This blog post is the first one of a series documenting my recent travel to Cuba.

I just spent a week in Cuba with a group of photographers led by Zack Arias and hosted by the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Due to the United States embargo against Cuba, it is not easy to visit this beautiful country. Santa Fe Workshops has a people-to-people educational exchange program license by the Treasury Department that allows them to organize trips to Cuba. We had a full schedule with morning and afternoon activities where we met many Cubans and learned a lot about this island that is just a 45 minutes flight away from Miami.

One of the places we visited was Cuba’s Center for the Promotion of Dance (Prodanza) to meet and photograph ballet dancers.

This was the first time I was photographing dancers. It is just amazing with what ease and elegance they pose.

An other example of a dancer modeling for us.

I love this shot of the ballerina who is waiting to get her dress so she can pose for us as well. This shot was taken through a broken mirror.

Unfortunately, time passed way too quickly. I wished we could have stayed longer and spent more time staging shots in their numerous rehearsal rooms.