Dance legend Carlos Acosta returns to the stage in Sarasota

In 1989, Ariel Serrano, then 17, and Carlos Acosta, 15, were selected from among their peers at the Cuban National Ballet School to spend a year dancing in Italy as part of a cultural exchange. It represented an unprecedented opportunity for two young artists from an island country that rarely allowed its dancers to leave for fear they might defect. It was a chance not only to ignite their careers but to experience a world far larger than the one they knew in Cuba, where both grew up in families of very modest means.

On the day before they were intended to depart from Havana, although the visas for their teacher and Serrano had been granted, Acosta’s had not yet come through. As the two boys bided their time at the beach, testing difficult leaps and turns on the forgiving sandy surface, Serrano remembers teasing his friend for holding up their departure.

“I was making fun,” he recalls, “and saying, ‘If it weren’t for you, we’d be in Italy right now!”

In fact, were it not for that fateful postponement, the ballet world might never have experienced Acosta’s brilliant artistry, nor would Serrano have founded, with his wife and fellow dancer, Wilmian Hernandez, the Sarasota Cuban Ballet School.

Because the plane they were meant to be on crashed, leaving no survivors.

“From that day on,” Serrano remembers telling Acosta, “Everything that happens to you, I follow you.”

Although their paths and destinations would diverge after that year in Italy – which Acosta recalls as “one of the most beautiful of my life” – they would indeed remain forever connected. Acosta, who is of mixed Spanish and African heritage, would go on to a long career as a principal with The Royal Ballet in London and an acclaimed international guest star, blazing new ground for the Black male dancer. Serrano, his performing days cut short by injury, would found the preeminent school carrying on the Cuban ballet tradition in the United States on Florida’s Gulf coast.

This weekend, the two old friends will reunite when Acosta, who retired from The Royal in 2015 and now directs the Royal Birmingham Ballet, makes a single tour stop in Sarasota to perform in the U.S. for the first time since 2018. In a collaboration with Serrano’s school, he and Laura Rodriguez, a principal with Acosta Dance, the Cuban company he founded in 2015, will take the Sarasota Opera House stage just weeks before his 51st birthday to perform “On Before,” a poignant tribute to his late mother.

For Serrano, bringing Acosta to Sarasota and his school, where the director will observe advanced students during a master class, is a long-awaited dream come true.

“This means the world to me,” he says. “I was there with him from the beginning, before anything big happened and he is here for me now. Carlos has always respected what we are doing, trying to keep the tradition of the Cuban ballet alive.”

An important friendship

It is Acosta, he says, who first helped him understand the degree of commitment, dedication and time it takes to succeed in the ballet world. His friend’s tireless, almost obsessive, work ethic, which dwarfed his own, awed and inspired him during their year in Italy.

“When we were done [with class and rehearsals] for the day and go back to the house, this guy kept working,” Serrano recalls. “I would say, ‘You’re crazy!’ And he would say, ‘You are crazy if you don’t keep working.”

The two men have been in regular contact over the years, with Acosta serving as an advisor to Serrano’s school since it opened in 2011. Periodically, Serrano would ask him to come perform in Florida, but Acosta’s full dance card simply wouldn’t permit it. When, in 2016, Serrano’s son, Francisco, joined The Royal in 2016 to begin his professional career, Acosta stepped in as “uncle” and the calls between Florida and London multiplied .

Last year, Serrano traveled to London to see Acosta come out of retirement for a series of highly-acclaimed performances at The Royal in celebration of his 50th birthday. As he often had in the past, Serrano again asked if Acosta would consider coming to perform in Sarasota. The timing was propitious.

“I thought that since I already had the conditioning ready to perform, that I could come and carry on dancing,” Acosta says. “I wanted to take it to America while I had the opportunity.”

The dancer/director, who will turn 51 in June, chose to bring “On Before, which he’d previously toured in the U.K., in part because it is less technically demanding than the traditional classical roles he no longer performs. The evening length series of repurposed duets and solos by multiple choreographers – including Russell Maliphant and Will Tuckett – also features video projections and a live choir singing the powerful “Magnum Mysterium,” symbolizing his mother’s death.

Not only does Acosta welcome this increasingly rare chance to perform, but also the opportunity to again honor his parents, whom he calls “the star of my life.”

“For me, it’s a way of thinking about my mother, but also sharing her and her essence with the audience as well,” he says. “My mother played a very important role in cultivating the artist I am.”

Navigating family drama

As portrayed in his 2007 autobiography “No Way Home: A Cuban Dancer’s Story” and the film that bears his childhood nickname, “Yuli,” Acosta’s family life was often difficult. His mother was the “softening” balance to his father, who saw dance as his son’s ticket to a better life long before Acosta did and could be demanding to the point of physical abuse. His father would eventually spend time in prison; his mother would suffer a stroke; and his sister, who had schizophrenia, took her own life.

The familial dysfunction drama of his childhood left Acosta with a deep sense of “loneliness,” a void that was filled only after he embraced ballet and used the discipline that had been engrained in him to become one of the most renowned dancers in the world. In short, he says, ballet became the friend he never had.

“It wasn’t always easy,” Acosta admits, “but I always understood that my father’s harshness came from love. He knew I had a winning ticket through dance, but I had to make it on my own. When you need to fight and it becomes a habit, it nurtures your conduct and behavior. But it was only possible that I developed this character and behavior because of my parents.”

Acosta admits that leaving the stage and transitioning to the roles he now holds brought back some of that emptiness he once felt.

“Imagine you have a friend all your life and one day you lose it,” he says. “Dance for me was my life, my purpose. When I was sad I could dance. When I was happy I could dance. Dance was the greatest friend I ever had. And then one day, that stopped.

“Now everything that I have is for everyone else – my dancers, my company, my kids. But every so often, I still have the opportunity and I miss that space where it’s just me and the music and you see the people out there and there’s just you and your partner connecting with the audience. And of course, the applause at the end. At this stage of my life, to have this moment again is wonderful.”

So beyond the tropical humidity and salt-air breezes that remind him of his birthplace, Acosta is looking forward to performing here because he knows his career has already been longer than most dancers will ever enjoy.

“From the moment I put my foot in Sarasota it will be special because I’m going there to be a dancer,” he said. “Every time I have that chance it could be the last. So I don’t take it for granted for one second.”

Carlos Acosta – ’On Before’

Presented by Sarasota Cuban Ballet School. 7:30 p.m. April 19 and 20. Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. Tickets are $25-$150. 941-328-1300; sarasotaopera.org; srqcubanballet.org

Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Ballet legend Carlos Acosta dances again in ‘On Before’ in Sarasota