First Look: Carlos Acosta’s Carmen for The Royal Ballet
It is 10.30pm in London, and the curtain has just gone down on The Royal Ballet‘s new quadruple bill which includes Carlos Acosta‘s new creation for the company: Carmen.
Here are the first images of the new production, hot off the press.
Carlos Acosta’s second choreographic creation for The Royal Ballet shares a Spanish theme but inhabits a very different world from his 2013 production of Don Quixote.
Combining traditional ballet styles with flamenco, contemporary and Cuban dance, Acosta’s Carmen distils the plot of the opera: it homes in on the dark love triangle between Carmen, Don José and Escamillo and focusses especially on Carmen herself.
‘I wanted to establish immediately who she really is’, says Acosta: ‘a force of persuasion, a force of seduction’.
The mixed programme of Viscera / Afternoon of a Faun / Tchaikovsky Pas de deux / Carmen runs 26 October–12 November 2015. Tickets are still available for some performances.
The programme will be broadcast live to cinemas around the world on 12 November 2015. Find your nearest cinema.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
