Carlos Acosta: Cuba Calls imagine...

MUSIC: Habanera from Carmen

POLITICAL SPEECH IN SPANISH

Nearly 60 years after the Cuban revolution,

change, it seems, is in the air.

Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship

with the people of Cuba.

In the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years,

we will begin to normalise relations between our two countries.

No-one's sure what the future holds,

but here, on the outskirts of Havana...

..ballet superstar Carlos Acosta is hoping to transform

an abandoned dream of the revolution's founding fathers.

You know, when you see this masterpiece,

you broadly understand how passionate I feel about this place.

I mean, it's not difficult to see.

No, it's not difficult. It is an amazing structure.

It's unbelievable, you know. I mean, and it's like, when I went around

and I knew I wanted to have a base for my new company

and get ready for the transition after dance,

I came here, I saw that this wonderful national monument.

It was like this, in decay,

and then I decided, you know, to get all my efforts to save this place.

They had an idea to create a city of art.

This is Fidel's idea?

Fidel and Che Guevara's idea, that's right,

to create the most amazing five schools of art in the world,

and so there was a ballet school,

this originally was intended to be the ballet school.

Over there, you see over there? That's the music school.

Over here, it's the contemporary dance school,

then the plastic arts school and the drama school.

Those were the five schools of the vision that they set out to do.

So, at the very beginning of the revolution, Fidel has this vision?

That's right. This is the zone before the revolution,

the Beverly Hills of the nation, you know, huge mansions,

all this was like a golf club, a golf...a golf grounds.

And so before he actually demolished the golf course,

-they thought that...

-They played golf?

..they'd play golf for the last time.

These are beautiful, these Catalan curves are lovely.

Imagine, somebody would give you the programme, the Royal Ballet,

say, "Come on, please, over here..."

-Well, take me to the auditorium.

-That's right, that's right.

MUSIC: Le Corsaire

APPLAUSE

OK, so this is where the Royal Ballet is going to come.

-Yes.

-OK? They're going to be dancing in the mud with the mosquitoes.

No, I'm just kidding.

This is what it looks like now.

It's not going to look like that always, of course.

But as you see, right now, this has been created as an auditorium.

The idea is to expand the capacity to 500-plus,

which it's already a theatre with this capacity,

by creating a mezzanine and so on. I mean, this is an idea.

The proscenium arch will be there

and then, over here, it will be the stage.

So you can imagine, Carlos,

I take it you can imagine yourself dancing here.

I can imagine instantly dancing differently.

-I mean, if we hurry up, you know...

-Before you're too old, you mean!

That's right! That dream can be true, but we must hurry.

Breathing new life into Havana's forgotten ballet school

is a bold ambition,

but it would be somewhat foolish to bet against Carlos beating the odds.

Carlos is someone

that just decides to do something and finds a way to do it,

very successfully every time,

so he will be successful in whatever he wants to do.

Carlos wants to constantly

learn more, express more, find out more. He's just...

He's itchy!

I think now it's really interesting retiring. I mean,

I know from my own experience, you have to step away for a bit

to breathe, but he doesn't want to step away.

He wants to get right immersed in what he can give back and how

he can get the next talent seen, and that's really exciting.

Are you aware that people think you're something,

someone special in their lives?

When I'm doing the book signing and I actually see somebody

telling me how much pleasure I have brought into their life...

Thank you for all the wonderful years.

You've certainly brightened my life.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

It's like, wow, that's very...

Like, it is still surreal to me.

But I know, you know, I'm aware,

but in life you have to move on.

What I don't want is that one day

the same people come and say to me, "Why don't you retire?"

You know? That's exactly what I try to avoid.

After a glittering 17-year career with the Royal Ballet,

Carlos Acosta is soon to take his final bow.

My wife keeps saying, "Why don't you bring your turban home?"

THEY LAUGH

APPLAUSE

Little lover boy!

What is surprising is that combination of natural talent

but also fierce intelligence.

When Carlos walks on the stage, he's there, he's so present

and he's got such magnetism

even before he's actually done a step.

He gave the guys a different energy, a different hunger,

and he also did that for the public.

His physicality is incredible. He's very strong,

very muscular. He has power.

APPLAUSE

My life has been in the 17 years getting up, have breakfast,

go to the Royal Opera house, for 17 years.

How you doing?

-Good, how are you?

-Good summer?

-Yeah, very good.

-Relaxed?

-Yeah.

-Yeah? Excellent.

It is a family. It is a family.

You think about it, I spend more time in this company than

in my actual family, so how you leave your family behind, you know?

No, you know something? Let's do it...

Carlos is, in fact, masterminding his own farewell.

Let's learn, all of us, let's learn this.

Choreographing, directing and dancing in a brand-new

production of Carmen that will be his Royal Ballet swansong.

That's right, so when you go, bam, bam...

and bam, and la, ti, da, bam!

Bam-bam uh-uh-uh ng-uh ng-uh...

LAUGHTER

Yeah?

That's right, OK.

One leg first, and good.

HE HUMS SUITE 1 FROM CARMEN

THEY LAUGH

What made you choose Carmen

for this big moment in your life, in your career?

Carmen, well, it's a very powerful story. It's great music.

MUSIC: Suite 1 from Carmen

I thought that I could do something quite modern,

striking and simple, but also that was emotion-based.

And sort of create my own story.

I need challenges, so it's almost like, I programme myself

and challenges give me a purpose.

This is where Carlos grew up, in the back streets of Havana.

And his extraordinary journey from here to the world stage

has been, perhaps, the biggest challenge of all.

Why was he called Yuli?

My father, he's tough.

He... He's tough!

Was your father Pedro especially tough with Carlos?

I grew up in Los Pinos,

which is a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Havana.

It was a working-class neighbourhood. Food was rationed.

You would go, collect the food like everybody else. Very simple.

By the time I open my eyes,

my father and my mother were split up already

but neither of them had anywhere else to go, so they had to share.

-You know, nobody's going anywhere.

-How many rooms were there?

-One bedroom.

-The one bedroom?

-Just one bedroom.

-How many of you?

-We were five. It was very, very tight.

Nobody knew anything about ballet and dance and art in general.

There were no books.

-You were quite a mischievous boy, weren't you?

-Mmm.

My father was a truck driver, so he was quite tight with money,

you know, he'd give you just enough.

Sometimes I wanted to go to the movies, to the cinema

to watch some movies, but he would not give you any money,

so I, from the very beginning, had a sense of independence.

I knew that I had to make my own living in a way.

One of the things was stealing whatever you could steal to sell it

and, with that revenue, then I could buy myself a cinema ticket.

-Revenue? Is that what you called it?

-Well, you know...

So this is your life? You're busy stealing, fighting, break dancing...

So where did ballet come from?

So, what happened was, the neighbour downstairs,

she recommended a ballet school to my father.

First, it was in the centre of the city, in Vedado, which is,

like, wellbeing, it's the centre,

and second, hot meals for free.

-Right.

-OK?

And third, it's good to get me off from these gangs of breakers

that will lead to no good eventually.

So, my father said, "Breakdancing, ballet - why not?

"You like dance? OK, I got news for you.

"I'm going to put you in a ballet school." And that was that.

I was praying not to get in

because, I mean, ballet... first of all,

to be a ballet dancer in my neighbourhood was very embarrassing.

Very embarrassing and, you know, they would call me Alicia Alonso -

"There's Alicia" - and all this sort of thing.

And the other thing with ballet, in the beginning,

it could be very boring.

I was a restless child.

You compare the music of hip-hop or Michael Jackson music,

it is very fast paced.

In the ballet, in the beginning, you are put with this tedious

ballet lesson.

Trying to show this... For a nine-year-old!

I love it now, but for a nine-year-old it just sounded tedious.

So many details to soak in, from the fingers to the elbows.

How they... And then all this. It is too much information and too slow.

And this was going on. This is a very, very alien world.

It was not good.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

BIRD TWEETS

This is almost the first photograph of you.

That is my first photograph. It was THE day of the photograph.

I remember that very clearly. I forgot the day of the photograph.

We were swimming in some...in La Finca,

we were swimming in this place called La Poseta,

and then my father just went to look for me over there

and just dragged me all the way down.

He make me put his tie. That was very embarrassing.

Oh, that's his tie?

That's his tie. I was saying, "Not the tie! Not the tie!"

"You shut your mouth!"

He put the tie on and just dragged me all the way to the photograph,

and that was the day of the photograph.

RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT

There used to be this forest at the back that has

completely disappeared.

It was a magical place with owls and all kinds of...

Caverns. Natural caverns and pathways

made by nature.

It's a magical place. It was just really wonderful.

RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT

THEY SING

This magic environment that you were in was fuelled

also by your father and his beliefs and he had this shrine, didn't he?

Explain to me what Santeria is.

It was a very basic religion, coming from a kind of voodoo.

You do sacrifices, you do offering for the gods.

It is also worship.

RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT AND SINGING

There was a shrine in our home and sometimes we had nothing to eat,

but the shrine has this wonderful buffet.

It's supposed to be for the gods, though, not for you!

Exactly. You see the ants, how they were eating the whole thing.

Sometimes I would get into trouble because I would eat the whole shrine.

RHYTHMIC DRUMBEAT AND SINGING

That was in most people's houses as well.

In the '80s, religion was prohibited,

so everybody tried to not say...

-You have to be quite secretive.

-You had to be quite secretive.

It was a very controversial topic.

THEY SING

CHEERING

Ironically, Pope Francis,

the first Latin American leader of the Catholic Church,

received a rapturous welcome in Cuba earlier this year

and has played a key role in the easing of relations with America.

But for Carlos, it was his personal battle with ballet that

dominated his young life.

How long did it take you

when you were having to go to ballet school in those early days?

-What time did you get up in the morning?

-At five.

The routes from here were not straightforward.

The buses were overcrowded. Sometimes you were hanging.

Sometimes there was one bus

and it was so full that you couldn't get on.

Is that one of the reasons why you played truant quite a lot?

I'd wake up at five.

By the time I arrived and eat and go to bed,

it was, like, ten o'clock at night.

I was nine years old,

so it was very hard to follow that routine every single day.

They kicked me out from the school.

Even though I was talented,

even though when I was there I show aptitude and so on,

they decided that the best thing for me was to transfer me

and send me to a different school in Pinar del Rio.

CAR HORN BLARES

# There's a story

# The gypsies know is true

# That when your love with golden earrings... #

The Pinar del Rio school had a particularity

that it was a boarding school.

I became like an exile.

For two years, I was there and then my parents would never come and see me.

The worst time was on Wednesday, when every parents would come

to bring hot food and meals and everything and show their support,

I had to sit down and see that every single Wednesday.

-That loneliness, was that really bad?

-It was lonely, definitely.

Loneliness. That kind of loneliness, it carries on and carries on.

By the time I got to the Royal Ballet,

Carlos was an established star.

He always had this melancholy for Cuba

and I always laughed at him because I know Cuba well.

I thought it was a reinterpretation of the reality of Cuba

that he had in his mind, but what can you do?

It is your homeland and your family is there,

of course you are going to have this nostalgia for it.

There were lots of things about England,

full stop, that were so different from what

he had been brought up with and...

He was also the only black principal in the company.

When I joined the Royal Ballet, we only were two black people

in a crowd of 80.

When you are nine, ten, you don't think about these things.

When you are 20, you say, "Hang on a minute."

For me, I was on my own.

On my own learning English, adapting to a different environment.

It give me something that I think is the most important thing.

It is, like, "No-one is going to do it for me."

I had to do it for myself.

You either fall making your choices or raise up.

Maybe it took time for him to realise that he was really changing

and maybe thought about classical ballet.

BALLET TEACHER SPEAKS SPANISH

When was the moment that you decided that ballet was for you,

this was going to be something you cared about,

you were passionate about?

Well, the school in Pinar del Rio wanted to organise

a trip to see the National Ballet of Cuba for the first time,

so I was dragged along with everybody else.

But I saw this guy called Alberto Terrero

and he was jumping and the way he was built,

tremendous muscular leg and everything, and the smile...

This ballet was commanding the stage.

When I was 13 years old, I said,

"Wow. This is like sports people, Pele... This is a cool thing."

It's not what I thought it was.

I was in my mind saying, "Perhaps I'll really give a chance.

"I can jump like that."

So it began from that point. It was a turning point.

Tell me, Maestra, do you remember your first encounter with Carlos

when he came here, to the National Ballet School?

Chery was my second mother.

She was what I had, what I needed next to me.

When she took me under her wing, she was my mother.

She absolutely filled that gap.

With nearly 3,000 students,

Ramona "Chery" De Saa

presides over the largest ballet school in the world.

This is an amazing place. It is all, much of it, thanks to you,

so what is it that keeps the pulse of this place going?

The Cuban school developed mainly from the Russian tradition,

but then they were able to adapt it to the Cuban physiognomy

and the Cuban nature.

So it is a combination of really fantastic strong masculine

technique, and passion and warmth and sense of humour and sexiness

that is the Cuban nature.

Those things combined makes explosive male dancers.

What was special about Chery as a teacher?

I think what was special about her -

there are many things that made her special - but her commitment.

Her passion was contagious.

It is very, very important to teach...

to translate that passion and that joy.

And, to me, the happiest thing is that she would just say,

"That... That's all right."

That meant the world to me.

Such was Ramona's belief in Carlos's ability,

she entered him into the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland,

a revered international ballet competition that aims to find

the best young dancers in the world.

In Lausanne, it was... I mean, the good thing is that, to me,

Chery's words were the Bible for me,

and if she said that I could do something good, it meant...

If Chery said that, it's because I can...

It was that blindly. You just wanted to do it make her proud.

And so, when I passed into the finals,

I knew - this is it.

APPLAUSE

-PRESENTER:

-Acosta, Carlos, au Cuba.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Do you still think you have the palette of Havana in your head?

You know, whether it's the cars or the buildings,

the greens and yellows and the blues.

That must be something, if you grow up with it,

-you don't get that anywhere else, really.

-Hmm.

And this is why, um...perfect.

Yeah.

It's very grand, touristically,

-and a lot of it decaying.

-Yes.

There is also beauty in that, somehow, you know?

It's sad, but it could be very atmospheric,

-it could be, almost, artistic.

-Yeah.

-It is scary, you know, how much work all this place needs.

-Absolutely.

It's like, "Wow. Where to begin?"

-Where do you start?

-Where do you start? Yeah.

But it's got to start soon, or it'll all be...

Every time there's a rainstorm,

the buildings deteriorate and decay more and more, don't they?

Yeah. There used to be a huge house here.

All these places have collapsed...

wherever you see a hole, or something.

They are all, like, treasured.

A crucial step in Carlos's master plan for the future

is to cast his new dance company

and he's holding the first series of auditions

for a thoroughly Cuban-flavoured adventure.

I want to have a company that it will be a legacy.

I want to work with the dancers and pass everything I can.

I will bring choreographers to work for this company.

I will choreograph myself

when I have a cool idea that I think is worth it.

It's not about me and my ego, it's about that the company lasts.

I think every dancer that has come here comes with the hope

to be chosen.

If he is so good, his company has to be also good.

What Carlos is trying to do is to create a new company,

a small company, where he can continue to choreograph

and obviously direct it, that he can also take on tour around the world.

So, all of these are Cuban dancers?

-They are all Cuban dancers.

-Amazing.

-All of them, yeah.

From different backgrounds of dance,

some are contemporary, some are classical-based...

How much preparation have they had for this,

in terms of what they're going to have to do?

It is a class, it is a standard classical ballet class,

and a standard contemporary class,

and they all have to pass a test.

And then you try to see how they move, the quality of movement,

whether they are musical or not,

and what they do with their exercise combination,

the imprint that they managed to put into the exercise.

DRUMS PLAY

And how much is it to do with personality as well as movement?

I mean, I am not looking for Baryshnikov, you know?

I am looking for a subject that I can work with

and turn it into one, you know, so they are all very young,

you know, and so I am looking for potential.

And then, on top of that potential, we will direct them.

Eventually, personality,

it plays a big, big role,

because it is a performance, performance and personality,

but you can work on that, as well.

THEY SPEAK IN SPANISH

So, how long before they get to know whether you love them or not?

Now we selected a few,

so that they could come...

Those who have passed this round,

we come back again with some more groups, and then we'll see.

But it is a process, so...

Wow, this is excellent.

-These details.

-Yeah.

I mean, that's the red. That's quite a good...

-Ignore all of that, but that would work well, wouldn't it?

-Yeah.

-I like that red very much.

-There were some other drawings somewhere.

The whole designing, what we are aiming for,

is simplicity, but powerful.

So, a lot of element of the Spanish for glory, for instance,

and that reflects across the whole design

but also into the music as well.

-And so Carmen again?

-Carmen, again, is here.

What do you think? The red... The red...

I think it's a combination of red and black.

This kind of tone is great.

The skin coming through...

There is a circle in which she dances - that circle is red.

You know? It is danger.

Carmen is somebody who...

She's always looking for trouble, you know,

and seduction. This is her main motive.

You're going to have a corset/dress that, in the fight,

they're going to rip it off and, from that point,

you get, like, into a corset, almost like you get in your underwear

kind of stuff, and then you go to jail...in underwear!

THEY LAUGH

As you do!

That's all that is.

And then you've got, like, you know, um, two more changes after that.

He's running away from the ballet cliche.

Nobody has ever seen you like that and it's true, you know.

I am going to look, literally, totally different.

I'm thinking of my dad in Argentina going, in the cinema,

"What happened to my daughter?!"

I can see it! I can so see it!

# Ba-ba-be, ba-bam, bam! #

For this new production, Carlos is hotting up

and honing in on the fatal love triangle between soldier Don Jose,

flash young toreador Escamillo

and, of course, the feisty Carmen.

So they get stripped and then become like a corset.

-And, for us, it is kind of jeans...

-Also, a little underwear!

A little corset.

This is us. This is Don Jose.

Military jacket, green, with a maroon whirl.

He has a hat as well.

And then Escamillo.

The cool dude.

So, we have buttons on the waistcoat...

So, in the case of Escamillo, we will go more to a trendy look,

sexy look...

Not too cleavage. You're not playing Carmen, Carlos.

LAUGHTER

Next time. I'm still thinking about it.

Never say never.

But I really want the audience to recognise that this is fresh,

this is the Royal Ballet now.

To me, it is very important to bring these kind of new elements to dance.

Carlos isn't the first Cuban ballet star to find fame abroad

and return home with grand ambitions.

WALTZ MUSIC PLAYS

Meet Alicia Alonso,

legendary prima ballerina who danced when almost blind.

Alicia is the all-powerful matriarch of Cuba's national ballet company.

And then, after the revolution, you got the support of Castro.

So, what is it that defines the classical Cuban style?

APPLAUSE

Well, perhaps not exclusively.

Despite Castro and the regime actively supporting

ballet in Cuba, the flamboyance of the ballet school

he first dreamt up with Che Guevara in the early '60s

fell foul of an ideological shift

towards Soviet-style rationalist architecture.

So, this elegant ruin was never finished,

and never functioned as a ballet school,

something Carlos is now looking to put right.

If I tell you the ambition that I have, I think it is

a scary one because I am already fighting for this.

My mission for here is a place that has many functions.

We have the base for my new company,

we have a theatre, which would allow us to produce shows,

to bring foreign companies,

so that we could become an artistic destination.

That is one element.

The most important element, is what I really would like to do,

is to give everybody who has talent a chance to dance for free.

I believe in free education. I am a subject of free education.

Thanks to the free education is I am me, here, now, talking to you,

and so I believe in that.

And now that I am in a position, I want to give that back,

but not just for Cuba alone.

I really want anybody, you know, kids who have talent,

who want to give it a shot, to let them know that there is a place,

here in Havana, that it can launch

their career if they really fight for it,

and money is not going to be an issue.

So we are trying to produce a kind of sustainable scheme here,

with the theatre, with a pyramid of friends,

like, I help this dream to come true.

Swan Lake.

Five years ago, people would have said this is a mad dream

but, somehow or other, your timing is good, isn't it?

I think this could be a moment.

This opportunity, with Obama and Raul making things happen,

I think is great.

It gives a lot of people hope, you know,

so that is what it is all about.

And I think it is a time for Cuba to flourish.

Cuba has a wealth of artists.

You want singers? Rhythms? This is the place.

Dancing? This is the place.

But we need resources and that's what these things will bring.

# Fiesta Cubana, Cubana, Cubana Cubana, Cubana

# Cubana... #

In the meantime, where to begin?

Something a little more down to earth.

# Chic chicco chi ca Chic chicco chi ca

# Cubana

# Chic chicco chi ca Chic chicco chi ca

# Cubana

# That's the time when Havana plays

# When they dance maybe two, three days

# Fiesta Cubana

# Fiesta Cubana

# The senoras are on the loose

# The fiesta is their excuse Fiesta Cubana... #

Temporarily, I've been given the chance to form my company here,

to have a base, a company base here,

while the main school is being refurbished,

so this is where we are going to train and we are going to

elaborate the repertoire and everything,

so this is going to be our base for the time being.

It is, as you see, it is what it is at the moment,

but, yeah, it's a good space. It's really tall, the whole thing,

so I think for the size of the company, this will be perfect.

Let me take you around. Let me take you around.

So, this is the other place.

All that...

All this needs to be re-adapted.

So that would be another studio,

and then, maybe, physiotherapy and so on.

At the moment, I'm just trying to make things happen rapidly,

make it happen, have a plan.

We know we are going to start there

and this has got to be finished here,

and the floors are coming when,

so they understand and everybody works towards a deadline,

but when I fly to London, back to London again,

you switch, one switch off,

connect the other, and then Carmen and...you know.

I've been living like this for a long time,

so I think I've mastered that kind of switching on and off.

Morning, company. Make your way to the front of the stalls...

So they need to...

It's quite clear. Many of them...

So, I make it more towards the back.

'Carlos is under huge pressure, I think,

'to actually dance two roles, to choreographic it,

'to have a huge say in the designs, the look, the music,

'the live musicians. It's huge.'

'It's particularly hard in this case cos he's on stage,

'then he's off stage,

'so finding the time to be objective is really, really tricky.

'And the schedules are very fast.

'We don't have very long to rehearse on stage.

'It is a very, very quick turnaround,

'so there's not much time to finesse everything.'

THEY SING

It is a big challenge to create a more theatrical piece,

where I invoke the opera, the chorus...

I sing it,

so it breaks a little bit with the boundaries of dance.

But of course, when you have 24 chorus members on the stage,

you have another 40 dancers on stage, you've got crew

and all that, it's like... There's no space to dance

and so that is the problem that I actually wasn't anticipating.

At the end, also, you also had to perform well,

so it really is insane.

I'm surprised you're not a complete neurotic mess.

I am a neurotic mess!

I mean, it's definitely a lot to take on,

but I think he absolutely loves it and you can see how much

he enjoys it, and it's almost like a drug.

And the middle bit with the table...

This is animal fear.

It's talking, it's singing...

You've made it even more difficult for yourself

by playing the two parts, and on different, alternate nights

you have to put yourself in the Don Jose part and then the other part.

It's like go out with a bang, right?

Well, you know, it's...

Don Jose leads the ballet, but, you know,

I cannot afford myself

to not actually dance Escamillo,

which is the fun character.

He's the coolest guy in town.

CHORUS SINGS

Just stop very quickly.

Stage left, your placing is brilliant, chorus and dancers.

Stage right, we've a bit of a block.

Carmen is about emotion, you know, and anger and passion is within.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

And not so much about the jumps.

But when I had to do those jumps, wow.

I know my body is screaming at me for doing these kind of steps.

HE GROANS

And the bottom line is that I don't need to do them any more, really.

I have done them for many years.

Coming on with the tables was once the light had come up on Matt.

-That was the last time we did it.

-That's what we're still doing...

# Stars, they come and go

# They come fast, they come slow

# They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze

# All you see is glory

# But it gets lonely there when there's no-one there to share... #

There's a vulnerability.

He's like a little kid.

Because you want to care for him and you want him to be happy.

His personality is...is complicated.

He has lots of layers and, somehow, all of that makes Carlos.

As we come into the '90s, which was what we call the special period,

Cuba was completely isolated.

That was the big exodus, where the situation was so bad here,

everybody was fleeing in rafts wherever they could get.

A lot of people died on the sea. I mean, it was just devastating.

Nevertheless, in the middle of all that,

I was probably the one guy who wanted to go back, you know?

Because I miss it.

My father, he...

He said, "The only way forward is for you to commit yourself to dance.

"You forget about us, you forget about everybody.

"You have to dance.

"You not only have to dance for you, you have to dance for us,

"because you owe it to us as well,

"because we also have to have the peace of mind that knowing that

"somebody of ours is out there, you know, living the life."

Tough though it was accepting his father's stern stance,

Carlos's success overseas meant the world to his family back in Cuba.

My grandad, he was the most proud person in the family,

and the same of my grandma.

I remember, she was going out to the street,

just going and saying, "Oh, because my son is Carlos Acosta."

And you say, "Yeah, but that person doesn't need to know that.

"They don't care!"

You know, although my father passed away and my mother passed away,

I am very, very content that they could see the glory

and they could actually...

You know, I would be able to provide them with a better life,

with a better living, and this is something that is wonderful.

# The latest story that I know

# Is the one that I'm supposed to go out with

# And the latest story that I know

# Is the one that I'm supposed to go out with... #

It's 17 years at the Royal Opera House.

In the early years, you had to find your way through it.

How do you feel now, looking back, close to the end of a chapter?

I'm feeling really weird at the moment, you know,

after the 17 years, to be honest, because I have been

so busy that I haven't actually landed.

It is... It is a big thing, it is your whole lifestyle.

A bit stiff today.

Tense.

What it is is the anticipation of performing, you know?

But it goes... You know, sometimes...

Normally, the opening night is very nerve...

and then you relax a bit once you crack the rise, you know?

But tonight is...is special.

I tried to take it as just another show cos...

We have, really, not very pleasant consequences

if I don't think that way.

Coming to terms that, you know, you're not going to be Romeo

any more, you're not going to be all these roles any more, you know?

It's a reason for grieving.

I always say there are a lot of great dancers, good dancers,

and they are artists. And, to me, you know,

I want to turn myself into an artist,

somebody who experiences the roles deeply.

Now, I am going to carry on dancing, you know, more contemporary.

Hopefully I've managed to bring my artistry to this new chapter.

To me, it is all about evolution.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Royal Ballet,

this is you beginners' call, please. Your beginners' call.

MUSIC STARTS

APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING INTENSIFIES

So, you're looking forward to the future as a kind of adventure?

There are so many things about life that

I am looking forward to experiencing

because I had so many choices, and it all comes down to what I really

want or what I really can handle, you know,

because I'm also a father.

CHEERING CONTINUES

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Carlos...

..this is a very special moment...

for us to celebrate your extraordinary career,

here at the Royal Ballet.

Over the past 17 years, you have given so many virtuoso performances

with your vitality, your charisma, and you have inspired us all.

CHEERING

And you have been a trailblazer for male dancers, and you have

been an inspiration to so many young men, who are probably on the stage

now because of you, and so we thank you with all our hearts for that.

CHEERING

Well...

..the reality is that to make... to build a career like that,

you need the help of the audience, of course,

the help of these wonderful people that you have got here.

They are like a family...

to me,

the help of all the wonderful people who are inside right now,

perhaps hiding in the wings, which are the crew members,

and all the lot of wonderful people in the offices

and in the physiotherapy room, so...

LAUGHTER

As you can see, it is a collective art. Particularly...

I'd like to thank my ballerinas, ladies and gentlemen.

They have been wonderful and gave me really wonderful

memories on this stage that I will never forget, so they...

APPLAUSE

And very important, my wife Charlotte,

who gave me so much love and support every single day at home,

you know, so that I could come here and perform for you,

so let's hear a big...

Look at that, look at that. Isn't she beautiful?

Unbelievable.

And I want to say something to the new generation of dancers, actually.

My advice for you is...

..allow yourself the freedom to commit mistakes.

There is no such a thing as failure

because life is an eternal learning process.

You are always learning, so be curious and enjoy, enjoy,

enjoy, because one day you blink

and you realise that 17 years have gone by and it is over,

and I know that too well.

So thank you very much.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

So, this is where you, what, lie down and do nothing?

That's it. They go, "Thank you for saving the school.

"Now I am just going to lie down and do nothing."