When the curtain goes up at Covent Garden to reveal Carlos Acosta, Cuban legend and leading man, standing on his own, one hand held aloft like a statue, white tights topped by what could be thought of as a shred of a toga, it is a moment of uncanny deja vu. He looks not so much 50 as immortal – back on the Royal Opera House stage (where he last performed in 2016) for a gorgeously miscellaneous crowd-pleaser, a five-night gala, to celebrate his half century.
George Balanchine’s Apollo, which Acosta danced with Darcey Bussell in 2007, is one of his favourite pieces, and the section he dances from it makes a miraculous start. But Carlos at 50 – a mix of scenes lifted from ballets and discrete pieces – depends not on miracles but on toil, self-belief and pacing. Acosta’s comeback is harder than any rock star’s because the age-defying expectation is on an exactingly different level. As he joked in an interview with Sarah Crompton in the Observer: “I have to do it in a way that I can still walk off and you don’t have to call an ambulance for me.”
On the whole, he pulls the occasion off like the star he has always been. He has such playful ease as a performer, even though now he is less the virtuosic centrepiece, more the steady foil to whichever ballerina happens to be in his arms. No longer gravity-defying, he embodies gravity in the other sense, mixing it with his trademark warmth and directness. In Apollo, he gets the (presumably welcome) opportunity to sit down to watch a trio of muses audition for his affections. (I kept noticing how his left leg, positioned backwards at a swanky angle, seemed to convey an attitude problem of the godly sort.) The matchless Marianela Nuñez, Apollo’s muse of choice, proves exquisitely conversational, paradoxically combining a mastery of speed with the ability to take her time.
The birthday party is a family and friends affair in which Acosta’s nephew Yonah Acosta, in Le Corsaire, does his uncle proud with dazzling doggedness, and is impeccably partnered by Laurretta Summerscales, their love a dizzying escalation. Throughout the evening, dancers from Acosta’s Cuban company, Acosta Danza, collectively emphasise festivity, charging their work with some of the dramatic character of tango, but expressed collectively and with speed, sexiness and finesse.
The birthday offerings Acosta has chosen are, without exception, stunning – even if there is an unintentional comedy to the darkness of the selection. Ben Stevenson’s End of Time (a slight overreaction to turning 50) is a sinuously melancholy pas de deux danced with elegiac intensity by Enrique Corrales and Yaoquian Shang. Valery Panov’s Liebestod (rough translation: love in death) is an equally unchirpy subject, but performed by the phenomenal Brandon Lawrence, a leading dancer at Birmingham Royal Ballet, where Acosta is artistic director. Gradually, like a narcissistic Atlas – now weathervane, now whirlwind – Lawrence makes the marvellous discovery of his own body. And what makes his performance flawless is the sense he gives of being part of the music rather than dancing to it.
This occasion is hello and goodbye in one, and it seems suitable that a Covent Garden swan song – or dance – should feature swans (always in plentiful supply in ballet). The Dying Swans, choreographed by Acosta after Mikhail Fokine, is sensational, accompanied by the boundless yearning of the Saint-Saëns cello piece. Zeleidy Crespo and Mario Sergio Elías are extraordinary as two noble birds in a gale, conveying animal pain in their farewell. But the evening’s most unforgettable treat is Laura Rodríguez in Mermaid, choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to the eerie music of Korean composer Woojae Park, with Acosta as her sensitive minder. Rodríguez is a swimmer, a drinker, a lover, and holds an empty glass as her whirling prop. She is breathtaking, offering chaos within absolute discipline. In her struggle on dry land she flails, swoons and subsides in an extraordinary unravelling of the self.
The evening is seamlessly directed by Acosta, and he and Rodríguez walk out of Mermaid into the splendid finale: his Tocororo, set in Havana, with an onstage band. Acosta dances at the centre of this exuberant celebration of classical ballet mixed with Afro-Cuban moves, and there is joy to the generosity with which he continues to give himself to his audience, intent on dancing all cares away.
