It’s a bit of a stretch to call this undoubtedly enjoyable programme Myths and Modern Masters but granted, it sounds better than Miscellany. Carlos Acosta – superstar dancer, now director of Birmingham Royal Ballet and Cuban company Acosta Danza – has picked and mixed dancers from both companies to offer a very eclectic spread of dance, and added himself into the mix.
At 53, Acosta may not have the physical prowess of his youth, but he brings great presence and depth – and some great dancing, too. That serves very well in José Limón’s landmark 1949 work The Moor’s Pavane, a distillation of Shakespeare’s Othello which boils down the story to four characters – Othello (Acosta), Desdemona (Beatrice Parma), Iago (Max Maslen) and Emilia (Miki Mizutani) – and contains their drama of deception, jealousy and revenge within a stately composition of measured steps and stylised gestures, set to courtly music by Purcell.
Nosotros, an intimate duet by Cuban choreographers Beatriz García and Raúl Reinoso, also benefits from Acosta’s gravitas and experience. Backed by plangent piano and cello, Acosta and Amisaday Naara enact the complex yet everyday dynamics of a longstanding couple: patterns of give and take, small gestures of tenderness or neglect, physical enactments of impeding, supporting, mirroring, clasping or evading.
In his own Nutracker in Havana Suite, Acosta casts himself as a fatherly magician to young Clara (Aila Acosta Holland – yes, his own daughter), conjuring up exotic scenes of delight familiar from Act 2 of the traditional Nutcracker. It’s nicely danced and choreographed, has zero qualms about any orientalist overtones, adds in a slightly weird party scene and ends with the classic pas de deux as if to say: there’s your pinnacle.
The programme proceeds to top that with a show-stopping performance of Agrippina Vaganova’s 1935 Diana and Actaeon pas de deux, Katherine Ochoa and Yasiel Hodelín Bello almost superhuman in their whirls, bounds and balances; you surrender to a virtuosity only youth could achieve. Acosta is well out of this one.
The evening closes with Christopher Bruce’s perennially popular Rooster, an effervescent crowd pleaser set to songs by the Rolling Stones. It’s the one piece that doesn’t quite play to Acosta’s strengths, though he dances impressively and gives great attitude, because the choreography itself is fired by the freshness of youth, yet to be weathered by experience. Acosta has moved beyond that.
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At Royal Opera House, London, until 9 August
