Posted on Sun, Jul. 05, 2009

The grand pillars and ornate interior of Baldwin Auditorium here on the oak-covered grounds of Duke University are a world away from Rosie Herrera's native Hialeah. And the polyglot group of earnest dancers assembled onstage for rehearsal this steamy Southern afternoon -- from Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Spain, Thailand, Russia, and the American heartland -- know nothing of the pulsing Latin clubs and drag queen extravaganzas that have shaped her as a performer and director.

Herrera, however, seems right at home here at the American Dance Festival. It is the largest, most prestigious modern dance event in the United States, fabled cradle for choreographers ranging from Martha Graham and Twyla Tharp to newer luminaries like Ohad Naharin and Mark Dendy. The commission Herrera has received to re-create her surreal dance theater piece Various Stages of Drowning: A Cabaret with the festival's accomplished student dancers for a performance here later this month, could send her fledgling career into a whole other stratosphere.

The prospect of success or failure here could be thoroughly intimidating. But Herrera, retro cats eye glasses perched on her nose, in pajama-like rehearsal gear and socks, is happily, utterly concentrated on building her fantasy world on these new performers. She is charming but very clear about what she wants, with a humor that can leave them taken aback as well as laughing.

''Good job!'' she says, smacking the behind of a startled Sasha Lyubashin, a lanky graduate of a St. Petersburg conservatory for ballet choreography, as he finally puts some force into a homoerotically charged duet with Spaniard Eneko Gil. ''Don't get distracted by the baby,'' she warns the group of an infant brought in by his mother, who has offered to translate for some of the Asian dancers. ``Isn't he cute? Let's eat him.''

It's a remark that's characteristic of Drowning -- comically over the top, but with an uncomfortable edge. ''This is very much not ballet,'' Lyubashin says later. ``I never heard of Rosie Herrera before. But I am happy.''

So is Herrera, mixed with awe that she is here at all. ''I am so honored,'' she says. ``Of course I feel completely intimidated. But I'm here to do my work.''

At 26, she is younger than some of her performers. ``In a way I wish I could just be here as a dancer. It's so amazing to be around all these people who are at the height of their profession, and they're so normal -- I call it elegant normal. They are so cool, and not at all what you expect.''

FIRST IMPRESSION

Herrera, too, was an unexpected discovery to American Dance Festival director Charles L. Reinhart, who saw Drowning when it was first performed in March as part of the Miami Light Project's Here and Now Festival at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. An influential figure whose 54 years in dance have included managing such renowned artists as Paul Taylor and Meredith Monk, and being artistic director of the Kennedy Center, Reinhart knew nothing of Herrera when he agreed to come see the up-and-coming Miami choreographers featured at Here and Now.

'I saw it once and I thought `wow,' '' says Reinhart, sitting in his office in a rambling white clapboard building. ``I saw it the second night, and I thought wow!''

Soon after, Reinhart contacted an astonished Herrera and offered to bring her to ADF to teach Drowning to students for performances in the festival's Past/Forward program July 20-22.

Drowning incorporates surreal imagery, comic pop iconography, and an often disturbing emotional subtext. Reinhart was impressed by way Herrera used her wildly varied experience -- as Latin showgirl, hip-hop dancer, drag queen choreographer -- and her Cuban background for a theater piece that could be enjoyed on many levels. ''She didn't leave it behind her, she brought it with her,'' Reinhart says. ``You can see [Drowning] on many levels. If you only read comic books, you'll love it. If you read philosophy, you can love it. That's really rare. As visual eye food it's spectacular. But it's also about life.''

If the commission is unexpected, so is Herrera's path in dance. Raised in Hialeah, she began as a cabaret dancer, strutting in towering heels and feather headdresses or twitching her hips in comic skits at El Teatro de las Bellas Artes nightclub in Little Havana.

She was also a hip-hop dancer in concerts and music videos for the likes of R. Kelly, Usher and a host of reggaeton artists, and at the MTV Video Music Awards.

MIME ASPIRATIONS

At 18, Herrera decided she should become a mime because, she says, ''I have this high speaking voice, and I was always typecast as the hooker or the damsel in distress.'' She headed to the University of Florida at Gainesville, intending to study there with a former partner of Marcel Marceau. But she also auditioned for a modern dance class, and was promptly taken into the university dance troupe.

''It changed my life,'' Herrera says. After two years she transferred to the New World School of the Arts, where she got her BFA in 2006. She studied classical singing, and worked with Circ X, a hybrid cabaret performance group, danced with various modern troupes, and choreographed for and performed with drag queen ''houses'' for underground competitions.

Herrera had only created short dances when she got the chance to do Drowning for Here and Now, and the pieces of her artistic life fell into place. ''I struggled with it for so long, the fact that I'm a cabaret singer, a hip-hop and modern dancer, an opera singer -- there's got to be something I can do,'' says Herrera, sitting on the auditorium steps and looking at the long green lawn between Duke's graceful brick Georgian buildings. ``I used to say I have to focus on one thing. But my personality is too complex. When I buckled down and started choreographing, all my education, all these other things made sense.''

Incorporating all those experiences seems to have made Herrera comfortable with the possibilities offered by the American Dance Festival's 385 student dancers, who hail from 27 countries and 38 states. Nearly 300 of them auditioned soon after she arrived in early June. Faced with this extraordinary array of talent, Herrera ended up with 20 performers, instead of her original cast of 12. Many are Asian, and most have limited English.

Herrera had been worried how these more formally trained dancers would take to Drowning, which she created around a group of close friends and collaborators, including actors, two drag queens, the young daughter of hip-hop dancer friends, and a tiny Cuban girl who -- in a sequence that goes from comic to horrifying -- is forced down on a series of elaborately decorated cakes by three men who start as gentlemanly dance partners and become increasingly forceful. Herrera didn't know if the new cast would understand Drowning's Latino or ironic pop culture references. And would she find a drag queen?

But she's been happily surprised by the new personalities and talents she's discovered, and the prospect of using them in new ways. ''I love them and I will find roles for them,'' she says.

OUT OF NOWHERE

Maungsai Somboon, for instance, an earnest graduate student from Thailand, has turned out to be stupendous in wig and bathing suit, lip-syncing Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On from Titanic. ''He's hilarious, and he came out of nowhere,'' Herrera says.

If there is a lot of cultural and linguistic translation going on, everyone seems happy to learn. ''I need a little more Material Girl here,'' Herrera tells the three men who are toting and tossing petite Taiwanese dancer Naihsuan Yng (everyone calls her Sunny) in the cake scene. Yng may be vague on her Madonna music video history, but she understands Drowning. ''When I saw her movement, I really like it,'' Yng says in hesitant English. ''I think I really can do it. [It's] not so much about dancing but what she feels about her life.'' She frowns. ``But I think I never eat cake again.''

Herrera is well aware of the potential benefits of appearing at the American Dance Festival, especially for someone who works outside the dance epicenter of New York. Chinese choreographer Shen Wei, a discovery of Reinhart's, launched his company at the festival eight years ago and has since become one of the most celebrated artists in modern dance, choreographing for the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics and opening this year's festival with a major evening length premiere.

But nothing is certain. And as much as Herrera is enjoying herself, she is apprehensive about leaving this creative haven for the struggle of an artist's life in Miami. But she has no doubt she'll return.

''Miami is home. That's where the bodies are that move me,'' Herrera says. ``It's that mezcla [mix] of the water and Latin and Haitian and African-American and American, a strong drag community, a strong gay community. Just as my work is the reflection of my serendipitous performance experiences, Miami is a reflection of these serendipitous experiences. So hopefully ADF will bring opportunities to me.''