MCB CHOREOGRAPHER OUT AFTER CUBA POLICY DISPUTE.

The Miami City Ballet season lineup announced this February changed significantly following the recent elimination of the resident choreographer's position held by Peruvian-bom Jimmy Gamonet De Los Heros since the company started in 1986. He created some thirty works there, including Tobiniana Op. 22--a Romantic-style "white ballet" to Dvorak honoring company founder Toby Lerner Ansin--originally scheduled for next February's Fifteenth Anniversary Gala Program, but now cancelled, along with his world premiere to Wynton Marsalis slated for the same date and another to Bach set for October.

That opening program has become all-Balanchine with two substitutions: Sonatine, a company premiere, and the Diana and Actaeon pas de deux. Other company firsts will include Balanchine's Duo Concertant in the second program and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue in the gala, which will also bring Robbins's Afternoon of a Faun into the repertoire. This leaves the waltz segment of artistic director Edward Villella's The Neighborhood Ballroom, in the March finale, as the season's only world premiere.

MCB representatives cite a new course set by Villella, leading to more works by assorted choreographers, as the sole reason for these changes. But Gamonet questions that explanation.

Prior to his June 23 termination notice, the choreographer saw a cloud darken his friendly, twenty-year relationship with the artistic director that had begun at Ballet Oklahoma. During the Elian Gonzalez controversy, Jorge Mursuli, Gamonet's lifepartner and chairman of the gay rights group SAVE Dade, had called ballet executive director Pamela Gardiner, a personal friend, to discourage a public challenge to the now-defunct Miami-Dade County policy blocking artistic dealings with Cuba. [See preceding story.] According to the choreographer, Villella's displeasure with that conversation left lingering tension between them.

At a June 19 meeting, "out of the blue [Villella] started to talk about my contract, which is something we don't do person to person--we have our representatives," said Gamonet, who refused to continue negotiation outside established procedures.

"When I left that office, I said this is the end," the choreographer said.

Though neither Gardiner nor Villella was available for comment, MCB president Michael Eidson vigorously denied a connection between Mursuli's call and modifications at the ballet. In fact, Eidson recognized Gamonet's contributions and hoped some accommodation could be negotiated.

"That's all up to them," said Gamonet.