Carlos Acosta

Carlos Acosta grew up in a poor neighbourhood of Havana and trained at the Cuban National Ballet School under the system developed by Alicia Alonso before becoming one of the most electrifying principal dancers in the history of the Royal Ballet, where he spent the core of his career from 1998. His athleticism and stage presence in roles such as Prince Siegfried, Spartacus, and Basilio in Don Quixote set new standards for bravura technique in the classical repertoire, while his autobiography and subsequent biopic brought ballet's human stories to entirely new audiences. He returned to Cuba in 2016 to found Acosta Danza, blending classical and contemporary forms.