Don Quixote
The Royal Ballet, 15th February 2019
Perhaps it’s written in the skies why Carlos Acosta’s staging of Don Quixote for The Royal Ballet looks tame. In the outer acts, fluffy white clouds scud across powder blue. For all the talk of “Latin warmth” in Kevin O’Hare’s programme note, for all the dancers’ vocal interjections of “Evviva!”, it’s mostly very polite, very English – more Manchester than La Mancha. It’s only in Act 2, with its windmill silhouetted by an outsized sunset, that we sense Spanish heat. Yet when Acosta throws in flamenco footwork and guitarists strumming round a gypsy campfire, it jars.
Marianela Núñez (Kitri) and Vadim Muntagirov (Basilio)
© ROH | Andrej Uspe
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