Miami Choreographer Rosie Herrera Brings Her Faith-Inspired Dance Work Make Believe Home

Dancer and choreographer Rosie Herrera, speaking by phone from New York City, describes herself as a Miami girl through and through. Later this month, she will bring one of her best-known works to her home city for the first time.

Herrera's company, Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, will perform Make Believe at Miami Theater Center on Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14. The presentation is supported by the Miami Light Project. Both shows start at 8 p.m. at the venue, located at 9806 NE Second Ave. in Miami Shores. Tickets range from $20 to $100 and are sold through eventbrite.com.

Herrera, who is Cuban American, says she grew up dancing in the streets, including hip-hop and an attempt at break dancing that embarrassed her older sisters. She received no formal training until she was 18, when she was accepted to the New World School of the Arts. A start that late can be a disadvantage for someone hoping to dance professionally, but she believes it shaped her approach, giving her work an organic and accessible quality even for viewers unfamiliar with contemporary dance.

She says she has always felt like an outsider and builds her work from the perspective of an audience member. In her view, some dancers create pieces only for other dancers, whereas she wants everyone to enjoy movement and wants it to feel justified and free of any agenda.

Before launching her own company, Herrera worked as a showgirl in a Cuban cabaret and performed burlesque with the avant-garde troupe Circ X. Even so, she felt she was not being chosen for roles. "I became a choreographer because I wanted to perform," she says.

The company was founded in 2009 and soon produced its first commission, Various Stages of Drowning: A Cabaret, after Charles Reinhart of the American Dance Festival endorsed and supported the work. Herrera sees both the piece and the company as representative of Miami. Beyond the tropical aesthetics, she says, the city appeared in subtler ways: everyone in the original company was a first-generation American or an immigrant, which she says was not planned for diversity's sake but simply reflected Miami. She says local audiences understand her work in a deeper way than audiences elsewhere.

Make Believe, which premiered in 2018, is the second installment of a trilogy dealing with religious iconography and faith. Herrera calls it an abstract exploration of how faith can both liberate and oppress, and she asks whether the way people engage in ritual shapes their attitude toward romantic love. The piece is also a tribute to little girls and what they find beautiful. "As a dancer, I am living a little girl's dream," she says.

She spent a couple of years researching the piece, consulting Catholic historians and religious scholars. The subject grew out of a crisis of faith that she says is still ongoing. Because a dance must ultimately be physical, she translates ideas through her body, which she likens to a tuning fork, and through images that come to mind, sometimes surreal ones. Collaboration with dancers can take years to clarify what she wants to say, until a moment of realization arrives, such as wanting limbs to resemble scissors mid-dissection.

One section of Make Believe grew from a remark she made about wishing she could fall for seven minutes without ever catching her balance. The dancers worked on how to fall, and Herrera later saw that the section was about doubt. "With faith, you're never standing firmly on two feet," she says.