Always good to see the young dancers of Acosta Danza, tonight in a triple bill that’s not too long—I wish it were longer—I’ve seen and enjoyed before Paysage, Soudain, La Nuit twice at Sadler’s Wells, Hybrid once at Sadler’s Wells and Soledad here at the Linbury in 2020, a mix of joyous and lyrical, private passion and futuristic challenges.
Pontius Lidberg’s Paysage, Soudain, La Nuit, its title setting the context, is dreamy and fluid. After a hard day’s work, one imagines, young people at dusk, when the heat of the day is fading and the red setting sun lighting the way, come out to play, relax and chill. It looks so innocent and happy. Too short, but oh so sweet.
Elizabet Cerviño’s wheat field set and Patrik Bogardh’s mellow lighting give the eleven dancers permission to drift, dance at their leisure, mingle, pair up and hit the beat. The beat is rumba great. Hips swing to Leo Brouwer (his with Rumba) and Stefan Levin’s Cuban Landscapes, so very inviting.
There’s an interesting male duet (Leandro Fernandez and Chay Deivis, who reminds me a little of a young Carlos Acosta), delightful solos from Alejandro Silva and Adria Díaz and free and easy interaction amongst the ensemble. A true company: hard to believe it’s ten years since the ever-busy Carlos Acosta founded it.
Rafael Bonachela’s Soledad is a fiery duet, the ups and down of a volatile relationship. Laura Rodriguez and Raul Reinoso each give as good as they get, one minute loving, sexy, the next it's a fight. The fight raises the joined at the hip erotic temperature. The set chair is to sulk in. Physically demanding, twenty tense minutes fly by. Just wow! Dressed in black against a black backcloth, the angst is dark, the feet bare.
The accompanying music charges the atmosphere. There seem to be four chapters accentuated by the chosen music. Chavela Vargas’s famous version of La Llorona (The Weeping Woman)—there are many interpretations of this Mexican legend going way back—goes deep. Gidon Kremer’s Hommage to Piazzolla takes the relationship down another route. She’s in charge: he licks her leg, she his hand.
We need an interval after that, though the two pieces are only twenty minutes each. Hybrid is slightly longer at thirty minutes and in quite a different ballpark.
Cuban choreographers Norge Cedeño and Thais Suárez say it’s to do with Sisyphus, but as far as I can see that’s life, overcoming its hurdles.
Simply breathing seems to be a challenge. Futuristic (Yaron Abulafi’s lighting and set suggest so), nine dancers in grey with appliquéd cords that could be breathing apparatus over their leotard top halves (costumes Celia Ledón) descend onto a red-lit stage. There are seven ropes waiting at the back. A girl is tied up like a puppet. She is released by her colleagues. Was she the scout sent ahead by this military cohort of close comrades?
Red ropes guide the way—a reference to Theseus and Ariadne? A matter of life and death? Again, it is a charged atmosphere, blending, we are told, “the African traditions of Yoruba with contemporary dance”… When the corded tops are removed, they all fall down, pass out. One girl is resuscitated by her male friend—he keeps her alive. But they all recover, acclimatise perhaps. The ropes are rejected. They can manage.
Maybe I’m making this up, or am I in a video game? Are they? Jenny Peña and Randy Araujo’s music is a cinematic score, atavistic at times but the rumba beat at the end signifies joy. What lovely specimens they are…
The dancers come from both classical and modern dance backgrounds. And the concept of Folclor is the company’s Cuban roots, a melting pot of African, Spanish, Latin American and European influences. But it’s the beat that gets me, the musicality rippling through the bodies, the bodies rippling in response to the music. I seem to remember there being a casa de la música on just about every corner in Cuba.