Visit to Acosta Danza Centre

Visit to Acosta Danza Centre

10 November 2025

On a wet November afternoon we collected at the Acosta Dance Foundation at Woolwich Arsenal. For those of you who have not travelled to this part of London it is another huge success story of taking old and rundown parts of London and giving them a major overhaul. The old barracks have been converted to large light and airy places for individuals to gather and work on their devices whilst enjoying food and hot drinks, amongst other functions. The spaces in between are open and wide pedestrian walkways down by the river Thames and next to an Elizabeth line station. Convenient.

The Foundation is the only Carlos Acosta dance space for students outside his native Cuba and comprises a few mid size and tall studios overlooking the neighbouring streets. The Foundation has some 20/25 students from the UK and around the world. They provide a variety of training including the choreography programme that we went to briefly watch with Robert Robinson performing his craft on 11 dancers.

The piece being developed is called lost nights and is set to reimagine what life was like for young people before the pandemic closed down this part of society and everyone was forced to stay indoors and not socialise. This happened as you will recall at the same time that social media took off and the younger generation missed out on some key social interaction.

His training was to encourage the dancers to be less soft and smooth in their dance but rather be more aggressive / assertive in their movements … more flamboyant, more jerky, to over emphasise and he did that by talking as well as walking the dancers through the movements with vivid descriptions of what they should visualise as they dance. It was a fascinating insight to the way choreographers transmit ideas and emotions to the dancers to encapsulate the movements they seek to develop.

It was a short session that we watched before being given a cup of tea and some fine food to send us on our way with the thanks from the Foundation key staff who looked after us. All fellow members of LBC should add this venue to a list of must dos. Highly recommended.

Alastair Thomson