Dreaming of New York, the musical in which you embrace (and which makes you want to go back to the hall)

At the highest point northeast of the island of Manhattan, where the subway stops on 181st Street, is the neighborhood of Washington Heights. It is the Hispanic barrio of the Big Apple, a melting pot of Latin culture, sociability, colors and sounds. The largest Dominican community in the United States lives there, but the Cuban and Puerto Rican enclaves are also populous. Lin Manuel Miranda, musician and actor, creator of successful musicals such as Hamilton, was born here. In the Heights, which in Italy takes the title of Dreaming in New York, is his story of that neighborhood and those birthplace.

It has been a hit show on Broadway since 2005 and has now become a film that will debut in theaters around the world – pandemic permitting – in June.

Now in Los Angeles with a big online event the first two trailers have been presented and immediately a certainty has emerged: it will be difficult to sit still on the chairs listening to that music, watching those choreographies. The desire to dance risks rising like the tide with the moon.

The story told is that of Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), the sympathetic and magnetic owner of a neighborhood bodega, who hopes, imagines and sings a better life to escape from his daily routine. “I’ve never seen a movie like this, where Latin boys sing songs about the pride of their origins,” says the young actor, whom audiences saw alongside Lady Gaga in A star is born.

Directed by the director of “Crazy & Rich”, Jon M. Chu, written by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the theatrical version of the Broadway show is colorful, bombastic, funny, loud like a Puerto Rican ‘piste de baile’. Around Usnavi’s life unfold the lives and dreams of Benny (Corey Hawkins), Nina, played by singer Leslie Grace, and her father Kevin who has the face of Jimmy Smits, Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), grandmother Claudia ( Olga Merediz), Daniela (Daphne Rubin-Vega), Carla (Stephanie Beatriz) and Cuca, or Dascha Polanco that the television audience knows for being one of the protagonists of Orange is the New Black.

“This film is a hymn to life”, says Olga Merediz. “A story that has no villains, but only dreamers”, confirms Leslie Grace who explains that it is easy to identify with the protagonists, even if you are not the children of Hispanic immigrants, because “it is the story of all the kids who wonder what they want to do as adults, wondering if they are carrying on their dream or that of their parents. Young Americans of the first generation do not like to talk about their anxieties because they see themselves as privileged. They are American and therefore they are lucky, but the consequence of this privilege is a profound identity crisis. It was nice to be able to talk about these very serious themes in a film that is pure joy ».

According to a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 4.9% of films produced in America feature the Hispanic community, one of the largest in the States. “This film turns the tables”, explains the director, Jon M. Chu, who is part of another equally underrepresented community in Hollywood, the Asian one. “I didn’t grow up in Washington Heights but it wasn’t hard to recognize myself in those kids, in their problems, in their dreams.”

Shot in New York before the pandemic, the film is exactly the opposite of what we are forced to do now: “There are tons of hugs, songs, dances, there is a lot of shouting, there are caresses and kisses, arguments and screams – says Lin Manuel Miranda – seeing him now, seeing the faces of the protagonists again after almost two years, I found it hard not to cry with emotion ».

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