hello. i'mjohn wilson. welcome to this cultural life, the radio 4 podcast series in which i talk to leading creative figures about the key moments of their life and the most important cultural works that have fired their imagination and had a profound impact on their own art. my guest is carlos acosta, the cuban—born ballet star who, over a 30—year career, is now regarded as one of the greatest dancers of all time. he became the first black principal of the royal ballet and set new standards of grace and athleticism in theatres around the world. having retired from the classical stage, he set up his own cuban dance company, acosta danza, and is also director of the birmingham royal ballet. welcome. let's start in cuba, with your family, your upbringing. a happy childhood? very happy, i must say, although in the �*80s in cuba, still, our family was on the... i would say it was poorer than most families, but still there was a big, big sense of community. it was a good time for cuba — anybody could participate, to everything that society offers. obviously education was free, there was a lot of community parties that brought the community together. i was a very restless, wild kid, and it was in the �*80s where the breakdancing movement started in cuba and everything, so i was into the breakdancing scene. obviously, later on in my family, my mother started to have some problems, and then i started to experience some problems with my father being injail and things like that, but i felt for the most part it was a very, very good time for cuba. an artistic family? you are the youngest of 11 kids. that's right, on my father's side. he was a truck driver, and before he met my mother, he had other affairs, and as a result he had 11 kids with different women. i was the youngest of his offspring. how many of those kids were all living together at any one time? we were not living together. i mean, from my father, from my mother's side there were just the three of us — my two sisters and myself — but we kept in contact with my half—brothers, say, who were in pinar del rio most of the time. i ended up going there, once i was expelled from havana. expeued? i was expelled from school at the age of 13. what did you do? i didn't like ballet very much, and i think i was experiencing a lot of problems in our household. my father was injail and at the same time my mother was ill, so basically our elder sister was the one who was cooking at home and everything, so i did not have that kind of influence and that kind of pressure, and so i went and i did whatever, so the school thought because at a point, i even left a show — the show was about to start and i was, like, playing with my mates, all covered in mud, so they said, "this guy, "if we cast him, we don't know if he's going to turn up "for the show," and so after too much of that, they decided the best thing for me was just to expel me. take us back to the street. you mentioned breakdancing — was that an early cultural passion? at the time, disco was still around, and this movie flashdance and fame, so that was the period of time. so i started to get to these parties in our barrios, and my sister was dancing disco at the time and showed me these moves, and i got into the breakdancing scene that was in our barrio, and i started to learn those moves. and we started to get, little by little, stronger so we could compete in the barrios in the zone. compete? yeah, all the time, we were trying to go and pick a competition between barrios, and they always result in a major fight because nobody wanted to lose. we were also bad losers anyway. just mentioning that time, you mentioned the barrios, those were districts, but impoverished districts? yes, marginalised a bit, on the outskirts, although... yes, marginalised a bit, on the outskirts, although in cuba, everyone had a free education. if you wanted to become a lawyer, there was a way for you. if you wanted to become a ballet dancer, there was a way for you. money was not an issue, and that was the communist way of getting by, and so it was pretty much tucked away in the outskirts. i used to take three buses to get to school, that's how far it was. i used to wake up at 5:00 in the morning, but it was a sense of adventure for me at that time, we didn't think about the future at that time. for me, it was freedom, it was fun. we now think of you as one of the great dancers. were you a great breakdancer? i was 9—10 years old, you know? i was a good breakdancing kid who could spin on my back and my head, and i had potential, very good, perhaps, and i picked up some awards in breakdancing in my own age group. and so, yeah, in the neighbourhood, in our barrio, i became quite well—known as a break dancer, myself and somebody else, opito, who used to be my breakdancing partner. he was white, i was black, and together we did all these numbers. you have nominated yourfather as a key influence in your life on your work. what was his job? what did he do? he used to drive a lorry, a massive lorry that he would transport food from all over the country, and sometimes he would go away for weeks, and sometimes months at a time. he worked very hard, and i started to have that sense of the value of working very hard. i admired him a lot because he, in the �*30s in cuba, he taught himself basically how to read, was reading with borrowed books, books that he borrowed from friends in order for him to grow intellectually and so on, so he was pretty much a self—taught man. but your father was the one who introduced you to ballet, as i understand it? yeah. introduced me to ballet, he forced me to do this against my will. what age? nine. because it all has to do with the breakdancing crowd, he could see where that was going to lead, i was already going to petty crime, stealing fruit and things. at nine years old, it's fine, it's just fruit, but later on, it could become something major, and so he thought that i needed to just get out of that scene, so he put me in something very rigid, which is ballet. was he interested in music or dance? or was itjust seeing a better way of life for you? music is part of our culture, dance is part of our culture, being a carribean island, that we have this constant dialogue with the sun, it really inspired us to dance. so on the street i was dancing, and we communicate with our body, so... he liked to sing, he liked to dance, but classical music, he said he also liked it, but...that�*s what he said. so you enrolled in ballet school at the age of nine. after the expressive freedom of breakdance, did it not feel very restrictive? very, very restrictive. it was quite boring, this piano music, it took me quite a while until i saw the national ballet of cuba at age 13, seeing this amazing performance, and that is when i said, "wow, that's very cool, i want to do that." from that point on, i developed the vocation. but i always had talent, my talent lies more in the ability to capture movement easily. even if i don't come every day to ballet, even if i skip ballet, i will come back and it was still in my body and i remember the choreography, the tempo, the musical tempo of the piano and everything, and i think that was my talent at that early age, and i think what eventually saved me. but at that moment when you saw ballet performed on the stage properly for the first time, you were 13 years old, what were you watching? there was one particular number called flower festival, which is by a danish choreographer, and it's basically doing a lot of beats with arms down, kinda like a scottish dance, you see the way the man was built and theyjump, thatjump and elevation, it seems like he was hanging. it was like wow, that is something amazing, and in all it was like sport, this is incredible, and everybody applauded, and i like applause, everybody likes applause, so it was something that ithought, "wow, it would be great if i could do that, and people would applaud me." did he see you dance professionally, your father? yes, yes, and that's something, because obviously he is not around anymore, my family aren't around anymore. and that is something that gave me a lot of peace, the fact that he fought and fought and fought for my future, did a lot of hard work to put me straight, even though i hated it at times. and he was, i considered he was quite harsh and brutal at times, but then he saw the rewards, when i did my first swan lake and romeo at the royal opera house, he came to see it and he could say "that's my son, right there, he's the prince," and he was crying. for the first time, i saw him wear a suit and tie, and he was so proud. and i remembered at the time our director, monica mason, she came to him and said, "we're so proud of you, and your kid and everything, and we respect him, and care for him here," and just hearing that for him was the world, and so that's something that i, that really gave me a lot of peace. your next important moment in your life that you have chosen, which had a profound on your life and work, and that takes us to 1989 — the fall of communism around the world. a very tough moment in cuban history, for all of us. it was just... the level of hardship and hunger, it was amazing, and there were a lot of cats disappearing from my neighbourhood, and dogs, everything, people basically had nothing to eat. there were 20 hours of power cuts in an environment that could reach all the way from 35 to a0 degrees celsius. and there was not any way of ventilators, orair—conditioning, nothing, it could be like that for years. that was because cuba was politically and economically alone in the world now. exactly. with the iron curtain in berlin coming down, everything just collapsed, so people did the best they could to survive. i remember we all got very thin, and it affected us all. there was this major exodus happening in 1994, you probably recall, where everybody was taking in anything out of desperation. before that, we had not witnessed anything like that, it was a big rupture in cuban society at that point, and we're still talking about those times as one of the hardest times. but as you have already acknowledged, you have communism, in a way, to thank for the free ballet school, all of those things. did you meet fidel castro? i met him a couple of times, he was somebody that turned up to ballet events, and events of all kinds of artistic things. an amazing figure, very tall man, everybody was afraid of him, i was afraid of him. too much power in one man, but my father loved the man because also he lived in the time before. he went and he got to meet him as well. i did a sort of musical extravaganza, tocororo, a cuban tale, in 2020, 2002, sorry. he turned up in a suit, because normally he comes with the green military outfit, and then my father on camera met him, and he started to talk about with him and everything, and i remember my father said he was the messiah and all of that, and fidel said to my father, "you know, "you know too much, i'm going to pay you a visit "so we can really have a chat over coffee, like a proper "chat," and my father did not leave the house for months after that, because i said, "should we go out?" he said, "no, no, fidel told me he is coming, i better wait," and obviously he never did, but that tells you how much he admired fidel. do you think you would have become one of the greatest dancers if it had not have been for the communist regime? i think for somebody like me, very hard. it was very hard to pull that off because, obviously, we did not have the means nor the money to purchase shoes. the shoes can last you one day, and then you had to put, like, a sticky tape and that is how you do with one shoe for the entire year. i don't know if, you know, if it was not for that kind of system, if i or somebody like me would be able to make it like i did. but you are the boss now and you have your own company in cuba, acosta danza, and also you are the director of the birmingham royal ballet. a tough boss? iam. but i can only apply what i apply to myself. i want people to take this art seriously. i want great ideas, i want to go and do something to the audience that they have not seen, and i need everyone to be with me on that. the next big influence on your life and work is travel. when did you first leave cuba? when was the first time you left the country? i think the first country i visited was mexico. that must have been 1989 or something, and then i went to italy. immediately after two months, and while i was in italy, i prepared for the losann competition, a major contest, 127 competitors at the time. and i was the last, number 127. so i went there to the competition and obviously at that time i did not believe in my talent myself. my teacher believed in it more than i did and decided that i was worthy of representing our school in cuba. and so i went in, and it was amazing. the level, there are so many people, you know, and i was pretty much rough, coming from cuba with boots and an afro and finding my place in this amazing world away from cuba, you know? so it was very intimidating at that time because, obviously, i was the only black dancer there in the whole competition. i had the most amazing teacher. and the most amazing support mechanism around me, people who inspired me and filled me with confidence and that is the difference. so much difference on whether you win or lose, it doesn't really matter because if you have this connection with your teacher, it's an everyday thing, so much you dance for her. if she just go and clap and say you did very well, that's what matters. and that took a lot of the pressure in that contest, always having her say, "just dance and enjoy and just you do not need to win. just enjoy." first time in europe, you're 16 and at a major competition. what do you remember of that day and what did you dance? in lausanne, don quixote, which was one of my most important roles, don quixote. it was a solo, the third act that everybody knows. so i did that. with quite a level of complexity for a 16—year—old boy, no. the steps that at the time was quite new and advanced for a 16—year—old kid, and so in 1990 it was still pretty much, i think it was pretty much the level was quite good, i would say. now a 16—year—old boy can do three times more than that, you know? i would probably not stand a chance if i go to compete now, the level has just gone so high because that is the way it is. really? that is the evolution of the species. you evolve and evolve and now you have more information, more accessibility, the internet you can google him and he is there. when you were on that stage that day and dancing, did you know you would win? how much confidence did you have? no. there were 11 finalists and everybody was really, really skilled and the semi—final, i had a little bit of a bumpy ride. i did not, i was not very precise, so i thought, "ooh, maybe i will not pass to the finals." that was the one. but then when i saw that, i passed, then i said, "ok, this is it, you know? now i will really go for it." the grand prix, the gold medal, everyone was competing for only one grand prix, so to win that and to see my picture in the paper the next day... it changed my life. at 18, you joined the english national ballet and came to london, the first time in london, i presume? yes. the first time in london, obviously. it was raining, you know? a lot of rain and the sun disappeared, you know, but amazing city. london, it is a different scale. already turin and lausanne to me was impressive, and now london. and no word of english, and it was very hard to try to find my own self within a city, where am i here? "how will i get by?" even tiny things like a bank. the bank? i did not know what that was. then i realised that the money was transferred into a bank, and there was such a thing as a bank card that you put in with your code. to me, that was alien. so, yeah, a lot to adapt and learn, but it was great. i remember in the royal festival hall, meeting diana. she came because i was the principal dancer at 18 already, i was the youngest at the english national ballet, and she came to see me in the nutcracker. and somebody knocked at the door and there she was. it was quite embarrassing. i remember it was a highlight for me. did you talk about dance with her? yeah, a bit. she was very respectful, those eyes, she was beautiful. we spoke a little bit about dance, a little bit about cuba and it was very brief. she said welcome, because she was the main patron of the company at the time. and obviously ivan, he was the one came to cuba to audition me at the age of 17, and he said, "i want that boy as the principal dancer for my company." you know, sadly he passed away, but he was one of the most, you know, influential people. thanks to him, you know, that he gave me that chance. and i think, you know, even having the success in london, he said what if i started to choreograph and do my own shows? that could be a difference for me, so i did. once i did that, i said how about if i write my story? and then after that i say, "what about if i write fiction?" and i did, so i keep going and getting impossible goals. needless to say, i am a workaholic. i have, i don't know, 20 projects on the go at the same time. that is how i like to keep myself busy. i want it all from life. i want everything. you retired from the classical stage a few years ago, but you still dance and train every day? ido... i mean, i don't train every day. i can't. as a director, i am on zoom and it is hard. i always have to coach dancers, but i do a lot of tablet workouts which keeps me in shape, and whenever i can i do contemporary dance, i still want to be on the stage. i want to be, you know, like the rolling stones, that they are still going. i want to be that. really? yeah. i love the stage. what can i say, john? i love the stage. you will not retire? i don't think i'll retire, as such. at some point i will, i suppose, but i am going to extend it because it keeps me, my muscles and it keeps me motivated and keeps the connection. in a way, it is very unfortunate that by the time you are 40, you are now ready for a life, but you have a sense that it is gone. musicians can go on to 80, but for us it is like, it is unfair. when you dance now, is it increasingly difficult? is it painful? it is painful, but you can modify, because i am no longer romeo. i don't wear tights because i can say that is painful because i have my cartilage in my knee killing me, and we work around it. but the art is still there. and you are just trying to find a way to communicate that. carlos, keep going. the mick jagger of dance. i like that. carlos acosta, thank you very much for sharing your cultural life. thank you for inviting me, john. for podcast episodes of— this cultural life, go to bbc sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. - hello there. good afternoon. well, it's still blustery for this time of year, but the keen south—westerly wind is falling a little lighter for most areas than it was yesterday. another day of sunshine and showers. shower clouds building here in clacton—on—sea, in essex. and a lot of sunshine recorded by our weather watcher in east lothian. so, the general theme is just set to continue. but the showers will be less heavy, less frequent for most places than we saw yesterday. still some sharp and thundery showers, though, always possible close to that centre of low pressure out towards the north of scotland. there's another system, too, approaching from the south—west by the time we get to the end of the day. so it will cloud over by the end of the afternoon across pembrokeshire and parts of cornwall. the showers will gradually fade away through parts of england as we head through the afternoon. some brightness out towards eastern areas of england will help to lift the temperature to 23 or 2a degrees. cloudy across western scotland. a rumble or two of thunder always possible across the moray firth. and then overnight tonight, this rather large area of rain isjust going to be pushing its way further northwards and eastwards across central and southern england, and into northern england, too. certainly very wet across wales tonight. mild and muggy underneath that rain. clear spells across northern ireland. and for scotland, watch out for a few showers still. now, that rain continues to push further northwards and eastwards through the day on monday. it's a rather messy area of rainfall, a lot of uncertainty still on the timing of the clearance of it. there are localised met office weather warnings in force for heavy rain across wales and for much of northern england, east and west of the pennines. rainfall totals of around 30 to a0 millimetres, but higher than that with any embedded thunderstorms. brightness developing later on through the day across wales and south—west england. warmest out towards eastern areas of england, with some brightness here. we should see sunshine and showers across much of northern ireland and scotland on monday, so a quieter—looking day here. it will be windy in the south, but the winds ease down considerably on tuesday, so a much quieter day of weather. that system has now pushed off into scandinavia. there could be a few showers breaking out through the afternoon, but also some sunshine on tuesday, with temperatures rising for most areas into the low—20s in celsius. and then we start to see high pressure building in from the south, so towards the south of england and south wales, temperatures could rise into the mid—20s in celsius. always a little cooler, a bit more showery towards the north and the west, but still some sunshine here. live from london. this is bbc news. a warning of a "significant" rise in the death toll from hawaii's devastating wildfires. 93 people are confirmed dead so far. when we find these, you know, ourfamily and ourfriends, the remains we are finding is through a fire that melted metal. the british government is under renewed pressure to stop migrants crossing the sea in small boats — after six people drowned in the channel. and a look atjust how much streaming platforms like netflix know about us, in the quest to recommend the perfect show. hello. we start in hawaii, where the governor is warning that the death toll is likely to rise still further following the wildfires on the island of maui. 93 people are now known to have died as the inferno swept through the historic town of lahaina. so far, only a fraction of the worst—hit area has been searched for bodies. more than 2,200 structures — homes and businesses — have been damaged or destroyed. recovery crews are combing through the charred ruins, and hundreds of people remain unaccounted for. the wildfires are the worst to hit a state in america in over a century and there is growing anger on maui over both the lack