Carlos Acosta has seen the future of dance, and it’s digital… or at least partly. Sitting in a meeting room at Sadler’s Wells, one of the biggest names in the ballet world – now director of Birmingham Royal Ballet – is telling me he believes that technology can move the art form forward in the 21st century.
BRB is bringing a new triple bill called Into the Music to Sadler’s Wells this week, the second part of which – a new commission called Hotel – “is pushing the boundaries” using cameras on stage among the dancers to project live images onto the scenery behind in real time.
“This could never be the Nineties or the Eighties. This is now and you will see even more technology emerging,” the Cuban-born star says, looking sharp in a dark check suit, gaze intense and posture on point throughout our conversation. “It is a natural fit if done correctly. You have to understand the dynamics of movement and merge it in a way that is balanced.”
He adds, “If, in 100 years, people ask what did we bring to the table… This is the kind of expression we could say we brought to the table, which is that mix of technology and movement and score.”
If Hotel nods towards the future, the third part of the triple bill – Uwe Scholz’s setting of Beethoven’s The Seventh Symphony – is very much classical, while the opening piece is by a choreographer who is often overlooked in the UK, but whom Acosta admires hugely.
“For the first time in our repertory we have Forgotten Land by JiÅí Kylián, one of the greatest choreographers of all time.” The 49-year-old himself has never danced a work by Kylián in his long and storied career, and he calls it “one of my greatest regrets. I admire him so much. These dancers have the chance I never did.”
BRB has a strong connection with Sadler’s Wells. It was where the Royal Ballet started, before the company moved to Covent Garden in 1946, leaving another company behind which, in 1990, moved to Birmingham to become the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Acosta joined BRB as director in January 2020, just three months before the country went into lockdown. “I worked with the team to devise artistic planning that didn’t open a huge hole in our finances,” he says. “When I first arrived it was, ‘How can we keep the company motivated’ – we didn’t even have a space, and mentally it was very hard. The level of anxiety the dancers and musicians went through was really high.”
Not only that, but all the costs have been rising, from energy bills to freight, and a fair few of the backstage crew left during the pandemic for better paid jobs. All that and BRB is among those nervously waiting to hear about their funding from Arts Council England over the next three years, which is due to be announced on Friday.
Then there’s the news that audiences have proved slower to return to live entertainment than for film. “If we don’t hit the numbers and the theatre isn’t full… well you can imagine,” Acosta says. “That then impacts what we can produce. I’m here to deliver this exciting vision and be optimistic… but it’s being weighed down by the reality. It’s a bit disappointing.”
Despite all this, he is trying to remain optimistic – “it’s my best trait” – and says what they’ve achieved since his appointment has been “incredible”. Not just the work on stage, but bringing in new donors, and the company’s new collaborations and commissions worldwide. “We can’t lose sight of the fact we’re building something great.”
The transition from dancer to director has been “very hard” in a role that demands much, from managing the dancers to lobbying for funding. But he believes the company is already changing, especially among the performers, “The level of physicality, the way they’re working. The level is rising, it’s not just about the principal dancers, it’s everyone. And for that it’s worth it.”
The talent is there in the UK, he says, and despite ballet’s elitist reputation it seeks dancers from all walks of life. Companies around the country, including BRB, have programmes in place to seek out talent from less privileged backgrounds who might otherwise slip through the net. “We are constantly on the lookout,” he says. “But there is a big chunk of dancers coming through the company, who are coming from working-class families and poor backgrounds. And also, diversity, we have one of the most diverse companies in the UK.”
Acosta was the first black principal dancer at the Royal Ballet in 2003. Has the industry become more inclusive since then? “Things have got much better all over the world,” he says. “Directors are much more aware of the necessity to see the picture more broadly. All over, everyone is fighting for talent from different ethnicities from all over the world. I think it’s great, and you can see the difference.”
BRB’s director – who also runs the dance company Acosta Danza, which he set up in 2015 – is also keen to bring dancers from around the world to build the company. When it comes to European talent, however, Brexit has become a major stumbling block. “It is a problem; the visa situation takes forever and is very expensive. It is a shame. The strength of this country, where every other country has failed, the UK has exceeded in bringing the world together and creating this incredible cosmopolitan society to live in harmony. That is the British strength… I never felt a stranger here. I came from Cuba and I’ve been heralded as a son of this nation. That is very rare,” he says before his brows furrow, “but now this could be jeopardised.”
Acosta’s story is extraordinary. Born in Cuba, the youngest of 11 children and so poor he regularly didn’t have shoes or access to hot water, his father sent him to enrol at ballet school. He was a natural, topping his class at Cuba’s National Ballet School before winning the gold medal in the international Prix de Lausanne at 16. He became a principal at the English National Ballet at 18, before going on to the Houston Ballet and then arriving at Covent Garden in 1998.
Acosta – who quickly became world renowned, hailed for his physicality as well as his ability to portray tender emotion on stage – spent 17 years at the Royal Ballet. Looking back at his time with the company, he calls it “the best thing that ever happened to me… It was the best time of development for me to becoming an artist; not just a dancer, an artist.”
He once said, that for those wanting to know how good they are, that’s where they go. Does he still believe this? “London is the capital of the world, you know,” he says before adding with a smile, “but watch out for Birmingham.”
In 2016, he retired from classical ballet. It was the right time – he was regularly in pain and mentally exhausted, “I wasn’t motivated to do another Swan Lake. I knew how hard I would have to push my body to get something similar to what I was before.
“I wanted to keep growing. At a certain point, ballet can’t provide that and you have to move on to more contemporary roles and carry on the journey in which you can stay relevant and communicate to your audiences – but through different means.”
Acosta maintains his fitness, but not the level required for a principal dancer. “I tend to do one project a year. I will prepare for that and tour. But the level of pain will never be comparable to when you’re at your highest level. To get that level of excellence is about training every day. At 20 you can cope, at 40 plus…” he sighs. “It’s not impossible but you have to block everything else. You have to be like a boxer and live for your body and diet and massage. I didn’t want to do that, I wanted more from life; to enjoy myself.” He currently lives in Somerset with his wife Charlotte, a writer, and they have three children. The set up is a world away from the bright lights of Covent Garden, and the stresses of dance at the very highest level.
“It’s also very naked what we do,” Acosta adds of those pressures, “exposing for everyone to judge; there’s the stress of baring your soul to the audience and critics can just say nasty things. You feel hurt sometimes. All of this is in your mind.”
There was another issue. “The other inevitable thing is the new generations; they elbow you out. One day I remember at the Royal Ballet standing up at the barre and looked around. I saw all these 20-year-old kids and there weren’t a lot of people that started with me.”
Last year he toured in the dance show On Before. “These days it’s a very special to go on stage. You know for a fact that one day it’s going to be the last one. So you enjoy those moments.” As he approaches 50, has he made a decision when to step away from the stage for good? “It’s going to happen, but I haven’t made a decision.” He adds that maybe he’ll dance once a year, but, “I have nothing to prove.”
As one of the most prominent figures in ballet in the UK and an advocate for the art form, I ask whether there is anything he wanted to get off his chest. “Everybody is suffering. I know it’s very tough circumstances,” he replies after a pause. “For many people it’s about survival. But even when you are surviving and everything is bleak, that’s when you have to turn to the arts the most.
“We need to acknowledge that it is crucial in our society. More than what people and politicians think. We should do more to preserve the arts at all cost for the sake of the people. It is not a commodity; it is a necessity.”
