Carlos Acosta Principal Dancer at the Royal Ballet Covent Garden

There is a guaranteed collective intake of breath when Carlos Acosta leaps on stage. No wonder, as he is the Royal Ballet's new King of Dance, a sizzling Cuban firecracker, hailed by some as the Latin Rudolf Nureyev.

In fact, he causes such a sensation on stage that this classy performer has now been given his own show.

We are lucky that he is on the stage before us at all. As a boy, Acosta resisted his father's attempts to steer him away from poverty and a life of crime by turning him into a dancer but, in the end, ballet chose him. He is now regarded as the leading male dancer of his generation.

"I knew I had something from the start," he admits. "I would skip classes for weeks or even months but when I came back, I was always way up there with high scores.

"If my father hadn't pushed me into ballet, I would have fallen into crime, for sure. I would probably have been involved in stealing and would most likely have tried to escape to the USA on a raft. I know people who did it and they survived, but many drowned."

As a boy, he played truant, became a break-dancing champion and played football in the streets. He secretly applied to join one of the football academies set up by Fidel Castro but was turned down. When he looks now at the discipline demanded of ballet dancers and compares it with the hedonistic lives of some of our top footballers, whose exploits too often bring shame on the sport, does he think it is all wasted on them?

He shrugs and runs a hand through his cocoa-coloured curls: "Maybe. But what can you do? I don't envy them but there is so much work involved in dance and the corps de ballet dancers and even soloists are quite badly paid. Top footballers can make in a month what some dancers earn in their whole career."

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[dancingboy97]

Uuurgh Carlos is so arrogant , I wish someone would slap some reality into him !!!

[twinsing38]

Latin Rudolf Nureyev. he defected fr Russia, no?. maybe it means as caliente as Latin. si, no?. ciao.

[Rayarena]

The commentator is pretty ignorant. He seems surprised that there is ballet in Cuba & that there are outstanding ballet dancers on the island. The fact is that ballet was bought over to Cuba by the wealthy & cultured French slave owners who fled to Cuba & settled there after the Haitian slave revolts where it was nurtured. Cuba unlike the rest of the Caribbean--with absentee landlords--had a very wealthy European-descendant landed gentry with refined tastes. Havana has never been Kingston.

[TheLacandela]

que bellezaaaaa

[ssassboy]

Just saw him dance in Premieres at the Coliseum last night. Breathtaking.

[IRA6629]

Oh yes do! I saw him in Manchester Lowery - It was amazing! :)

[icarrus4u]

THE MASTER!

[SukLengWong]

Fantastic explosive dancer. I hope I can have the opportunity to see him dance live before he retires.

[jaredanceur]

He is my Idol!=p