2024-03-03 15:54:40
Photos: Jorge Luis Borges
Text: Jorge Suñol Robles
After months of absence due to COVID-19, the Acosta Danza company, directed by the renowned dancer Carlos Acosta, returned yesterday to the Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso, this time with the show Fénix, which is part of the celebration for the fifth anniversary of the group.
“We will take this opportunity to meet when the year ends as a new starting point. 2020 will be remembered as the year they forced us to stop. Life has placed us before the real value of each thing, we have learned to value time. It has been very difficult but also humbling. We develop our faculties to survive; “We have been more responsible and supportive,” says Acosta in the words of presentation of the season.
On the nights of December 10, 11 and 12, three pieces that show the potential of its dancers, capable of taking on everything from the most classic technique to the most contemporary trends, will be uploaded to the “García Lorca” Room of this beautiful colossus. The crossing over the Niagara, Soledad and Interpreted World, make up Fénix, which, as its name indicates, highlights that will to resurface and move forward despite adversity.
“It is the perfect symbol of the beginning, of resilience, of purification and immortality. We want to be inspired by this myth to continue working and also to pay tribute,” adds Carlos Acosta.
The company dedicates these performances to the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, who would turn 100 this December, and has been the greatest promoter of Cuban ballet. He also wants to pay tribute and remember figures who physically left in 2020. Such is the case of the historian of the city of Havana, Eusebio Leal; the star Rosita Fornés and the director Juan Padrón, who left us Elpidio Valdés, the most popular of the Cuban animated films.
Since the beginning of the year, Acosta Danza has not performed on stage, due to the health situation caused by the pandemic, but the dancers, choreographers and the entire team have not stopped their creative and transformative spirit, in search of accurate and risky formulas that have been granted to them. a distinctive seal to the group, where the interpretive ability of its dancers and their versatility stand out, as well as the intentional repertoire in all its seasons.
If something unites these three pieces in the program, beyond the good choreographic work, with names like Marianela Boán, Rafael Bonachela and Juliano Nunes, it is the symbolic language, which supports the concepts of freedom, adventure, loneliness, beauty in simple things and of course, Cubanness, the latter most latent in Mundo Interpretado.
The premise is clear: “It’s time to live again,” says the season’s catalog. Acosta Danza knows how to reach the heart of the audience, he knows exact endings, moments of necessary silence, moments of tension and strength. Therefore, Fénix, you have to go see it and enjoy it, and applaud it, those applauses that these artists dedicate to the health personnel who face the new coronavirus in Cuba.