( 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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