If you’re desperate for a weekend in Cuba, but can’t spare the time or money – or face the Covid-tastic hoopla – you could do far worse than hurry down to Sadler’s Wells to catch Acosta Danza. This week marks the fourth visit to these shores for the zippy young multi-disciplinary, multi-ethnic troupe, founded in 2015 by the great Carlos Acosta as he retired from the Royal Ballet. And, serving up a generous but not overlong programme of five works – two of them revivals, but three new to these shores – it’s their most convincing appearance here yet.
True, one of those novelties, the Sisyphus-inspired Hybrid, is – with the best will in the world – pretentious twaddle that (tragically given its source) goes nowhere fast and finds its stride only a couple of times in the more up-beat ensemble passages. But, that aside, the strike rate is excellent.
The evening opens pointedly with the UK premiere of Raúl Reinoso’s Liberto. A lustrously lit, semi-abstract series of duets between a runaway slave and a woman, this strikingly contrasts his faltering body-language – aptly marionettish, after so long being controlled by others – and the god-like confidence and command of the other. It also yields the evening’s first appearance of Zeleidy Crespo, a simply astonishing, stage-dominating fusion of titanium-like strength, long-limbed, mercurial fluidity, and regal charisma.
Thankfully, Crespo also gets a solo all to herself, in the revival of Maria Rovira’s short-but-sweet Impronta. Like Liberto, this draws as much on African-Caribbean folk as it does on Western contemporary idioms, and it sees Crespo joyfully, imperiously, fill the large Sadler’s Wells stage with luxuriant movement – you’d swear she was 10 feet tall.
The two highlights of the evening, however, are pieces similar on paper but, in crucial ways, chalk-and-cheese. Both are essentially odes to Cuban culture, and – in their amicable conviviality – come across as distant, Cuban descendants of Jerome Robbins’s perfect ensemble piece Dances at a Gathering. However, each one ploughs its own very distinct, richly enjoyable furrow.
