Havana Rakatan, Peacock Theatre

Havana Rakatan is a journey through Cuban music and history, opening on a silent scene where a lone dancer stares out to sea – facing Miami, 90 miles away. That brief reflective, solitary moment is unique in a show lasting over two hours and exploding with collective energy, dynamic movements and racing musical changes. Dancing is obviously the focus but the ravishing costumes and physiques (male and female) also feed the eyes, and the seven-piece traditional band and singer shower the stage and theatre with searing trumpet-led mambos, smoochy cha-cha-chas and sexy conga-driven rumbas.

I was initially concerned that this production might trigger memories of 1980s hotel cabarets in Havana, where the music and dancing (and the sadly cheap costumes) told similar proud stories of Cuba’s musical history but tried so hard to please the foreigners that the results were clichéd and felt fake. Havana Rakatan suffers from none of that; in 20 years, Cuban music and dance have opened to the world and most significantly, developed a unique identity.

The Buena Vista Social Club may have been retro but were part of that process; the timba overtook salsa around the Latin world, and rap and hip hop are now on the international dance scene. With the ballet company Rakatan, the same thing was happening before our eyes last night. Their exhilarating production would surely make Carlos Acosta, who belongs to an earlier generation, envious of their confidence to transform classical ballet through their own folk traditions and inventive moves.

Founded in 2001 by the choreographer and dancer Nilda Guerra, Ballet Rakatan now coincides with the BBC’s stunning documentary series Latin Music USA (read my review later this week). Archive footage from the first episode shows monochrome Havana crammed with American tourists in clubs and bars; music was everywhere and dancers, hookers and pimps flourished. The same buildings and street scenes, now distressed and decrepit, are used as backdrops to the stage performances (picture right): exteriors of once elegant houses, American cars, the courtyard (patio) of a crumbling tenement block where rumba parties draw crowds. High upstage, the band provide the 14 dancers with music, and set up a symbiotic relationship between bodies moving in space and syncopated notes, phrases and choruses.

The two-part performance first explores the Spanish and African roots of Cuba, dancing through mambo in a glitzy nightclub and elegant cha-cha-chas which succeeded it, romantic boleros and funky, percussion-based rumba, then concluding in a noisy street party. The opening Afro-Flamenco sets the pace and the standards for glamour and dancing. Representing the Spanish line, Maria Mercedes Pèrez Rodriguez performs flamenco with a Cuban accent, a reminder of the impact of the Spanish Ballet and Flamenco Schools in Havana on young dancers today.

The Afro-Cuban elements which tend to dominate, are particularly transformed by the lead dancer, former basketball player and choreographer Yoanis Reinaldo Pelaez Tamayo, who captivated the audience. His unusual height and build break the rules of ballet and his looks and poise and confident, original poses set him apart as he incorporates sensuous movements of his African ancestors without losing connection to his ballet training. He glides into positions like a snake, leaps like Nureyev, spins like a hiphopper, and slinks around his partners like a gigolo, and pushes Michael Jackson off the radar.

One of my favourite scenes is the sparring between African plantation slaves and labourers and the Spanish countrymen (guajiros). Set against a gigantic view of the tourist haunt at Pinar del Rio, the musicians took to the foreground with the languid, beautifully melodic guitar songs familiar from the Buena Vista Social Club’s own guajiro, Eliades Ochoa (the one in a cowboy hat. A more classic ballet scene, it is accompanied by songs about the beauty of the landscape, and of course, love as girls in 19th century Spanish dresses smooch with sugar-cane cutters carrying machetes at their waists. Here, Yoanis Tamayo, spins his partner whilst moving into a kneeling pose, demanding unimaginable control.

The Peanut Vendor (El Manicero) scene, set in a crowded patio, reworks the 1931 global hit song as an acrobatic ensemble piece. The dancers’ eye-watering pelvic moves and shoulder-shimmies accompany the song of the peanut seller, Geidy Chapman. Her deep, rich voice follows in the tradition of Omara Portuondo and perhaps knowingly, the Cuban Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz. Sadly she lacks their charisma physically and vocally.

The costumes all through the show are so eye-catching they compete for attention with the dancing and choreographies: tropical colours, demure colonial dresses, white suits and straw hats mingling with today’s clubbing outfits. The ravishing cha-cha-cha scene is entirely monochrome, men in black suits and women in Grace Kelly-style full-skirted dresses. But the choreography, worked out in a team, and precise to the split-second, relies on a non-balletic bravura athleticism.  Ballet Rakata represents the New Cuba, redefining ballet, inventing new physical approaches, and Havana Rakatan is dazzling proof.

Book for Havana Rakatan at the Peacock Theatre until 6 March

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