Sizzling point from San Juan.

During the eighteen years she has lived in San Juan, Lolita San Miguel has produced a series of ballet miracles: a school, a style, a company, a repertoire, a reputation. "Just like Dance Theater of Harlem represents the black race in classical ballet," she has said, "we consider ourselves in a parallel fashion the Hispanic representatives on the same level."

Indisputably the leading Hispanic classical dance troupe in the United States, Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico, of which San Miguel is artistic director, houses Latin innovation within a classic tradition so flawless that even the toughest critics applaud.

"One of Puerto Rico's best kept secrets," raved the New York Times after Ballet Concierto's 1990 Lincoln Center debut, and the moniker has stuck. Today, the accent is on best because by now the secret is out. In the last few years Ballet Concierto has literally gone places. The company has over nine mainland tours under its belt and plans to tour Egypt, Spain, and Israel. In its considerable baggage is a signature piece, Carmen, created for the company by Jimmy Gamonet de los Heros in 1994.

If San Miguel were a lady disposed to leave anything to chance, a meeting between the Peruvian-born choreographer and Ballet Concierto would seem almost fated. But she had known of Gamonet de los Heros even before Edward Villella signed him on as resident choreographer of the Miami City Ballet, and her expert scan had been monitoring videotapes of his multicultural pizzazz (see Americas, May/June 1993). Her commission represented as educated an artistic decision as could be, but the big surprise was the young man's acceptance. Had he not said that he would be mothballing his flair for exploring ethnic themes on point?

"I just don't want to be labeled for that only," Gamonet de los Heros explains now. "If I had to survive on ethnicity, I would be starving and there wouldn't be twenty-six ballets in the repertory of the Miami City Ballet. Of these, only four have, within their structure, some ethnic themes: Danzalta, Transtangos, Tango Tonto, and Contropical. This particular project was enticing because I would be dealing with dancers with a broader understanding of the Spanish influence and, of course, my inspiration was the music."

Until Gamonet de los Heros's version of Carmen appeared, only three versions, all by choreographers steeped in the Latin idiom, survived in the classical ballet repertoire. Of those, Hilda Riveros's, set for Ballet de Santiago's 1993 Stuttgart debut by the fire-brand Chilean who had mentored the teenaged Jimmy in Peru during the early stages of his career, has hardly been seen anywhere else, so most balletomanes really know only the other two. Roland Petit's ballet, created for his wife, Zizi Jeanmaire, has flouted the competition since 1949, when it premiered in Paris as the ultimate in French ballet chic with Madame Petit wearing a pre-Madonna-style bustier. Later interpreters included Natalia Markarova and. in 1990. American Ballet Theater's Alessandra Ferri, but dance historians agree that the initial triumph owed everything to Jeanmaire's electricity, and she in turn owed it her lifetime stardom.

The film Plisetskaya Dances features the lightning-limbed Soviet Maya Plisetskaya in her favorite "Carmen Suite," which in 1967 the Cuban Alberto Alonso set to a score arranged by Plisetskaya's composer husband, Rodion Shchedrin. While Petit's ballet was deliciously scandalous with its boudoir pas de deux, Alonso's version of Carmen became a political statement, first as part of Communist-bloc camaraderie. In exchange for it, Plisetskaya dispatched her brother to Havana to partner the choreographer's sister-in-law, Alicia Alonso, a trade that catapulted the Ballet Nacional de Cuba to world-class status and gave the legendary prima ballerina assoluta (still the only one the Western Hemisphere has produced) a ten-year breather in which to train a Cuban prince at her level. Then, through the 1970s, Carmen alternated with the swan classics as the centerpiece of Soviet cultural presentations in Latin America. Yet when the Cuban company used the ballet to herald renewed cultural exchanges with the United States later in the decade, an unenthusiastic New York press corps pronounced it flat.

None of this history was lost on critics in attendance at the coast-to-coast premieres of Gamonet de los Heros's Carmen in spring 1995, and comparisons were inevitable. The latest edition does, after all use the Shchedrin arrangement, spliced with a few new transitions painstakingly gleaned from rare compatible instrumental recordings. Beyond that, it is easier to point to improvements. Gamonet de los Heros inverts Alonso's bullring into an ellipse and replaces his austere arc of men with a semicircle of effervescent female corps de ballet. An exquisitely intimate bedroom pas de deux, as central to this ballet as Petit's was to his, relies on the upper registers of contemporary technique rather than high voltage. And, yes, this latest Carmen wears a bustier, but she appears on the toreador's arm in a sensational scarlet gown, a bata de cola to die for, designed for her demise by Haydee Morales, Miami City Ballet's costumier.

"I am familiar with the earlier versions, and I liked Alonso's a lot when I was a young dancer," Gamonet de los Heros allows, but, he adds, "They did not affect me, and I don't compare my work with them. If anything, mine might be a little bit more of a caricature or `cartoonish'."

Cartoonish? Perhaps his compression of a three-hour opera into a fifty-five-minute ballet might more aptly be termed creative shorthand, an aesthetic elimination of detail in favor of the essence. Mainly, though, Gamonet de los Heros's Carmen is the critics' choice because of better choreography.

To focus on a single element, however, is to forget that this ballet balances on two sets of legs, not one, the second well-trained pair belonging to San Miguel. A New York-Puerto Rican product of the City's High School of the Performing Arts by way of the School of American Ballet, she brought with her to San Juan sterling credentials: Several seasons with the Joffrey Ballet; ten years as a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera, television contracts; certification in the Pilates method, a regime as important to top professionals as their bar; and a stint teaching for classmate Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theater of Harlem.

Ballet Concierto, which she founded within months of her arrival at the invitation of the local dance teacher's association, reflects her artistic convictions. Physically, the company is attractive--the men are sculpted athletes, the women raving beauties--and schooled to perfection, but there's more.

"I don't want all the mannerisms," says San Miguel. "I don't want all the flash. I believe in beautiful, clean dancing, in a certain use of the body and at the same time I believe in projecting personality; I don't believe you are just there to interpret the music. I believe you are there to show yourself as well." So, if her dancers like their salsa picante, she indulges them, and their exuberance translates onstage into sleek legwork, snappy turns, and sizzling partnerships.

San Miguel's San Juan audience responds best to the classics she has given them: Swan Lake, Giselle, Le Corsaire, La Fille Mal Gardee, Coppelia, and a Nutcracker so established as a Christmas tradition that it pays for her expensive commitment to stage full-length ballets. But she also insists on a Hispanic repertoire that spans the continents and the generations. Ballet Concierto's mission, San Miguel maintains, is to develop Hispanic talent and not just dancers.

"We invite choreographers to submit ideas to us yearly, and every fifth year we do a concert of the best new works plus a contemporary masterwork such as Anthony Tudor's `Fandango' end [Ballet Nacional de Cuba's resident choreographer] Alberto Mendez's `Munecos.' I keep my eyes and ears open to news of any talent. This is how I get my Hispanic choreographies, such as [Argentine choreographer] Julio Lopez's La Casa de Bernarda Alba."

Newer works include Maria Julia Landa's rousing, ruffled Tributo, to Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernandez, and build to the hugely popular "El Cumbanchero," and Jesus Miranda's "Portal del Yunque," a leaf-toned celebration of the benevolent creatures native to the tropical rain forest.

"I have six choreographers I have developed in my company," San Miguel beams, "but Jesus and Maria Julia are special because they were the first ones to get their feet wet in choreography, and they turned out to be very good."

The decision to stage Carmen harks back to San Miguel's days at the Met. "It was the opera I danced the most," she explains. "When I wrote my proposal for a grant to support the choreography, I said, 'I think it's time for a new Carmen, and I have the people to do it and the right choreographer.' And it was a wonderful opportunity for Jimmy because my dancers could give him the right style."

After some two years in performance, Carmen is about to be staged by Gamonet de los Heros's own company. In an event that has been eagerly awaited, the Miami City Ballet will premiere the ballet in March. The question now is whether the winning team of San Miguel and Gamonet de los Heros has future plans. "The doors are open for a lot of possibilities," says the choreographer from Miami. "Nothing definite," adds San Miguel in San Juan, "but we're keeping in touch."