Carlos Acosta showed that the English dance Conga too

One of the best Cuban dancers talked exclusively with Cubasí and Granma about the success of Cubania (Cubanness), the show he premiered in London recently....

And the fact is that as he is one of the greatest Cuban dancers in the classical repertoire, this does not prevent Carlos Acosta from creating beyond all frontiers, without prejudices or harms to good art. Exclusively talking with Cubasí website and Granma newspaper, he commented the experience of Cubanía, a show that put the British to dance conga:

“I had the possibility to make a production at the Royal Opera House, I wanted to make a show, called Cubanía, so I prepared a programme and included a suite in the second part of that programme. It’s a smaller version of Tocororo that was not danced for a long time and the show was highly successful…”

“At the end we finished with the conga at the Royal Ballet, that was precisely what they wanted, because of the ballet with elitist stamp that remains there, then as I am a person who embraces another sector of the population they wanted me to make a production to attract younger people, with another view and to break some stigma of classicism in that theater a little bit…“

If critics expected more or less, that does appear to worry this virtuoso who assures to be satisfied with a staging he had conceived very well since his birth.

“It’s a show for the audience, critics come and go with it, because at the moment in which I am, they judge me too harshly and actually what I aim is to achieve something more entertaining, something more popular, this sort of thing for people, it’s a summer show, the sun, the tropics, colors, the Caribbean, that is what Tocororo aims, it does not intend to propose new views in the art issue, but rather for people and that goal was fulfilled, the audience stood up to dance with the conga, it achieved that direct contact with the audience, but at the same time I knew there would be a split in opinions among critics.”

Because of production reasons the show may not be presented in Cuba at the moment, and Carlos Acosta won’t attend the next Ballet Festival, but the famous Cuban dancer plans to return sooner rather than later to put down roots on the island:

“I want to come to Cuba to form my own company here, a small company of neoclassical and contemporary dance, I’m still maturing the project line, but I’m working on that and think it will be in two years time. I will perform the next season completely, a full classical repertoire as I always do it, but in the next one, I’m going to mount Carmen for the Royal Ballet and this will be my farewell from all the world’s stages in the classical repertoire, so by 2016 the Cuban audience will have me fairly enough here.”

And in fact the dream is taking shape because Acosta has held talks with the Minister of Culture, has undertaken efforts to establish a headquarters and assesses the possibility to join a British theater that would accompany the project, mainly in promotion affairs.

Regarding the possibility to publish in Cuba the Spanish version of his novel released in English last October and whose very Cuban theme allowed to certain degree the chance to produce a show like Cubanía, Acosta affirmed: “To publish the book here, of course, that will happen in some moment, but I also wrote a biography, then I’d like it to be in that order, first the autography and the novel later.”

Translated by Jorge Mesa Benjamin/ Cubasí Translation Staff