In 1969, Fidel Castro banned Christmas in Cuba. The country was declared atheist, and Santa a foreign import. Festivities were eventually reinstated when the Pope visited the island in 1998, but the young Carlos Acosta, growing up in 1980s Havana, never got to celebrate. He’s making up for it now with Nutcracker in Havana, which transplants the classic ballet from its usual snowy Germanic setting to sunny Cuba. It’s a savvy idea with popular appeal: very much still the recognisable Nutcracker – a trad, family-friendly show – just with added flavour.
At a little under two hours, including interval, there is no messing around. We get straight into some of the big tunes, and Clara (a charming, ever-beaming Laura Rodriguez) even reels off some fouettés in the first scene. Acosta just wants you to have a good time. What makes it all work is Pepe Gavilondo’s Cubanification of the original Tchaikovsky score – the most melodious in the ballet canon. A mark of the original’s greatness is how often and how well it has been adapted across styles, from Duke Ellington’s famed suite to last year’s brilliant jazz score by Cassie Kinoshi for Drew McOnie’s Nutcracker, and now this Latin makeover. In some scenes it’s played pretty straight, with the difference all in the orchestration: flutes, percussion, Cuban lute and tres guitar; elsewhere the music is cut loose from waltzes and marches and reborn with shifting, syncopated Cuban rhythms – the Nutcracker by way of Buena Vista Social Club. This is real dance music.
Similarly the dance – performed by Carlos’s Havana-based company Acosta Danza, plus guests – combines ballet with Latin and contemporary styles, and some great group dances that capture the joy of multigenerational family gatherings, complete with grooving grandparents.
The show is essentially two parties. The first is with Clara’s family, including Drosselmeyer (the charismatic Alexander Varona), the magician character who in this version is Clara’s uncle, who has emigrated to Miami and back with lavish gifts. For the second, we are flown off to a magical land for a parade of entertainments, a gaggle of colourful national dances (the Chinese duo becoming a martial arts act), and former English National Ballet dancer Laurretta Summerscales going full ballerina as the Sugar Plum Fairy. There are nods to the Cuban theme here too: instead of the usual toy soldiers we have mambises – mustachioed guerilla soldiers who fought for Cuban independence. Also in the toy box, a cameo from the always brilliant Zeleidy Crespo, playing a doll of a Yoruba god.
Of course one could pick faults: this ballet not addressing the narrative dissatisfaction at the heart of the Nutcracker; Acosta not being the most technically inspired of choreographers; some of the classical dance wanting more snap and sparkle; an unevenness between the dancers who are big on personality (Raúl Reinoso’s Fritz, for example, and Frank Isaac in the Mirlitons) and those underselling it. But that would be churlish, and to miss the point. Acosta has created a fun, festive variety show that is as warm and likeable as the man himself.
• Touring until 18 January
