© John Ross Carlos Acosta 'Tocororo' reviews Acosta in reviews Corveas in reviews recent Acosta company reviews more Jeffery Taylor reviews Web version held on Ballet.co by kind permission of Jeffery Taylor and the Sunday Express Express Website

Cuban ballet star, Carlos Acosta, has never hidden his homesickness or the loneliness he lives with at the top of his profession as one of the world s most popular dancers. Now Acosta, 30, directs, choreographs and stars in a show about the price of fame.

Tocororo is a little boy (played by Carlos's 13-year-old nephew, Yonah) who leaves the poverty stricken barrios of his childhood, as did Acosta, but on maturity discovers his God given talent is a barrier. The real life Acosta, against all the odds, has become a one-man world heritage site thanks to his sublime gift of dancing; in his show his character must deconstruct his classicism to join the street cred crowd. Hmm. At one level a doubtful premise that chimes in with the anti-art lobby always on the look out for a good bit of dumbing down; at another, letting our hair down does us all a power of good.

Carlos Acosta's Tocororo - a Cuban Tale
© John Ross

Whatever he does Acosta's stage presence is warm, magnetic and utterly likeable and when Tocororo finally learns to relax and mambo with the irresistible on stage band, he conquers the world. Salvatore Forino's sets are sparse but instantly conjure up night club, shanty town and street corner. The central set piece in which Acosta goes earnestly Messianic and teaches his people that showing off on the drums is better than pasting each other, is mercifully short, but the dancing is endless. Mind you there is only so much you can say with a shimmy and a pelvic thrust, delightful though that may be, but boy, what dancers Acosta has recruited from the Danza Contemporanea de Cuba.

The love interest, Clarita, who turns the innocent boy into a man in the time honoured way, is Veronica Corveas, while Alexander Varona as the Moor is spectacular in that old fashioned eccentric Straw Man dancing sort of way.  

Carlos Acosta
© John Ross

As a choreographer, Acosta makes the mistake of using balletic principles of untold yearnings and mysterious forebodings to evoke atmosphere without story. You cannot be that poetic in a show, you just confuse the action - and the audience. But for spreading his wings and searching for a life after ballet, Acosta deserves all praise. And the fact that we would be happy to watch him dance the Railtrack time table helps him no end.