Callie Manning: this elegant MCB soloist is graced with natural stage presence.

Even in the ebb and flow of ensemble formations, your eyes go to Callie Manning. A Miami City Ballet soloist with elegance, unaffected style, and a ready command of the stage, Manning's steady focus has helped to bring her fresh opportunities lately.

"I've always had a lot of self-motivation," Manning says. "Instead of looking around and feeling competitive with others, I tend to compete with myself."

That approach has taken her from coryphee to corps member to her current level since joining MCB in 1999. Manning's career has flourished through the company's Balanchine repertory, from her strong work in the corps to increasing distinction in featured roles. She has shone in the haunting La Valse, the showier Pas de Dix, and the moody angles of Four Temperaments. But don't leave out her heating up Paul Taylor's Piazzolla Caldera, rocketing through Twyla Tharp's recent MCB stagings, or her solos in 19th-century classics.

Even when only performing a brief but tricky solo in Balanchine's Raymonda Variations, Manning, 26, brings precision, clarity, and authority to each step. A fluid dancer, she takes pride in looking natural onstage. "I'm not afraid to try new things," she says, "but even back at school I was really cautious." That means she never slights the preparation she needs for a role. Her commitment to making the most of every opportunity helps her gauge when she needs help. She is also quick to acknowledge role models and support, like longtime MCB principal Deanna Seay, whom she turns to for stylistic pointers.

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Her deepest gratitude is reserved for her mother, a Montessori teacher in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "If it was not for my parents, there's no way I would have ever made it this far," Manning says. Their encouragement has been unflagging since Manning begged for ballet lessons as an 8-year-old--seemingly out of the blue, though a TV broadcast of The Nutcracker may have started it all. Despite costs and commutes that taxed the family's resources--her father is a manager at a lawn care company--her parents made sure Manning got the classes she quickly grew to love. She can still laughingly recall how her morn once took back a pair of pointe shoes to the store "since they'd worn out after just three months!"

Training at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet under teachers such as Marcia Dale Weary put Manning on track for the School of American Ballet. After a couple of years there she decided to audition for Miami City Ballet. She wasn't expecting an offer, she says. "I just went to see what it would be like."

Two weeks later the company's artistic director Edward Villella called her with a contract. "In auditions I look for individuality," he says. "It's about an ability to physicalize music. Callie has that."

As an extra plus to Manning's heading down to Miami Beach, Jeremy Cox, her occasional dance partner and constant SAB confidant, was hired by MCB at the same time. "It's comfortable when friends work together," Cox says. "You can laugh and have fun, but you also prop each other up." Their camaraderie helped them several years ago when a Prodigal Son featured Manning as the Siren and Cox in the title role.

While a big fan of her dancing, he prizes Manning's other qualities. "Callie's one of the most caring people I know," Cox notes, amazed at the challenging tasks she takes on as the company's labor representative, a bridge between dancers and administration. She will listen to fellow dancers' complaints, research how other companies have dealt with similar problems, then present a wish list to management for negotiation.

"Callie succeeds because she's a very intelligent young woman," Villella says. "She's structured, focused, inventive."

Manning's spark didn't go unnoticed by Twyla Tharp, who picked her for an assertive leading role in Nightspot, an MCB commission last season. Swanky in her red skirt, Manning's club girl blossomed into a right-on woman. Whether in quick strides or smoldering poses, she responded to a lover with abandon and then challenged his duplicity with defiance. The punch in her phrasing never overwhelmed her sensuality. Despite initial anxiety, Manning says she found working with Tharp exciting, and threw herself into the piece. "I'm still thrilled that Twyla made me a lead," she says. "I think it was because I try to stay really strong and really use rhythm."

Back from Geneva, Switzerland, where Manning spent the summer with her Swiss beau, MCB principal soloist Didier Bramaz, she can look forward to MCB's staging of Taylor's Mercuric Tidings and Robbins' In the Night, company firsts, with their trove of new roles to wish for. Need a ballerina with both force and refinement? You don't need to look beyond Manning.

Guillermo Perez covers dance for The South Florida Sun-Sentinel.