Carlos Acosta dances this weekend for the 500 years of La Habana

September 22, 2019

The great dancer Carlos Acosta performs today on a Cuban stage to present a new season of his company with works by creators from Belgium, United Kingdom, and Sweden.

With performances on September 20, 21, and 22, at the Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso, the director of Acosta Danza aims to join the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the founding of this capital, his native city.

Acosta, an artist of wide international prestige, will star in Mermaid, a duet conceived by Belgian Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui expressly for him and Marta Ortega, a former dancer of Danza Contemporánea de Cuba who has been part of Acosta Danza since the company's founding in 2016.

Also, in the performances on the 20th and 22nd, the renowned dancer will perform in Rooster, a choreography by Briton Christopher Bruce that addresses seduction strategies based on eight well-known songs by the band The Rolling Stones, including the popular Sympathy for the Devil.

Acosta Danza will also perform Fauno, by Cherkaoui, and Satori, by Cuban dancer Raúl Reinoso, a member of the company.

The season is called Evolución and is completed with the work Paysage, Soudain, La nuit, a choreography by Swede Pontus Lidberg, to music by his countryman composer Stefan Levin and Cuban Leo Brouwer.

This piece features on stage a fabulous installation by Cuban visual artist Elizabet Cerviño, and Lidberg himself participated in the world premiere of the piece in 2018, alongside Acosta Danza.

The company aims to present dance performances in full accordance with the most current notions being developed in the world, not only in terms of body movement but in everything related to the stage, states a statement from the company.

Acosta Danza seeks to offer integrative performances from contemporary and neoclassical perspectives, without discarding other expressions, periods, and styles of dance art.

Acosta Danza will continue its presentations at the Gran Teatro on September 27, 28, and 29, as part of a calendar of celebrations for the 500 years of Havana that began in late 2018 and will extend beyond November 16, the official founding date of the old town of San Cristóbal de La Habana.

Known as the "black god of Cuban ballet," Acosta (Havana, 1973) is one of the Cuban dancers with the greatest international fame.

Until recently his name resonated as a possible candidate to continue the work of the legendary Alicia Alonso, about to turn 99, at the helm of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba (BNC), a responsibility that all signs indicate will fall to the current subdirector of the BNC, celebrated dancer Viengsay Valdés.

In 2015 he returned to Cuba to found Acosta Danza after leaving the Royal Ballet in London, where he was a principal dancer between 1998 and 2003, and since then has left his mark on the Cuban scene with an eclectic style, with a tendency toward the contemporary but without abandoning classical roots.

At the beginning of this year he was appointed director of the Royal Ballet of Birmingham, one of the most prestigious companies in the United Kingdom.

The biographical film "Yuli," in which Acosta plays himself, was received with standing ovations at the past International Film Festival of Havana, attended by the dancer, the film's director, Spaniard Icíar Bollaín, and screenwriter Paul Laverty, winner of the Best Screenplay Award at the San Sebastián Festival.