I recently started ballet lessons again. I admit it has been a few decades since the last time I contemplated ballet but I felt I needed something a little more interesting than the yoga, Pilates, gym routines that had started blending into one. After all I am a designer, not an athlete, and without a particular loyalty to a specific daily sport practice I get easily bored. This time around, thankfully, there are no pink leotards and tutus. In fact, if you saw me heading to my class, you would never guess I was attending a ballet lesson at all. You would think it even less if you saw me walking down the street a day later as the pain of stretching muscles that have not needed to be stretched for too long kicks in and restricts quite a lot of comfortable movement!
Yet I am thoroughly enjoying the self inflicted torture. Perhaps it is seasoned with a dash of childhood nostalgia and an ever so slight delusion of feeling a little younger, but I am really engaging mentally and physically in the process. And naturally as my mind refers to the last professional ballet performance I saw, I find myself even more in awe of the skill and strength that was involved in such a performance.
I am taking about no other than the debut of Acosta Danza. The ballet/dance company created by the iconic ballet dancer Carlos Acosta. It is a show case of classical, conemporary, street and conceptual dance and the performances are all amazing. The choreography, costumes, flow and of course the dancing are all exceptional. My favourite if there had to be one was a piece called ‘Imponderable’ with music by the great Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez. But I am splitting hairs as I would be hard pushed to choose a second and a third. So in my born again enjoyment for ballet practice I felt I had to urge anyone and everyone that can, to, as the Evening Standard so aptly put it, “beg, borrow or steal” to get a chance to see it!
There are three shows listed for New York City (USA) in April and two more in Norwich (UK) in May/June.
http://www.acostadanza.com/en
