Iliana Lopez: Miami nice.

On an early spring morning, Edward Villella, artistic director of Miami City Ballet, stands before his dancers in the company's large studio on Lincoln Road in South Beach, putting them through their paces. No one marks. Even in class, principal dancer Iliana Lopez shows her long, refined lines and graceful port de bras. "Elegant, dignified," is how Villella describes her. As she does a double pirouette into a lilting pas de bourree, all the buoyancy of the music comes alive in her body. She smiles a big, generous smile, looking very happy to be dancing. In fact, everyone in the room seems to be having a good time in spite of Villella's constant demand for more speed. No one can afford to slack off. This kind of rigorous preparation makes it possible for them to expertly perform even the most difficult of Balanchine's ballets. It never dampens their ardor.

Lopez and Miami City Ballet make perfect partners. The thirty-four-year-old dancer joined the company in 1987, one year after Villella, former star of New York City Ballet, agreed to establish a classical ballet company in a climate associated more with lazing in the sun than with sweating in a studio. Today, the forty-three-member troupe travels the world, winning praise for its brilliance in a repertory comprised largely of Balanchine works but including modem pieces by Jose Limon, Paul Taylor, and resident choreographer Jimmy Gamonet De Los Heros. An editorial in the Miami Herald proclaimed, "Wherever in the world it appears, Miami City Ballet leaves an image of shimmering dance, creativity, and verve. No other `export' does us more proud."

Says Lopez, "The company and I grew up together. If I'd gone somewhere else, I would have been just another dancer."

Villella disagrees. "Iliana came with that intangible, inexplicable thing called talent. Although trained in another century's dancing, she learned to transcend that to perform works by Balanchine and Gamonet. She is our first dancer, with none of the usual trappings that go with that. Of the great ballerinas, she reminds me most of Maria Tallchief, with her command of the stage, her energy, her musicality, and her confidence."

In fact, Lopez creates a sensation every time she dances Balanchine's Prodigal Son, Divertimento No. 15, Raymonda Variations, and Sylvia Pas de Deux, and the company's new hit, Gamonet's The Big Band SUPER-MEGATROID. The Miami audience is effusive, and Lopez grabs its heart.

Resting between class and rehearsal, Lopez explains the good mood that pervades the company. "Edward and Jimmy aren't perfectionists, aren't negative; they're easy-going. I've always felt that this is a place that allows me to develop freely. Edward also likes the Latin temperament because he has it himself."

All of Lopez's Latin passion came to the surface when she took the lead in Gamonet's new ballet, Carmen, which had its premiere in February. "I love it," says the dancer. "I can be dramatic, sensual, play a flirt who always gets what she wants."

Jordan Levin wrote in the Miami Herald, "When Iliana Lopez, as Carmen, strides out to the strains of the Habanera, she's a confidently challenging seductress, planting her palms on swishing hips, whirling into deep lunges. Gamero is unresponsive, but when she leaves, he does a tentatively yearning solo, his tin soldier joints cracking open with desire ... The part of Carmen seems made for Lopez; both direct and voluptuous, she dances splendidly."

Gamonet knew that she would be ideal. "The technical advantages of this lady are major," he explains. "And she has come to that age when she can really portray drama. You can see her personality onstage. Whatever you give her, she enormously enhances it."

The two pair up again in his new La Casa de Bernarda Alba, based on the Federico Garcia Lorca play, premiering in the fall. "I'm really looking forward to that," says Lopez. "It's probably the most dramatic ballet I've ever done."

In Miami City Ballet, Lopez has found a place to flourish artistically, alone and with her husband, principal dancer Franklin Gamero. Both Venezuelans, they married in 1982. Only in Miami did they find a company where they were both equally happy. Dancing together, they bring special excitement to Balanchine's Sylvia Pas de Deux and Concerto Barocco and Gamonet's Divertimento Espanol and Carmen: "Edward likes how we look together, so our marriage really works on all levels."

As she talks, Gamero stops by to give her a kiss before going to another rehearsal. In March they were asked to represent Miami City Ballet in Washington, D.C., at the Folger Shakespeare Library Gala, where they danced the Balcony Scene from Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet. "The best thing that happened," says Lopez, "was Mrs. Clinton saying she kept her eye on Miami City Ballet because she found the company so exciting."

Born in Valencia, Venezuela, Lopez got her performing experience in Caracas at the Teresa Carreno National Ballet Company. But getting there took unusually hard work because Lopez had flat feet. "I had to wear orthopedic shoes for nine years," she says. "Not only were my feet flat, my right foot was sickled. I had to work five times harder than anyone else to do pointe." In an attempt to get her feet in condition for the discipline, she often slept with her pointe shoes on. "Usually, I could only stand it for a couple of hours and then, in the middle of the night, I'd take them off," she explains. "Most difficult was getting on top of the shoe; I had to remember all the time how to place my weight."

In 1981 Lopez and Gamero went to Moscow to compete in the Fourth International Ballet Competition. In preparation, her teacher insisted that they do the technically complex pas de deux from Swan Lake and Le Corsaire. "She thought it the best way for us to learn," says Lopez, "and as a result we had no fear of the stage, but we did things before we were really ready. It's tricky to train that way; I wouldn't recommend it."

Before Moscow, they had only danced at school recitals. She admits, "I feared suddenly having to dance at the Bolshoi's theater." After forty-five days in Russia, going through four rounds of competition and making the finals, Lopez realized that she could make it as a dancer. Nonetheless, on her return home, she agreed to her parents' wishes that she attend college. For two and a half years, she studied at the Central Caracas University, majoring in languages. At the same time, she danced with the National Ballet.

"It was too much to do both," she explains, "so I eventually asked my parents to give me a year to become a professional dancer. Back then, it wasn't considered a good thing." Fortunately, both she and Gamero soon won scholarships to the San Francisco Ballet School, where she performed in The Nutcracker, Beauty and the Beast, and Stars and Stripes. After growing up in the Russian tradition, Lopez was now learning the faster American style.

Not long afterward, Cleveland Ballet asked them to join the corps. They stayed less than a year, because temptation called in the form of an invitation to become soloists with the Deutsche Oper Berlin. All it took was a videotape of them doing Don Quixote. Europe opened a whole new world, where dancers had the status of artists. "At home, dancing wasn't considered serious," Lopez explains, "so it made us feel wonderful to be respected. I only learned a little German; most of the dancers spoke English."

After a year in Berlin, Dusseldorf Ballet asked for them, and they moved once again. Asked how she and Gamero managed to deal with so many different situations, she explains, "We've always been very positive people; we don't think negatively. We look for what's good wherever we are." While in Germany, Lopez had the opportunity to perform with great dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev, Galina Panova, Natalia Makarova, and Paris Opera Ballet etoile Monique Loudieres. Still, she had done only two Balanchine ballets, Stars and Stripes and Symphony in C, and his choreography intrigued her. His work wasn't anything like the nineteenth-century ballets she'd mastered, and she wanted the challenge.

Villella provided Lopez with a company where Balanchine reigns supreme. "I joined Miami City Ballet to grow and to work with Edward," she explains. "Another reason was to be in a climate and culture that I was familiar with. I love the heat and ocean and whole atmosphere here. People sometimes think of ballet as cold, but no one could think that when they watch us -- a lot of that has to do with where we live and train. I can bring my background and my home right into my dancing. Here I feel complete."