viernes, 13 de enero de 2023

CARLOS ACOSTA, A VERY UNIQUE CUBAN DANCER

 ( this is a transcription of my blog in Spanish, here is the link to it:

https://habana-havana.blogspot.com/

CARLOS ACOSTA, EXTRAORDINARY CUBAN BALLET DANCER

For some time now I wanted to write something about us, Cubans. I wanted to write something kind, something that would give a better idea of ​​who we are, of those interested in Cuba as a Homeland, as the home of the most valuable thing we have in our lives. But I looked for  the words over and over and they all seemed hollow to me kidnapped by politicians and demagogues since a long time and therefore they sounded empty to me, they were like faded fabrics that tried to dress my soul, but they showed that  were misused many times and failed to cover the slightest of my thoughts.

Then I looked for examples among my country mates who, rather than feeling proud of them let us see that human quality that we all Cubans have, it doesn’t matter where we live, but in this case someone from Cuba who would remind us that there is more than revolutions, political parties, and he or she will let us see that in Cuba there are extraordinary human beings in their daily lives who one day are lucky or not to be rich, or famous, but above all they continue to be beautiful Cubans.

Anyway, it has been a long time search, and although I have found several I have decided to start with someone very special.

Although it is a common place to remember it, it is worthy: the Cuban Carlos Acosta was one of the most, if not the greatest dancer in the world, and on that podium only two myths accompany him: Nijinsky and Nureyev. Acosta published his autobiography No way home. A Cuban dancer's story

It was Carlos who showed that a ballet prince could be black.

Carlos Acosta, a writer! No need to be surprised. Perhaps because Acosta is also a choreographer, an expert in telling a story. His life is the life of many Cubans who have struggled against the circumstances of the empires and the hunger of the 1990s.

But it took talent to turn him into a legend: a humble birth in Los Pinos, the decision of the truck driver, his father,  to be a dancer, his initial rejection of ballet, the advent of the vocation and the moment in which "Air Acosta"  took off.

 The book offers us that detailed, precise and cathartic history: It was also his way of exorcising his vicissitudes –among them, several family tragedies– and the wrongs that come with fame. And among them the fundamental has been the color of his skin. Because it was Carlos who showed that a ballet prince could be black.

Carlos has given his story an important part of himself, to tell amazing events, in which he feels the hand of destiny on him. Like when he was still a student at the National Ballet School, Acosta had to go to the Teatro Nuovo Ballet in Turin, Italy. It was his first trip abroad, but the visa did not arrive on time. The teenager collapses, defeated, but his father reminds him, undaunted: "Mijo (My son), what happens, as bad as it seems, is convenient." The visa arrived, Acosta would have taken the Cubana Airline plane headed for Rome… the one that never took off because it caught fire with its passengers on the plane track at the Rancho Boyeros airport.

In a similar way we can read the story of the invitation of the Houston Ballet, just when Acosta felt depressed in the National Ballet of Cuba, which he had joined after having been principal in the English National Ballet. It was at the English National Ballet that Ben Stevenson saw it. In the Cuban company, Acosta, already winner of two Grand Prix, the one in Lausanne and the one in Paris –the most prestigious–, was only accepted as a “soloist”, four categories below the one he held in the English group. They replaced Oedipus the King, and Carlos naively hoped that they would give him the title role that made famous to Jorge Esquivel. But he danced – that is to say – the role of the old man who must kill Oedipus. Aged by makeup and costumes, the other dancers teased him saying that he looked like Celia Cruz. Carlos felt humiliated. The worst: he knew that it would be many years before he could dance Giselle. Then, he thought  “I can only be Albrecht with my heart and not with the fullness of my legs”. Three weeks later – in the meantime, he had danced a Rose Specter in which the pink leotard made him look like the Pink Panther – he received Stevenson's letter. He called him right away, and a week later Stevenson landed in Havana.

 


Already in Houston, critics were quick to recognize the phenomenon: “the flying Cuban”, “the parachute”, “the lethal weapon”… Carlos began to understand that he was a star, a celebrity. “The world will be mine, the world will be mine”, he repeated to himself to make the physical pain produced by the overtraining to which he submitted himself disappear, which aggravated an ankle injury.

His successes were growing, and Carlos would have wanted to phone his family to tell them about it. "But that would have meant looking back, and I had promised my father not to." It is the relationship between Carlos and his relatives that has defined him. The fearsome "Papito" - threatened him with the machete that he kept under the bed – he didn’t  stop admonishing his son every time he faltered – like when he hurt his ankle in London, because he could not concentrate on a jump thinking about the family or whenever he insisted on returning to Cuba. “Your place is not here, among us. Go do your career outside”

In one of his returns to the island, his girlfriend Estefanía had become an ally of his father. At the reunion, Carlos suffered from an uncontrollable erection, but Estefanía is a shower of cold water: "When are you leaving again? And what about your career?" Carlos insisted in forgetting the matter, but Estefanía was implacable: “What are you going to do here? Why do you think people are into the sea on rafts? The erection went away, and Estefania too.

 

Carlos had been expelled from the Provincial School of Ballet in L and 19 for failing the exams. But that year many students had not passed, and the Minister of Education allowed, as an exceptional measure, that several of them (including Carlos) continue their studies. So the teachers, fed up with that spoiled boy, sent him to the Santa Clara school in revenge. It was "Papito" who took him: it had been a trick by the teachers, because Carlos' level did not exist in that school. Back home (after sleeping on the benches at the bus station), the mother was seized by indignation, but this time it was the angry Pedro Acosta who calmly uttered: "Tomorrow will be another day." And next morning he took his son by the hand, heading to the school in Pinar del Río. Carlos says that he never saw again in his life this proud man behaved the way he did, begging for his son to be admitted.

What was the happiest day of his life? It was one of 2003 when he was able to have his mother Maria and his father Pedro sitting in one of the best restaurants in London, in Soho. He was celebrating many things, the premiere of his own show that gave a sentimental view of the poverty-stricken environment of the Havana slums where he was born.

His personal story is that of many Cubans, only his ends in Victory, at least professionally, unlike that of many who fell by the wayside or now only breathe and eat in the streets. He is a man in search of his own soul. On the one hand he exposes his problems, but on the other he does not look for excuses, or guilty ones and in the process are the characteristics which define a human being who is a fighter of honesty and effort.

Carlos was born in 1973 and in his family living without money was almost a way of life. One day a strange smell that came from the kitchen space (they lived in 2 rooms) greeted the young Carlos when he returned from school. His mother had put on the table the roasted remains of his pet: two bunnies. He ate rabbit never again in his life.

Like many boys of his age he was obsessed with football, but when he was nine years old his father found out that his neighbor's two sons had escaped poverty by attending a local ballet school. Carlos was horrified. What would the friends in the neighborhood think? “Everyone will say that I am gay!”  His father took him by the hand, took him to a secluded place and said: “Listen, you are the son of a tiger, and the son of a tiger inherits his father's stripes. If someone tells you that you are gay, then you smash their face.

Later, Carlos Acosta would bring to Cuba the London Royal Ballet as a gift to Havana as a gift for his people, his beloved Cuba. Not  the usual officials would see him in their comfortable seats, but for us, the ones who are in the hearts of those who, even being far away, are still Cubans.

And anyway, this story  would be too long. But I like it, a lot. Because many times will fails. Many times, every day we have to face the message that we really are nothing, we have to face the fact of thinking about leaving our country to be able to help our families, that our dreams are bourgeois nonsense or simply selfish. We have to face the option of committing a crime in order to bring something decent to eat into our homes. And so, among many other good things in the world, we think that maybe one day someone will really see us as we are, or our tenacity will be rewarded, or the streets will be ours again, full of calm and decent people even if they don't have clothes of a brand and that some children do not lose pet to save a dinner on any given night.

Humberto

LOCAL GUIDE AND TEACHER. SOCIETY, HISTORY, ARTS

+5352646921 Whatssap, Instagram & Signal

http://humberto.webcindario.com

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