Unfortunately, she didn't get to see finish. She died that same year. So I took it upon myself to make sure that that base, which we created on this history, existed and is known. It's the only thing that has allowed me to move forward and create in peace. It's the only thing that has allowed me to move forward and create in peace. This is very good today. Do you consider yourself and your work to be activists, to be working for a particular type of social change or cultural change? And if so, what? I think so, yes. Giving classes in the University of the Arts of Puppetry, publishing books, promoting puppetry all over the island, organizing an international festival, doing workshops, conferences and coursework all over the island on puppetry, and to make young people help them fall in love with puppetry. And to defend puppetry's place within that system. I'm part of the provincial government in Matanzas. I'm the only artist. It makes me responsible to make sure that I care for this from a very concrete base, for this industry. I don't want to be a misunderstood artist or an artist that is not understood in fun. I already passed my bad child phase. I want to work from the point of view of knowing that puppetry has this amazing presence in this industry. I've seen it here. That puppets, and I've seen in documentaries here, that puppets are used sometimes to create social change. Or in a visual artist who bring new collaborations to puppetry. To be able to do something like this to be able to do an interview in the beautiful museum of the arts of Radarburg. We're in a very good place moment in time right now. But the struggle continues. Because we should never be satisfied with anything. We hope the impossible. We wish for the impossible. You talked about puppetry's place in Cuban culture and society and making sure it had a place. What can it do with its place? What's its role? If you're successful in making sure that puppetry is still alive and vibrant, where does it go from there, what's its role? I don't think it has any power. It has the obligation to mix itself within the other arts to walk together to walk towards change and evolution and so that it serves more than entertainment. I think it's a special moment and that we should take advantage of that every day and add more to what we are doing. Everything that we can. Thank you. It's a good lead into your art that we saw at the Latchez. Mixing other art forms, it wasn't really strictly puppetry, but it blended puppetry and dance and acting and music was very prominent. So talk about the mix of art forms in your work. So the ugly duck language is the piece from Theatre of the Seasons is from 2006. It was a way of us saying puppeteers are not just these folks who are sort of behind the scene that they could dance if they wanted to. That they could work with mass if they wanted to. They could use the lyrical style of opera if they wanted to. And all of that helped me out puppeteers, the plain two-dimensional flat puppetry. And only using a very small frame as our backdrop. Has that speed that emulates computers today. And that on top of the story of Anderson, we're adding a new concept. That is the concept of accepting the natural. See difference as something that is natural. I thought that it was very beautiful, that imagery of the ugly duckling that becomes beautiful.  That's not what was important. Cinderella. Cinderella. Thank you, you do it now. Duck was more important. How it is, the duck as it is, multicolor, with all of their colors inside. But since I am a non-conformist completely.  And this one, now what? So the story begins anew. Like life begins anew. Because like life, like art also begins. Like love begins again. Towns restart life again after wars. After a long time of depression. I love differences. Because the world itself is different. And at the same time, the same. We've done a great service to ugly ducklings.  How is the relationship now with the United States, that if it's getting better, and if that changes something in your art? I'm not John Kerry. I'm not John Kerry. Bruno Gonzalez, I'm not Bruno Gonzalez. The State of... A bridge that was actually never broken. Cuban artists and North American artists have been collaborating for years. Regardless of the diplomatic ties of the countries. I was in... I was here in 2011. So I stood up in 2014. The 14th of April in 2014. So we inaugurated our festival. That was a global welcome of puppetry. With a North American group. Sanglass theater was the ones who inaugurated this global festival in Cuba. Many of my colleagues from the organizing committee were wondering, why do you choose Rubén as a North American group? That we have against the North Americans. For the first time, there's a North American group working at the festival. Why don't we start with them? Especially if it's a cultural master like Eric Best. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I grabbed and seized. And Eric took advantage of it even more than I did. Of course, in an innocent way. Convocó para la escena al vice-ministro de Cultura de Cuba. Director Provincial de Cultura de Matanzas. Y a la Presidenta de Arte de Cénicas de Matanzas. Y los... Demostrando que el arte siempre ha estado mucho más allá de la política. Porque el arte es una política que rompe barreras. Una política que se fija en el alma del pueblo. Una política que no es hipócrita. Porque el artista cuando actúa se entrega con todas sus luces. Muy lento. ¿Cuál fue tu reacción cuando Eric lo hizo? Tampoco soy un vencible. Un gran funcionario en la escena. Yo dije, Eric, sabrá. Pero él lo hizo muy bien. Y en mi interior me dije a mí mismo. Que sea lo que Dios quiera. Intentivamente Dios es muy titiritero. Es el titiritero que nos maneja a todos nosotros. Por eso me gusta ser titiritero. Es ser un poco Dios. Todo lo que hemos hablado, siente que es un momento histórico en el titiritero en Cuba. Un todo lo que se ha dicho y él te viaje también y no para atrás. So the concept of the history of puppetry. That's for others to do. Theatre of the Seasons is doing its part. Very conscious way. This is a door that opens not for us but for Cuba. A opportunity that we have to take. Dialogue is awesome. And we are all responsible, all Cubans be it the theater artists, the doctors, the lawyers. It's a moment that is impossible to do from the outside. I respect everyone who lives outside of Cuba. But the battle is from within. Living inside. And confronting the change, the benefits, everything that is happening there. You never sure of your home with your family. And we know that our family is not all the same color. And the same height. So questions. You just said the change needs to happen from inside. Where so many young people are leaving. From Cuba. So many people are leaving now more than ever. Because the United States allows Cubans to come and get citizenship unique in the world and nobody else gets it. So how do you feel about the departures and what could be done to thank Cuba so that they can work for change from within like you say? I think it's a global question. I think there are a lot of youth everywhere. That is a legitimate right. And it's a very juvenile right to look for their place in the world. I, because of my job got the opportunity very early on to travel the world. And I didn't have to find in another place what I already had within me. And the main thing that any country should do is take care of their country on all social and economic levels. I think the best thing for a country to do is to do the things that need to happen in a country the economic, the social aspect. But that's not something that any country does by itself. They all depend on a lot of different social currents. Hope that walks. They're going to be that regardless of whatever system they're in and they will either return or not. Depending on where they found their space in the world. I can just say that I try to do my their place without clipping their wings. And if it's with art or whatever you want. I'll step in I'll talk about some of the work you're creating now. There's a moment in Cuba very, very rich in Cuba right now. We just finished a popular Cuban singer working with puppetry that we just finished working with a very popular Cuban singer working with puppetry that we just finished that we never thought could be in a puppetry popular music a very Caribbean image and it's a project that we are now touring through all of Cuba. Necessary It's called A Story of Love in a Baroque He's the popular singer and that's one of the puppets of the show. It's a live music performance. She talks about the impossible love between a child and a siren and for her to get her legs has to pass through adventures They sail together to get away That's a project that we've done for the whole family That's a project that we've done for the whole family and a very surrealist object-based piece So this is the surreal object-based piece and it's based on Buster Keaton The Garcia Lorca So it's an adaptation of Lorca's piece Pass This is Buster Keaton with his kids We see his brilliance with plastic arts He can go from all colors to two colors This is another moment as cups This is a very sensual moment in the play It's a spectacle of the subconscious with all of the demons and all of the illusions of the human mind It's like two creations that are in polar opposite of each other And now, after seeing Degeneration, which is sanglass pieces tonight, yesterday I leave with many thoughts and that's what art is for to sort of knock you around in your place and pick up your pieces together and the other thing is formula the prescription of a doctor but that's not theater Ah, Eric Adults Completely For children for adults and for adults that's the proportion of all of Cuba largely because the government has funded art education in schools Do you see that being threatened now by the changes in the structure of the government? Yes I think they'll take care of them The arts are a very important tool and weapon in any nation When a nation doesn't realize that art is the soul of the nation they lose a lot I think there's an interest to save the form It's one of the values that the country does not want to lose It's actually at this moment that they're looking to me to form a national school for puppetry I just hope that it's very real to be able to invite global puppeteers to come and give classes in the school It would be a beautiful way to give back the teachers that we have got Eric is very much invited next year to join in a global festival that will take place in Cuba on a puppetry So from Canada to the United States to Argentina I think it's time to form a continental family a very strong continental puppetry family So that can come to light And the government is the one that is supporting us in doing this With hotels, with food With transportation So we can have up to 15 Just like the previous year we brought 80 puppeteers from all over the world And it was done with government money The government of which I'm the only you've got to be on the inside here As to what you see as the unique Cuban cultural aspects of your work I'm Cuban And I can't stop thinking in Cuban about my origin or ethnicity A very high And that is Hold on Turn it into theater Because that's what the world But if you go to My colors are Cuban The text that I use Because I don't live anywhere else I live in mine With all of the strengths and weaknesses of a country And all the good things and the bad things of a country All of the suns and the moons of a country So therefore my puppets are all 100% Cuban Else there's still a little bit of time 12 Primarily in New York City with a company called Puerto Rican based company I knew that Teatro de las Estaciones was going to join us and be in the states So I got a wonderful call from Eric Bass asking if I could come up in translate And I think I was packed before the conversation finished And so I've spent the week comparing notes from the two islands The very common phrases that they and I laugh quite a bit together And my work as an artist as an actor, well the actor for hire I do what the director wants but as a director and as a creator I do create also subjects on social justice I'm preparing in December to work in a collaboration between beatboxers and image theater actors in our company in Pregonas And the subject is it's currently called a nation's beat And we are just prepared to tackle a very difficult subject that is very current and we come into rehearsal with respect that someone can feel but also that we want to respect all sides of the moment and no longer see victim of police not having moments they extend the conversation and say this moment was this person was a human being who had a life and had people they loved and loved them and with Reben about puppetry and a director in theater and with Eric I think I've talked Eric out in so much that I not even close it's my goal but then he's good but I think the interesting thing is that there's definitely a social justice context in this festival and so we're all like-minded artists who work in different mediums and this is a great opportunity not only to talk as artists but cultural artists from very different backgrounds about something that we're all passionate about which is the human condition and what we can learn from it and what we can give back Reben introduced Sene Calero Founders of the company is my companion for 28 all the images of the theater one of the actors Garcia is one of the stars of our company Buster Keaton he was a Buster Keaton that you saw there a formal theater education he comes from an acting background but he knows how to think and puppet very young he's 36 we can say very proudly Senegze 60 Maria Laura Germán Maria Laura Germán she's a graduate of the same university of the arts she's 26 years old she studied playwriting she studied playwriting and the next piece that we're doing is her piece she is very spastic participates in a lot of different aesthetics in the arts I have no problems with that I don't pay for exclusivity for our actors I would love to but I don't she's 24 years old she is I know her she's 16 years old she went to study about library systems in Havana and she told her that's not your thing your thing is puppetry and acting and you'll be back I don't have children I don't have children children are very children are very children are very badly behaved but she is my most badly behaved but she is an excellent actress very creative very creative as the two that you have and I know that these are people that I can trust and we have Luis Toledo he's 22 years old he's studying right now in the University of the Arts he's studying theater critique with us in the group and I do with the iron fist and the cotton glove that's how I treat him but he learns because he learned with two rocks I have a flower and a piece and it's the youngest generation of theater and it's he's of the youngest generation of theater my age is like Peter Pan thank you very much


Hi, good morning, and welcome to these products and focus US they're they're going through a relatively terminal session there as Janet Yellen's Minutes came out very dovish on the interest rates had a short-term impact on the dollar which did reverse course for about five seconds and is now firmly heading back into positive territory big gains on cable your dollar and and dollar yen and That kind of a short-term impact has hit a little bit of equities and also crude oil West Texas as Even though they said there's no rush to raise the interest rates I think if you take the GDP figures the potential non-farm payroll figures on Friday They've had the ADP was quite good as well as that the the US is gonna be faced with a rate rise sooner rather than later Regardless of the rhetoric coming from the Fed and the markets seem to be reacting in that way as well US 30 drifting lower needs to take a little bit of heat out of there as well Because it's been just going great guns for such a long period of time We could do with a little bit of a little bit of a money sell-off and we know it has come down ever so slightly the last couple sessions next potential support 16 738 on US 30 you given hundred not quite showing that same that same pressure though very volatile of the last six seven sessions Long-legged candles both directions six seven seven four looks to be strategic in the short term I don't think today's any different I can see European markets feeling the pressure, especially the Germany 30 this morning Japan to do five smashed it yesterday getting on close to potential resistance 15 828 Better reversal this morning Surprising considering you've got such a big move in dollar yen But in reality, I'm sure that's a bit of profit-taking or potential profit-taking. I should say after such a strong run up right here Finally Japan to do five springing into life. If you have a look at that dollar yen move that is a significant technical move A breakout above potential resistance one or two spot 90 was a false breakout We're on the wrong side of that potential resistance right now But we are retesting it and a break and close above that opens up one of the three spots 77 And that would provide a little an element of support and to push Japan to do five a little bit higher So we talked before about an earlier rate hike would Be painful for equities good for the long term painful for the short term And same with crude oil west texas as a growth global growth story aspect If the us raises rates sooner rather than later that could Hurt global demand ever so slightly and that's why we've seen such a big move on West texas crude yesterday in the back of the feds minutes Where people really reading between the lines even know it was quite dovish rhetoric From the fed You know the writings on the wall. They have tied themselves into that employment data And I think most traders are believing it's going to be relatively positive Gold surprised by not feeling the pain as much as you would expect usually goes very interest rate sensitive dollar positive sensitive, but it's just hugging 1295 Which has been a level that's been in play and has been a subject of many technical conversations for a long time I think we might be in a descending triangle formation right here, which means we're going to break out one direction or the other But 1295 looks to be strategic in the short term euro dollar still feeling the pain obviously Eurozone countries not looking so so billows Germany surprising with weakness Portugal's in trouble with their biggest their biggest bank posting an almost 4 billion Euro lost today lots of pressure on there and obviously lots of positive dollar momentum as well so Looking at one spot 33 is the next potential support followed by one spot 31 93 And there will be a lot of a lot of kind of traders looking at your dollar a lot of German and uf data due out today and tomorrow We'll cover that in just a second I'm finishing up with gbp usd feeling the pressure there This is quick, you know quite a multi-session loss that we've had here. I think from a percentage basis Let's actually have a look to see what that actually is Uh from the close right here that is a 1.4 drop Looks to be one spot 6 9 23 is the broken support now acting as potential resistance You can see a broke through it and it's having a chance to retest it again. It's failing to do so And if we have a look at that economic data, we've got german employment data Eurozone employment data. That's obviously going to be quite big for for your dollar We do have jobless claims in the u.s. And we've got pmi And the u.s. Is well 245 uk time fast forward on to friday. You've got german pmi uk pmi us jobless, uh, you sorry us non farm payrolls employment rate data and you do have university magic and consumer sentiment survey and us manufacturing pmi and all that fundamentals coupled with all the technical levels right here This is probably one of the more exciting times you're going to find in the market and You know to keep you keep you on the chart forum for updates from our global analyst team in regards to some of these technical levels Make sure you make insights pot your leg going forward This seems to mark as insights insights directly from our global team and join me again tomorrow to find out what happened next


A big throw. Perfect! That was a perfect, I didn't even know! How's it going everybody? Dot to the way here back with some more Dragon Ball Fighters online matches. And this time we are once again continuing on with the official Bandai Namco online tournament. As you can see with the second preliminaries about to get underway, there are a lot more characters here, a lot more players and a lot more UI Goku's. Now, if you watched the first video, you might've seen that I wanted to change my team from the original main team to something more online friendly, like Broly or UI Goku, but it looks like we can't change our team yet. Unless I'm stupid, it might, we might not be able to change our team for the whole tournament.  In which case, let me know. But until then, I guess we're gonna wait until things get started off here and we're gonna battle and see if we can collect enough chips to move on. Preliminaries are now begun. Let me go ahead and get the first game Bandai. Put me in, let me get the first game. I don't think I'm gonna get the first game. Ha ha ha ha! We're in, we're finally in. Okay, we didn't get one of the earlier in the bunch, but we didn't get the last either. That's at least good.  We might've gotten the last. We were pretty late. We were pretty late in the process. But we got in. Okay, starting off, we're going up against the Goku, Blue, Piccolo and Trunks. I wouldn't lie to you and say this isn't scary. Cause it is.  I couldn't combo off that. I was too, I was too terrified. I tried mashing bad start for us. We need to land like a super dash yamsis. It's just to cool it down. Get him. Heavy to follow that up. Are you insane? It worked. That was crazy genius. Switch out. It was a risk worth taking though. I'm not, I'm gonna give myself full credit for that one. What a Bardock auto combo. You know Bardock is pretty friendly himself. Bardock has been a savior. I can't believe he sparked. Love it, love to see it.  No assist, no problem. Krillin'll get it done. We also have the sparking lead now. Honestly, I think we go ahead and yamcha here. This might not be the best idea. I don't know. We didn't have any assist up so I couldn't run the rocks. Will he block to him? I'm gonna say no. He did it. Aynfist actually killed raw. Thank you, yamcha. There's a reason you're the most clutch character in the game. The win, get that sliding. That's fine, back dash off that. He's got reflex for days. Oh, unfortunate. That's fine. We don't need to walk into any more reflex. We're good on that. I've had my full of reflex. Get down. Down to the ground, let me see him. He's got him still though. Might just be enough. It is, it's looking like enough anyway. Come on, get into the corner. Don't drop it. Go with yamcha first so we have the availability for a second disc. Now kill with one, Krillin. Nice. Save a little bar for something on top. Krillin's looking for toppings. What we think it's sprinkles? Maybe Reese's piece? Oh, I can't believe we didn't get killed for that. Couple of rocks. Couple of rocks. That's gonna seal the deal on game one. Hurry up. Nice. It's all about speed at that point. If you got the game, make sure to finish it fast so that we can move out and get some more tokens. Oh, I couldn't forget about base Vegeta as well. But we get a clean air to air to start us off right. Hopefully we can make the right moves to make this insurmountable. Nice, yamcha. Thanks for looking out, buddy. I can always count on you. I messed up. That one's on me, yamcha. Let's go. I'm crawling my way back. I did this one for yamcha. This is looking like a two-bar kill. Do we wanna stay in with Krillin? I'm gonna make the executive call that, yes, we do. I trusted my second destructed is Broly. The character I wanted so desperately to play. I can't believe we actually had a turn on that one. He might've just taken too long to click a button. But I was not about to hesitate. Another clean hit. This is looking like a good game for us. I don't wanna speak too soon though.  What a combo, Krillin. Just getting the job absolutely done. Gonna take a bar though, unfortunately. That's fine. I will pay the price for that. Goku Black is anchor. For far, honestly, Goku Black does scare me as a character. But he's far from the worst anchor that we could've just had. Nice, open him up. Three bars, obviously I have problem spending that right now. Oh my, good, that was crazy. That was actually just crazy. Oh no, I didn't spend all the meter appropriately, it's fine, we should still have this in the bag. Yes we do, but I made a mistake there. Remember, you can't let mistakes go just cause you win. I gotta merit it on that mistake. Bardock, get us out of here, skip all the outros. We need stars. All right, this is a very interesting team. You can't see it, but he is using C assist on base Vegeta. Not a great opening for us, get there. Okay, good. I'm glad we're gonna get a knockdown out of this. It's not gonna be the cleanest situation in the world for us, unfortunately. Woo, nice two-h there. No way I couldn't get there in time.  You are insane, he is trying to take it all right now. The rock couldn't save me. All right, we gotta switch out. The safest way to do this is to go into Yamcha just so we can get that sliding right towards us. Nice, see that's why Spirit Ball's such a good level one. You get a very good state of game for yourself, even for just one bar. Now Frieza, oh, Frieza's gonna be a bit of a problem character, huh? Unfortunately, Frieza is back, and just his two-h was very unfortunate there. Oops. Woo, that was smooth! A little cross under move. Even I didn't know I was gonna do that. Yes, it was a mistake. What are you walking forward for?  All right, do we kill time here? I think that's the strap. Again, we're gonna use the Spirit Ball to get better oaky for us all. We didn't get to switch out to Bardock though. That would have been the cherry on top. A switch into an actual point character would have been the best move for us. Super Dash, that was sick. We could still lose this, by the way. Gohan, very scary. I've never been able to play defense, period, but also against Gohan. Meet him halfway with the Wolfang Fist. Wolfang Flash. Mess up our oaky on purpose? Definitely not on purpose, by the way. Yamcha it out? Oh no. Couldn't meet him with a Vanish there. Oh, he's gonna wrap it. Oh no, big mistake. Big mistake. Hoping for a Vanish kill at this point. I can't believe we let it slip through our fingers. I can't believe it. Don't eat that, don't eat that. Literally don't eat that. I can't believe we let it slip through our fingers. Got it, okay. That was a killer for the mental though. That one, that one hurt. Letting that slip through our fingers like that and killing more game clock, while we need to be out there getting more games. That would hurt, but I'm glad we were able to wrap it up. Honestly, knowing me, I could have easily lost that. Okay, this game is going to be a rematch with somebody we've already faced before. It went well for us that time, but there was a couple moments that, oh no, no, no, no, that was bad. But hey, we made the most out of it, not too bad.  Good damage on the board. But yeah, like I was saying, there was some moments there where I could definitely see what was happening. That was so clutch crillin'. Do you understand how clutch crillin' is?  I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I think. Yeah, it's speedrun strats at this point. We gotta get the timer down. Speedrun strats, I'll take it. We will definitely take base Vegeta getting out. Now we just need to move on to Broly. Come on, Broly, don't do this to me. He's a Broly player. He's a Broly player. Get off of me! Take it somewhere else. Broly, you are scary, my man. I'm gonna have to ask you to sit still. Sit still, Broly. I need you to sit still for me. All right, we got enough for a knockout, so just don't even play. Don't play cute, don't do anything that you can drop. Just get it over with. Get it over with, get Broly out of here and create a very similar situation to the first match. Goku Black's going to have to do it alone with Sparking. Excellent work, Yamcha, appreciate you coming to help out the team. Corner, we get the spin, medium. Love to see it. Don't know the side switch combo. Let's be open with ourselves here. Please connect. Don't know why I opted for a level three considering he still has Spark, but I'm going to take a chance here and try to... No, we don't need to read it. Decent enough. Decent enough. Decent enough, we're working on something here. All right, now the throw. A big throw. Perfect, that was a perfect. I didn't even know. Woo, I'll take it. Move on, move on, go, go, go, go. We're moving, I didn't even know that was a perfect. What? Okay, go, go on to the next one. Okay, moving on, I think we're facing an opponent we haven't seen before. Ooh, Dragon Rush. I hate going for early Dragon Rushes with no knowledge of my opponent because it just feels so scary. You don't know who they are. You don't know how they like to play, whether or not they like to test you first. That's just one of those things that, as you play more matches, it does get significantly more comfortable to do that, but it never makes the first one any easier.  We got to give it up, Krillin getting destroyed. Oh, Super Dash to follow up, wary of the 2S, maybe. Or the Super Dash was just a natural option there. Either way, I think we're left with, I was gonna say Spark, we're gonna left with, whoa, I can't even talk, left with what option and that option was to Spark, but I couldn't get to the button in time. Oh, Krillin's down for the fight. At least now we can say that we do have the Spark advantage, but I don't think we got enough health off any one character to really feel that. Yeah, 618 is doing fine too, rough. It's fine, we're gonna have to make up for it though. Gonna have to make up for it. I'm gonna take a level three here just because I'm a little afraid of where that combo was going with how I started it. Going in, level three, what's the mix? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, I vanished, what?  I don't wanna, dude, the barrier, it's in vulnerable. I can't get past it, the ultimate defense. Oh, not a vanished hold, Bardock. You just gotta vanish on that. What a 2H in the air, the confidence. The confidence on that was insane. We're definitely just messing ourselves up at this point. All right, I'm just gonna take this to try to get control back. Vanish that, vanish that, please. No vanish on that, that's crazy. 18 is messing us up. 17 assist. Oh, destructive disc assist. It is so bad for us right now. We have gotta get a character down to start feeling some, in order to feel good about this, I need a character down. It can be any character, but if I get a character down, I'm feeling much better. All right, we're gonna save Bardock and his assist for now. The sparking's out of the picture, so anchors really don't make that much of a difference to me. Does he block the 2M, he doesn't play Yamcha? He does not, now we're feeling okay. I'm feeling somewhat okay about my chances now. But the two danger characters are still left. Why are so many people playing Goku block in the start of it? I'll take it, I'm blocking.  Okay, good, good, good, good dude. Is this a one bar or two? I'm just gonna see if it's a one. It is, okay. Max one, by the way. Dude, I'm so invested in this. It feels so good dude. It feels so good to be invested. This guy's 18 is a different character.  That could be it. No, I'm bad at the game. Come on, just give me that. We actually walk away from a win there. That by far was probably the one I thought I was going to lose the most. That one felt like I was gonna lose it. 32, well, when did I get 32 tokens? Bro, can I just back out? Wait, how did I get what? How did I get 32? Listen, I don't think there's enough time for another game. Maybe if you get a really time for it, yeah. That's sicked up pretty well. Time for an ultra quick match. I don't know if that's even possible. Yeah, I feel like we should be safe, but I guess if I got 32, how many tokens did other people get? There's only two minutes left, so we have to do a speed run here. Nice, and we're already off to a decent start. The speed run must continue. Oh, he stopped the 6M. He was waiting to mash. Looks like he knows that what's at stake too. He can't be blocked. Nobody can block for too long. Nice combo with Piccolo. Oh, he's mashing, hurry. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait, why is there, what? Wait, I know I said speed run, but what? Hold on, get the bead, Krillin. Even up the score a little bit. They just hit me with, nobody said a dog can't play basketball. What was that? Call a ref, somebody call a ref. I can't believe how off guard. He said hurry, and I was like, oh, that's cute. They programmed in the outside timer to talk to the match. No, it was just, we had 10 seconds. We played for four seconds. Oh my God, that scared me. Who needs horror games when you could just play made up tournament rules? Well, the results are being calculated now. Whatever happens, happens. It's been a blast so far. I hope we get to carry on, but we've had so much happen at this tournament already and we're only in the second preliminaries. Man, my heart is still beating for what I saw seven seconds. Here come the results. Did we make it? Oh, we did, but it was close. Oh my God, where is, the guy that beat me got number one. I knew that was gonna happen. Whoever won that match got number one that round. I knew it, I could tell it. All right, legendary black, you caught me off guard. I'll give it up, you caught me off guard. Good job, good job. All right, well, this is where I'm going to end this second video here for the tournament. Join us next time when we take on preliminary round three to see whether or not we can make it past that round as well. Other than that, if you have a favorite moment, definitely let me know down below in the comment section. And while you're down there, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel and check out some of the other videos that should be on your screen right now. I've been Datsudoya. I've been enjoying this so, so much and I hope you are as well. And I will see you in the next one.