Not that it was easy. In his memoir, No Way Home, he recalls an instance, after he had just joined the Royal Ballet, when he got talking to an elegant black man in a bar, who told him that because of his colour, the company had probably brought him over to play the jester. Acosta flew into a rage and replied: 'I only dance principal roles. I am Romeo, I am Siegfried... if there aren't any black Romeos, I'll be the first.' Is it any wonder audiences root for him?
The works performed at Sadler's Wells were slender, but so what? We still got to see Acosta in the pas-de-deux from Le CorsaireHis virile, gravity-defying leaps were breathtaking and his partner, Viengsay Valdes, competed with him to achieve seemingly impossible feats.
Acosta wants to mine his past, and that of his troubled country, in dance. Some critics have found his efforts self-indulgent, but that ignores the fact that for many more casual ballet-goers, reliving a childhood dream is key to the appeal.
Like many girls, I was ballet-mad between the ages of six and 10. I worshipped Fonteyn and Nureyev. As a teenager, boys and exams lured me away from the ballet until I took my then 10-year-old niece and my mother to see Cinderella at Covent Garden three years ago. I had found a way back to the magical world I discovered as a child.
Acosta personifies that small hope we all harbour that we too can beat the odds. It is not just for his talent that audiences love him, but for the inspiration of his personal history. To become the dancer he is, Acosta has had to face down poverty, the loneliness of leaving his family and his country and the preconceptions of those who could not envisage a black dancer playing the prince. Cuba's loss is our gain: we are lucky to have him living and working here.
