It is Carlos Acosta's 37th birthday, and the greatest ballet dancer of his generation — a man dubbed "Air Acosta" for his legendary leaping ability — is pleading with me to hold our interview on the ground floor so he does not have to walk up a flight of stairs. "Seriously, man," Acosta says in his Cuban-accented English. "I don't think I can make it."An aging ballet dancer cuts a particularly tragic figure and, grimacing as he settles into his chair, Acosta says he can sense that his time for performing the great virtuoso roles of classical ballet — Albrecht inGiselle; Romeo; Siegfried from Swan Lake, a part he revolutionized as the first black man to play the prince on the world's major stages — is almost up. When pressed, he says he suspects 2012 may be his final year at the Royal Ballet, where he is the principal guest artist. But Acosta is convinced that the end of his ballet career will mark the beginning of an exciting new chapter. Now he is hard at work reinventing himself as a choreographer and modern dancer, shifting to a type of dance that is more fluid and easier on his body. On July 28, Acosta stars in Premieres, a show at the London Coliseum that combines ballet and modern dance — and allows him to start moving away from the form that has made him famous. "When you put on the white tights, and you see some other 20-year-old kid leaping about, you ask yourself, 'Why would I carry on? I've done it so well, for so long.' When is it time to say, 'Enough'?" he asks. "I'm battling with myself all the time."
Time is a crappy magazine, but whatever--this profile is pretty solid, if only because it allows Acosta to speak. Another dancer that I want to write about, alas. I'll be curious to see if his new venture succeeds, too. The apostate ballerina. Does he really feel that way? Hmm, I wonder...
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