Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote lacks the wow factor

Superstar Carlos Acosta makes little or no reference to Don Quixote’s established history in his programme note about the genesis of his new ballet. As a dancer hailing from Cuba, he is certainly familiar with the work’s performance tradition, but a greater historical awareness would probably have helped Acosta rethink his realistic approach to the 1869 work. However, history is frequently frowned upon in today’s culture. Don Q, as it is affectionately known, is regarded by dance highbrows as the compendium of all those theatrical and choreographic conventions that give ballet a bad name. Yet if the ballet has successfully stood the test of time, it is because of its camp aesthetics, its phoney exoticism, its naive, subtext-less narrative — freely adapted from Cervantes — and, not least, because of its breathtaking technical numbers.

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Theatrical realism ill suits this context. Even the acrobatics we have all become accustomed to expect — especially after the visits of the Bolshoi ballet — are pared down. The overall effect is of a tame, pastel-toned Don Q that has the same relationship to the traditional version as the Seville oranges one finds in UK supermarkets have to the real Spanish ones. Do not get me wrong, there are some good ideas in this new production, but I cannot help feeling that these still need fine-tuning, together with more rehearsals and some careful editing. At least the sets, by Tim Hatley, are fun, even though the moving houses could have done with a more sun-scorching lighting effect to bring them fully to life.

The more sanguine and darker tones of Act II, however, mark perfectly the transition from the ‘real’ world to the dream-like sequence. The new staging comes with a new orchestration of the ballet score by Martin Yates, which, I will be honest, made me sorely miss Ludwig Minkus’s original catchy tunes.