Miami City Ballet soars

Edward Villella was the most famous male dancer in America in the ’60s. He devoured space onstage, performing with an exciting blend of daring and elegant precision.

George Balanchine captured this style in the iconic roles he made for Mr. Villella in “Rubies” and “Tarantella” and as Oberon in “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Mr. Balanchine could celebrate the dancer, but he never tamed him. There was a maverick quality to Mr. Villella that still surfaces in his role as director of the Miami City Ballet, one of the most highly regarded companies in the country.

From the beginning, he says, “I didn’t go down to Florida to join old Florida; I came down to influence, hopefully at the highest level.

“I was brought up that way by a guy called George Balanchine and some other guys like Igor Stravinsky and Jerome Robbins and Lincoln Kirstein and my teacher, Stanley Williams,” Mr. Villella says, invoking some of the most revered names in 20th-century dance.

In 18 years at the helm of the Miami ballet, he has created from scratch a small, sleek company that projects some of the same energy and daring he brought to his own dancing.

“I have a very specific point of view, a very specific background,” Mr. Villella says. “I needed to get the Balanchine works up first and establish us in that area. That took about 10 years, and after that, I added a ’Giselle’ then a ’Coppelia’ and a work by Frederick Ashton. But I started with that good solid core of sophistication, and it seems to be working.”

The Miami company is appearing at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts this weekend in two strikingly dissimilar programs sure to attract different audiences. Saturday evening, the company is dancing “The Neighborhood Ballroom,” and Sunday afternoon’s program contains some of Balanchine’s most challenging neoclassic ballets: “Ballo della Regina,” “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” and “Rubies.”

Mr. Villella says he created “Neighborhood Ballroom” for “Floridian reasons.”

“Our biggest competition in Florida are traveling musicals — they have a big audience,” he says. “I wanted to appeal to that audience, which was not necessarily a pure balletic audience.”

With “Ballroom,” the director tunes into nostalgia for earlier dances, focusing on four periods: the Boston Waltz, part of the early 20th-century belle epoque; the Roaring ’20s, with jazz and the quick step; the foxtrot and the art-deco period; and finally the mambo.

The Miami Ballet is unique because it operates far from other cultural centers. Because less is seen in Florida, Mr. Villella is free to pursue top quality without a constant drive for novelty. The result is an exceptional repertoire of first-rate dance works that would delight any dance lover’s heart.

The company has yearly seasons in four South Florida cities. “We are a $10 million company trying to look like a $20 million company,” is the way Mr. Villella describes his group.

“We are essentially a Florida company with national and international visibility. There are not that many groups that travel with a repertoire like ours, with major works like George Balanchine’s ’Violin Concerto.’”

While there won’t be any newly created works next year, there will be company premieres of a distinguished collection of ballets: Paul Taylor’s “Piazzolla Caldera”; Jerome Robbins’ “Afternoon of a Faun”; “Fancy Free,” a work by the talented young choreographer Trey McIntyre; and three major Balanchine works: “La Valse,” “La Sonnambula” and “Ballet Imperial.”

Mr. Villella takes a dim view of Miami critics telling him what to do. “They’re always on me for not doing either Euro trash or other current stuff,” he gripes.

A newly arrived Miami critic recently reviewed the company’s local premiere of Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs,” calling it a “train wreck.”

Other directors might have seethed silently, but not the fearless Mr. Villella.

“I picked up the phone, called him, and said, ’Man, your ego is showing … Like us or not, but report with professional courtesy —to the field, to the art form, to the dancers. I speak before every single performance, to the same audience that you are writing for, so just understand that I can respond, and I will.’ And I did. I said to our audience, ’This guy called it a train wreck. I’ll leave it up to you, you see it and tell me.’”

WHAT: Miami City Ballet

WHEN: Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 2 p.m.

WHERE: George Mason University’s Center for the Arts

TICKETS: $25 to $50

PHONE: 703/218-6500