On my tenth birthday there was cake, chips, probably a movie. Carlos Acosta goes down a less obviously celebratory route to mark a decade of his company of spry Cuban dancers. No fireworks, and precious little fun.
Acosta Danza don’t have to light all the candles just because it’s a birthday. Acosta’s young performers have a real zest for movement and tackle material by choreographers (all male on this programme) from both Cuba and beyond. They’ve made a welcome home in the British dance landscape: stylish performances, but not always in the material they deserve.
The opener is very mid. L’Ecuación by George Céspedes places a quartet wearing Haribo-toned trousers inside a large yellow-framed cube. Each dancer claims the space in their own way; then they combine to a percussive score, all shoulder shimmies and scissor jumps. It’s sharp but slight.
There’s more substance in 98 Días by Javier De Frutos. The Venezuelan-born, British-based choreographer was drawn to the poet Federico García Lorca’s visit to Havana in 1930. Initially planned for a week, his stay stretched for nearly almost happy months. “This island is a paradise,” he wrote.
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De Frutos uses Lorca’s poetry, spoken by an unseen voiceover, as a movement score. It halts and glitches before continuing – much, I guess, like the poet’s own visit. Dancers in deep azure jumpsuits scooch around in their socks, roll slow shoulders, wiggle inviting fingers. This was a supposedly transformative trip for Lorca – though seems less blissful here, as the central figure falls in and out of step or navigates romance and fisticuffs.
Spain’s Goyo Montero also quotes Lorca in his grotesque, tormented piece. Llamada opens with pale-clad dancers quivering in isolation, shuddering as if the ground shakes beneath their feet. They turn on a man in a layered skirt, their faces a rictus of derision under a forbidding crimson light. Even though the mood shades into something intimate and playful, it ends with them marching to the front of the stage, howling and grimacing at us, each trapped in their own fury.
Nearly all of the 15 dancers have come through the Acosta Danza Academy in Havana. They’re full of grace and pep, and would clearly dance the life out of juicier material. At least Alexis Fernández’s De Punta a Cabo steers towards a relatively upbeat close. It’s set against Havana’s esplanade, seen in a video that backs the piece, skies sighing from sunset to sunrise.
The dancers are smooth in their sneaks, moving through all kinds of dance: swivel-hipped salsa, power-move pirouettes. In the hazy morning light, it ends with people getting down to their scanties. Skin and good times – it’s cheesy, but after an evening of dour dance, I’ll take it.
Sadler’s Wells, to September 27; sadlerswells.com
