Dance
Acosta Danza: Evolution
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan
four stars
In November 2017, Acosta Danza brought Debut, the company’s first ever mixed bill, to Edinburgh. This latest programme is tagged Evolution - it’s an appropriate description, highlighting how Acosta Danza is expanding its repertoire, building in more elements of visually striking staging, without losing any of the Cuban energies and cultural legacy that Acosta has placed at the heart of this enterprise. That intention comes centre-stage with Satori, a new choreography created by company member Raúl Reinoso. In Zen Buddhism, this word encompasses spiritual illumination. Onstage, Reinoso shades the path to enlightenment with nuances of Cuba’s own melting-pot traditions and indeed struggles.There are folklorique influences in music and movement, as well as bravura pointework by a talismanic ‘guide’, the formidably poised Zeleydi Crespo - the encounters unfolding under a billowing canopy of blue cloth that physically brings everything together in symbolic unity.
Swedish choreographer Pontus Lidberg brings an ‘outside eye’ to one of Cuba’s most significant genres: the rumba. In Paysage, Soudain, La Nuit it becomes the leitmotif to youthful flirtations, confrontations, laddish camraderie and occasional loners who meet in the fields at twilight. It’s light-hearted, yet full of insightful details that the company deliver with a (seemingly) artless easy grace and charm . Meanwhile, out in the forest - depicted on a gorgeous back-cloth - Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Faun is stirring into wakefulness... Carlos Luis Blanco brought a lithe, even acrobatic sinuousity to the role, exquisitely matched by Zeleydi Crespo as the long-limbed partner who slinks and intertwines in a coupling that is feral, earthy and yet as mystical as Debussy’s original score. Finally - Rooster. And he’s surely sloping, cock of the walk, in downtown Havana. Acosta himself leads the pack in Christopher Bruce’s abidingly crowd-pleasing response to Rolling Stones classics. He’s sly, sexy, brilliant, but his company are also in their element - the girls are perfect minxes, the lads are wannabe swaggerers, the timing and the humour is spot-on... wow!
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here