Miami Dancer Comes Home With All her Latin Moves

Sometimes the circle does become complete. So it is that Bianca Golden, 10 years after her graduation from the New World School of the Arts, will take to the stage this weekend in the Miami debut of the increasing celebrated L.A-based Contra Tiempo dance company.

Artburst talked with her the night before the debut.

You grew up in Miami. When you left it for New York, did you imagine returning to perform with a dance group of this caliber?

I longed for it. I love Miami. My family is here.

I had been studying dance since I was three years old. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t consider myself a dancer. So many who taught me are here. I wanted to come back to perform for all of them.

But life as a dancer in New York is far from easy. It didn’t take long to realize nothing was going to be easy.

What makes this return perfect is that I am dancing as a Latina in a company which is all about the way we move as Latinos, the way we look. [I’m] in this company to dance with all my heart.

Contra Tiempo describes itself as contemporary union fusion.

Yes. It’s a mix of salsa — think Celia Cruz, Ruben Blades and the Fania All Stars — Afro-Cuban “sacred” dance, hip-hop, and modern.

These are rhythms you must have grown up hearing here in Miami.

Yes. But I took classes every day both in ballet and in modern dance. Then, as often as I could, I would go to the clubs to dance Latin. I always knew it was then that I shined brightest. That was confusing. When I looked at the dance world as I understood it then, I didn’t see a place on a concert stage for my kind of dancing. I had the technique, but I liked to jam funky. I didn’t know there would be a way to bring them together.

The founder of Contra Tiempo, Cuban-America Ana Maria Alvarez, has described the same sort of frustration.

Yes, and she is one of those who are opening up new spaces — new fusions — for many of us dancers.

What was you experience like during your decade living in New York?

I was able to work as an artist-in-resident in “underserved” schools in all five boroughs of Manhattan. Actually, lots of days it felt as though I was running from one school to the next. Pretty much everywhere I went I was able to surprise my students. I looked just like them but I had solid classical technique and its discipline to work from, as well as years of studying the arts. Most of the young women in my classes hadn’t thought those worlds belonged to them in a real way. I stood in for what they too could become.

Contra-Tiempo at the Carnival Studio Theater, Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 21 at 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; tcikets $40; 305-949-6722, 877-949-6722; www.arshtcenter.org.