Dame la mano

Cuba aficionados call it ‘America’s best-kept secret’. On weekdays it is a simple snack bar in New Jersey. But, on Sunday nights ‘La Esquina Habanera’ transforms into a lively club where Cubans from miles around dance the rumba. Here, they forget their worries and become re-vitalized for the coming work-week. For Cubans, as filmmaker Heddy Honigmann discovers, dancing is just as important as eating, drinking, sleeping or making love. In the beautifully photographed Dame la Mano, Honigmann portrays, in typically sensitive, truthful ways, several regular visitors of La Esquina Habanera. For them, the rhythm of the rumba is as important as the beating of their hearts. They yearn for their native Cuba and the relatives who stayed behind. They have striking stories to tell. Pedro is a gifted dancer who, in his first years in the US, kept his head above water by working as a stripper and gigolo. 62-year-old Rafaela dances in her kitchen all day long. Her son, Alex, dreams of starting his own restaurant with a dance floor ‘much bigger than the Esquina Habanera’.