It’s true. One of those things you never thought you would see in your lifetime is actually happening. It will begin in Birmingham, not Alabama, but that home to Europe’s largest public library and the world’s most comprehensive collection of Pre-Raphaelite art.
It’s happening. Black Sabbath: The Ballet, is a reality, or at least it will be from September 2023. For the uninitiated, Black Sabbath are sons of Birmingham who did not grow up queuing for tickets to see The Nutcracker. Four teenagers – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward-had ideas about music that no-one else seemed to have. They wanted their music to paint pictures of a darker world. After the success of their first self-titled album in 1969, followed by Paranoid in 1970, they went on to become one of the most successful heavy metal bands ever, often credited as the creators of heavy metal music.
To Carlos Acosta, artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and until 2016 a global ballet superstar, the Birmingham origins of Black Sabbath sound an important note in the city’s musical heritage, one to celebrate in dance. And why not? It is yet another revolution from the Cuban who has no respect for artistic or musical barriers. Carlos Acosta has even less regard for obstacles put in the way of young, aspiring, talented dancers. As passionate as he is about Birmingham and attracting younger audiences with the music of Black Sabbath, he has started bigger revolutions four and a half thousand miles away in Havana.
For more than 10 years, Acosta has been banging heads together to establish Cuba as a Dance State without boundaries or barriers. To describe these endeavours as the creation of an international dance centre diminishes the scale and scope of his ambition. The objective has not been to convert an abandoned site in the Vedado district of Havana into a ballet hub primarily for the benefit of young Cubans and some non-native talent. Nor is the focus exclusively on the technique and repertoire of classical ballet. It is much wider, embracing diverse related dance genres.
Open to the most talented teenagers irrespective of their nationality or resource, free places are offered for a three-year course. The Acosta Academy, as it is called, shares dancing studios, classrooms and performance space on the same site with Acosta Danza, whose professional dancers encourage the students. As the founder has put it, “I want to provide a platform and focus for young people, to explore hidden talents and develop their skill, and help them make positive choices in life, while raising both the awareness and quality of dance to a new level.”
Carlos Acosta has leveraged his extraordinary achievements, global fame and influence to become an agent of positive change, a dance evangelist and philanthropist. His creative and philanthropic vision challenges us to re-evaluate what ballet can be, what Cuban dance – his ‘project for life’ – can offer to the world, and what innovations can eliminate barriers to talent.
The next cycle of Carlos Acosta’s revolution turns both in Cuba and in Birmingham with Black Sabbath, who sold no fewer than 75 million albums worldwide, does seem to indicate that there are no limits to revolutionary ideas.