Chica Power

Ballet Hispanico was founded by a fiercely determined woman named Tina Ramirez 40 years ago, and the company’s upcoming anniversary season could serve as an unofficial celebration of female choreographers. Eduardo Vilaro, the energetic New York native now in his second year as the company’s artistic director, has assembled two programs that include world premieres by two women, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Maray Gutierrez, as well an earlier work by Ochoa and the return of Andrea Miller’s Nací, last season’s vibrant new addition to the repertory. That means half of the season’s repertory is created by women—an impressive percentage.

As a special opening-night treat, American Ballet Theatre’s peerless principal dancer Herman Cornejo will perform Tango Y Yo, a solo he choreographed to his countryman Astor Piazzolla’s music. The repertory also includes works by Talley Beatty, Vincente Nebrada, Christopher Gillis and Jean Emile.

Ochoa, the daughter of a Colombian father and Belgian mother who was raised in Belgium, is an increasingly busy freelance choreographer who brings an interesting mix of perspectives and backgrounds to her work. Sitting in the Ballet Hispanico conference room on the Upper West Side before starting a rehearsal of Mad’moiselle, her full-company world premiere, she cheerfully describes herself as a “cocktail” of mixed cultures. She has always lived in Europe—Amsterdam has been her home base for 17 years—but her Colombian half clearly plays a role in her work. “There was a duality, a cultural collision between my parents, though I was brought up more in the mindset of European culture.”

She danced professionally until 2003, training in classical ballet but joining a series of European companies with radically different movement styles. Her early performing years were spent with “two German companies that were very theatrical. I hated them, because I was 18 and wanted to kick my legs high and turn and suddenly I had to cry onstage!” She moved on to perform contemporary jazz dance with Djazzex, a more comfortable fit. “My energy could just flow. They really taught me how to move across the stage.” Next she danced with Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet for seven years, in a repertory she describes as “more conceptual ballets, quite edgy work.”

That company gave her opportunities to develop as a choreographer and get her second career going, but the choreographic bug had bitten her quite early in life. One day when she was 11, her dance teacher left the students for an hour with the pianist, who played a minute of music to which “we had to create something with a friend,” she recalls. “That was amazing. I felt, if I can do this for the rest of my life, I will be the most happy person in the world. From that moment on, I choreographed every year in school for the student workshop. My last year, I did choreography for the entire school—100 kids.” Working with chorographers during her performing years, “I was always thinking with them, observing how they created.”

A 2003 Dutch National Ballet commission gave her the courage to pursue her choreographic passion full-time, and these days she keeps quite busy. Much of her work has been seen in Europe, but she is making inroads in this country; she will be working with Pacific Northwest Ballet in 2012. Vilaro had her create dances for Luna Negra, the Chicago company he directed for 10 years, and introduced her to Ballet Hispanico audiences last year with her duet Locked Up Laura.

Before After, her 2002 duet, joins the company’s repertory this season, having been seen briefly here in 2006, performed at the Fall for Dance Festival by members of Dutch National Ballet. Ochoa describes it as being “like a flashback. It’s a study of what happens before the end of a relationship.” The score by Marc Van Roon samples, among other things, the words of a street poet on a New York corner.

But the big attention-getter promises to be Mad’moiselle, which has its world premiere on opening night. Inspired by the company’s strong women, and intrigued when someone asked her why so many South American women include “Maria” as part of their names, she launched into an exploration of iconic female imagery, a work which includes theatrical aspects as well as juicy, space-devouring movement. The score blends a soundscape by Bart Rijnink with a selection of songs and melodies with “Maria” in their titles or lyrics. “I wanted to make a palette of different aspects of those women, in a very abstract way,” Ochoa says. “Every section is about Maria, and the identity of those women. So all the women are Maria, they are a multiplicity of each other.” The company’s men have plenty to do in the piece as well, but as with the Ballet Hispanico season itself, the women are very much in the limelight.

Ballet Hispanico

Nov. 30–Dec. 12, Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave. (at W. 19th St.), 212-242-0800; $19 & up.