A Fusion in Florida : Dance: Miami City Ballet’s Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros stays in step with Latino roots but is as likely to draw from computers, the classics.

Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros, resident choreographer of the Miami City Ballet, is a mixmaster of an unusual sort. A neoclassicist of the Balanchine school, he’s making his mark with ballets that are as likely to be inspired by computer programs as Andean marriage rituals.

In fact, the combination of old and new, European and Latin American influences, is a trademark not just of the man, but of the acclaimed young company to which he belongs. Founded and led by Edward Villella, the hotshot star of the New York City Ballet during the 1960s and ‘70s, the Miami City Ballet makes its awaited Southern California premiere Friday and Saturday.

Presented at the Wiltern Theatre by the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, the company will offer two different bills, including four dances by its stylistic godfather, George Balanchine. Also featured will be four works by Gamonet de los Heros: “Nous Somme” (1986), “Danzalta” (1992) and “Divertimento Espanol” (1994) on Friday, and “D Symphonies” (1994) on Saturday. Both “Danzalta” and “Divertimento Espanol” were commissioned by UCLA.

These two dances also bear the signs of a hallmark style that has led reviewers to characterize the company’s--and the choreographer’s--work as Latin-flavored. Earlier this month, for instance, Jennifer Dunning wrote in the New York Times that the Miami company “dances with a Hispanic verve.”

But these can be fighting words when you’re an up-and-coming choreographer trying to avoid the proverbial artistic pigeonholes. And it’s a particularly touchy issue for artists from culturally diverse backgrounds who are working in traditionally Eurocentric mediums.

Gamonet de los Heros, for one, has a “mixed reaction” to such critical epithets. “It depends on what they’ve seen,” says the Peruvian-born artist, 36, who spoke by phone from Arizona, where the company was performing prior to this week’s L.A. engagement. “When you see ‘Danzalta’ or ‘Divertimento Espanol,’ those are pieces that definitely have a Latin taste to them. It comes from the energy from the dancers--that aggressive, go-for-it kind of dancing.

“But when I do things in a neoclassical vein, I don’t see them as Spanish,” Gamonet de los Heros continues. “I don’t think ‘D Symphonies’ and ‘Nous Somme’ show any Latin influence at all. I personally believe there’s a tendency to label.”

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Gamonet de los Heros began dancing as a teen-ager, with Lima’s Ballet Nacional. He immigrated to the United States and met Villella in 1981 and has been with the Miami City Ballet since it was founded in 1986. Since then, he has developed a body of work that combines influences from his native Peru and other Latin American countries with the neoclassical style of the Balanchine tradition.

“Danzalta,” for instance, was inspired in part by Gamonet de los Heros’ long-term interest in Ecuador’s Andean region. Following a 1991 tour stop in Quito, the company was invited by government officials and diplomats to return to the region to research the indigenous culture.

“We were invited to find inspiration from the native costumes and art,” says Gamonet de los Heros. “We met with local artists and musicians. I saw so much and I came out of it with a theme for a ballet: The piece is based on an Andean marriage.”

Yet Gamonet de los Heros also had trepidations about the feasibility of fusing such a traditional culture with the rigid style of 20th-Century Western ballet. “Before I took on the project, I thought--especially given my experience of living in Peru--that this was going to be tough,” recalls the choreographer. “I was trying to look at some kind of physicality from the native dancers. It is simple and symmetrical, not as complicated as classical dance.”

While the Miami City Ballet’s design team found a ready pool of visual information, Gamonet de los Heros was initially stymied by the limited movement vocabulary of the region’s dance. “To develop a complete work based on that was rough,” he says. “So I was drawn to investigate more about pre-Inca work, to have more information.”

He ended up finding ideas not just in the native Andean dances, but also in the movements of everyday street life. “When it came to the physicality, there’re a lot of elements that I found just in the way people behave,” he says. “The women walk with their upper backs bent forward--because they are the ones who carry the weight (of packages), not the men, and their babies. They do it for so long that they have this tendency to lean forward.”

Translating that kind of ingrained posture into ballet, however, wasn’t necessarily simple for the choreographer: “I have certain turns in the beginning (of “Danzalta”) where I had to explain that you have to drop the upper body. The tendency for dancers is to be a little more arrogant.”

“Divertimento Espanol” is Gamonet de los Heros’ staging of Petipa’s “Paquita,” with the 19th-Century work dressed in what the choreographer describes as a “visually very aggressive style.” There is a Spanish flavor here, but it is very different from the indigenous themes of “Danzalta.”

Yet Gamonet de los Heros is just as comfortable creating dances that have nothing to do with his cultural heritage--such as the neoclassical works “Nous Somme” and “D Symphonies.” The former is a pas de deux and the latter, danced to Baroque music by C.P.E. Bach and J.C. Bach, was choreographed largely by computer and is described by the artist as “dance for the sake of dance.”

In fact, this fusion of neoclassical and Latin sensibilities looks to become the trademark aesthetic for Miami City Ballet and Gamonet de los Heros, who concludes: “The styles do blend, it’s just a question of how much of each element you take.”

* Miami City Ballet, Wiltern Theatre, Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Pre-show talks by Edward Villella, 7 p.m. $33-$26. (310) 825-2101.