Edward Villella steps out

For all of its 17 years, the Miami City Ballet has been the bearer of glad Balanchine tidings -- thanks to company founder Edward Villella. The former New York City Ballet star has happily capitalized on his legacy by filling his repertory -- especially on tour -- with brand-name Balanchine. And receptive audiences have rewarded the Miamians.

“We do have this reputation,” says Villella of the high marks given his company for its authoritative way with the master’s dances. “And it is a lovely compliment from the tour presenters to hear them say, ‘Gee, if we want Balanchine, let’s get it from a good source.’ That’s a nice place to be.”

But when the troupe arrives at Cerritos Center next weekend, the Saturday bill will feature Villella’s choreographic debut, a celebration of four dance eras called “The Neighborhood Ballroom.” It’s the first full-evening, non-Balanchine work that Miami City Ballet has ever taken on tour.

So why is Villella stepping out as a choreographer, and why is he tinkering with what has been a winning tour formula?

“The truth is,” he says on the phone from his Miami office, “this is just another facet of our persona. I had never planned to develop an exclusively Balanchine outfit. Yes, we started that way, identifying ourselves as a company that embraces the modern classical aesthetic. But the world of dance is bigger than that.”

Villella admits that at least part of the impetus behind “Neighborhood Ballroom” was to create a work with as wide an audience as possible.

“Absolutely,” he says, when the notion is posed to him, and later: “My idea was to make dance more palatable to pop-culture fans.

“Right here in Miami,” he points out, “our biggest competition is the traveling Broadway musicals. That audience, which we haven’t as yet been able to attract, may not go to a Petipa or Balanchine ballet.”

He’s not alone in his assessment. Arts organizations all over, including symphony orchestras, are bowing to the mixed tastes of potential audiences -- some of them offering populist fare and all-purpose entertainment.

Villella quickly justifies turning social dancing into concert choreography by noting that even 19th century classicism commonly used folk motifs and folk dances. “Look at the third acts in big ballets like ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ They had their czardas, their mazurka, their waltz.”

For that matter, Balanchine did his share of ballets with a popular bent.

As for why Villella chose this moment to bring out his piece, that’s simple.

“I just completed it,” he says. “The work took seven years. And although we’ve presented a section of it here and there, this is the first time it could be performed in toto.”

Last month, “Neighborhood Ballroom” had its Miami premiere -- 14 performances “and all of them to standing audiences,” says the choreographer, a debutant at 66. Including, apparently, at least one critic: The Miami Herald called it “a genuine and triumphant tribute to four decades of American dancing.”

But on the extensive tour that brings Miami City Ballet to Los Angeles, only Cerritos has opted for the full work. Villella says that he doesn’t try to influence presenters one way or the other.

“They look for a number of things. Often it’s evening-length ballets or other kinds of packagings and ideas. Some of them say, ‘OK, I’ll take a piece of it along with the Balanchine works.’ These are things you don’t try to force on a presenter. We offer a list of what we’re touring and just let them choose.”

Craig Springer, executive director of the Cerritos Center, says that he found Villella’s “Neighborhood Ballroom” a great opportunity because “its basis is popular dances and music that everyone knows. Combined with the first night’s Balanchine program, it provides the perfect mix for us.”

Rough and tumble

Villella was never was an ivory-tower artist.

Once the cover boy of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, he redefined the male image in his field in the 1960s and 1970s. Not for him the danseur noble purity of an Erik Bruhn, or effete niceties. Instead, the small, dark, muscular dancer seized the stage with speed, athleticism and brute power. In no time, the Long Islander, who, in true “Billy Elliot” style, had to furtively pursue his love affair with ballet against his father’s wishes, was proselytizing his way across TV variety shows and free-lancing on Broadway.

When it came to starting his own company -- bankrolled by ex-New Yorkers in Miami -- Villella’s urge to carry on in the Balanchine tradition was automatic. His skill in the endeavor made the company’s name, but all along, the company has had a bigger-than-Balanchine repertory.

In fact, a list of roughly 100 other company ballets shows that Villella, who was named a Kennedy Center honoree and received a National Medal of Arts, both in 1997, is nothing if not eclectic in his tastes.

Whatever tour audiences might see, at home at least, the company has danced Russian Imperial, French Romantic and Danish Bournonville ballets, along with a rare work by Paul Taylor. What Villella never had in mind for the company, however, were dances that carried his name as choreographer. And, he says, even now that he’s made the move, it won’t be a regular thing. “My primary function,” he explains, “is as artistic director. And at MCB that means handling production, administration, board relations, development projects, community outreach. To be a daily working choreographer is beyond my capacity and resources.

“That’s why ‘Neighborhood Ballroom’ took so long. I had to develop the continuity and survival of a burgeoning organization. Finally, I ended up doing it because our resident choreographer” -- Jimmy Gamonet, who left Miami City Ballet in 2000 -- “ turned down the assignment.”

To help with the task, Villella called upon as consultants “some old pals from my New York days, ballroom dancers who live down here.” He had already conceived a narrative line, featuring a young poet who struggles from one stage of life to the next, finding and losing his muse along the way.

“It’s based on four [time] periods, with four traditional dances, four rhythms of popular culture in the previous century. I wanted to address the late Belle Epoque, the Jazz Age, late Deco and the Latin influence of the ‘50s. As far as I can see, that’s when we had the most interesting music.”

He’s talking about the jazz of Duke Ellington, the swing of Artie Shaw, the songs of Hoagy Carmichael (used in a fox trot segment) and the Latin numbers of Perez Prado -- all preceded by some American-style slow waltzes, and all taking place in the same neighborhood ballroom during those different eras.

While he makes no bones about hoping that the work will extend Miami City’s relationship with audiences beyond the typical concert-dance crowd, he also sees this dance spectacle as doing what art is supposed to do: reflecting culture and art as it evolves in the real world.

It’s a topic that’s on his mind because he has just returned from a Dade County commission meeting where he spoke, with others, against cutbacks in Miami’s arts funding.

“If you are a major city and wish to be recognized as such, you will not be able to do that without having the means to document culture.”

And he ties that notion back to what inspired “Neighborhood Ballroom”: “You look back at the old Fred Astaire movies and see pop culture that is now classic. You look back at jazz, which I title ‘Unspeakable Jazz Must Go,’ because it was opposed at that time, and it is now regarded as classic and a critically important part of the American vernacular.”

And beyond that, he says, whether its sources are classical or populist, “Neighborhood Ballroom” and the other works that Miami City Ballet dances, takes on tour and keeps alive have even more importance to taxpayers and governments.

The arts, he says, are the place we turn to for relief from the “horrors of terrorism and wars and economic, global devastation.”

Dance can “provide us with a soulful insight,” Villella says, “an experience like going to church.”

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‘The Neighborhood Ballroom’

Who: Miami City Ballet

Where: Cerritos Center, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos

When: Saturday, 8 p.m.

Price: $45-$55

Contact: (800) 300-4345

Also

Miami City Ballet presents a program of Balanchine and Petipa choreography on Friday, 8 p.m., at the Cerritos Center.