Carlos Acosta
ONCE, THE MENTION of Cuba brought to mind cigars and communism. Today, the country is just as widely known for dance—for its salsa, its rumba and, increasingly, its national hero Carlos Acosta. Acosta is the ballet star whose unlikely rise from a boyhood of petty crime on the backstreets of Havana spawned a book, a stage show and numerous TV documentaries. In his 17 years at the U.K.’S Royal Ballet, Acosta never stopped pining for his native island.
So it comes as no surprise to find him back there. Having hung up his ballet pumps in London, he says he’s “giving something back” to Cuba with the founding of a Havana-based dance company. Acosta Danza, which launches its first European tour in Lodz, Poland, this month, is not a classical ballet company. Instead, it is pursuing its own identity, reviving Cuban dance works and exploring indigenous Cuban rhythms. He wants, eventually, to incorporate flamenco and hip-hop in order “to create a company that doesn’t look like any other in the world.”
Such is Acosta’s celebrity in Cuba that auditions had to be conducted in secrecy. As it was, hordes of hopefuls turned up—and in the end, half of the 25 dancers he selected had little or no formal training. While this isn’t a classical company, everyone takes ballet class three times a week.
That is because, as Acosta insists, “in my company the dancers have to be able to do everything, from double
tours en l’air to backflips. And they can because they’re young, they’re moldable as clay, and, of course, they’re Cuban.”