Miami City Ballet Artistic Director Gonzalo Garcia Dives Into His New Role

Gonzalo Garcia officially took the helm as Miami City Ballet’s artistic director on August 11, but he’s wasted no time getting started. A week after the company announced his appointment on June 16, he flew out to California’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts to see MCB perform Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake and introduce himself to the dancers. He’s since hired a new company member, plus he worked with the marketing department to produce a video for MCB’s upcoming all-Justin-Peck program. And he arrived in Miami ahead of the season to attend photo shoots for the company’s 40th-anniversary campaigns. “I wanted to be involved,” Garcia says, even though his predecessor, Lourdes Lopez, had already programmed the 2025–26 season. “I wanted to include my taste and my vision, especially visually, as much as I could.”    

Garcia, MCB’s third artistic director after Lopez and founding artistic director Edward Villella, welcomes the challenge. “I’ve always been a bunhead,” he says. “As you start getting older and start teaching, you start developing your voice artistically, and then you want to help develop the next generation. And as an artistic director, you can really shape the dancers and think about what repertoire will shape the future—not just here in Miami, but in dance’s future.”

Born in Zaragosa, Spain, Garcia had a long performing career as a principal dancer at both San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet. After retiring from NYCB in 2022, he became company repertory director and joined the School of American Ballet’s faculty. Both positions, as well as his experience as artistic co-chair of SAB’s Chairman Circle, have helped prepare him for an artistic directorship, he says. “Now it’s a bigger, fuller responsibility,” he says. “I have to make sure that all the departments work together.”

Ahead of this week’s Peck: Miami in Motion season-opening program, Garcia joined Pointe on Zoom to talk about his new position.

Why did you decide to apply for MCB?

A position like this isn’t something that happens every day, and after years of preparing myself as a dancer, a repertoire director, and a teacher, it felt like the right moment. The job felt like a good fit. First, because I am an immigrant who became an American citizen and experienced the American dream. So I felt that I could understand the big, strong immigrant community here in Miami. I have also had a long education with the Balanchine and Robbins works, both at SFB and NYCB. And I’ve always been very curious about building versatility with traditional full-lengths and new voices that push the artform forward.

I thought, Just applying will teach me a lot about what I know and don’t know. What I discovered through the process is that I had a lot of things the company was looking for. Plus, my husband [filmmaker Ezra Hurwitz] had been a dancer here for eight years, so I felt like I already had knowledge of the artistic team, the repertoire, the different theaters. And I had worked with Edward Villella and Lourdes Lopez at different points in my career.

Do you plan on being a hands-on director?

Yes, I want to be in the studio. I think that’s where you get to know your dancers, learn their struggles. Teaching for the company is also important to me. Right now I teach three times a week—which is a lot, because I like to prepare and teaching requires a lot of energy. Eventually that will change, but I’m already integrating myself in rehearsals.

How involved will you be with Miami City Ballet School?

The school is one of the things that attracted me to this job. When you have a school attached to the company, you have a bridge; it’s basically your future. The director, Arantxa Ochoa, is also Spanish, so she and I share a similar background. We also serve a similar vision. Like me, she had a lot of exposure to Balanchine and Robbins as a dancer with Pennsylvania Ballet, as well as the traditional works.

My favorite thing is working with dancers in the studio. You can ask all of the NYCB ballerinas that I worked with; they would always say, “Oh, Gonzalo, you like to rehearse too much!” I have always loved the process. And as a teacher, you really are in that process. I want to be involved in whatever capacity I can.

Is it too early to discuss your plans for MCB’s 2026–27 season? What kinds of works do you hope to program?

It’s being cooked right now. As soon as I got this position, I was eager to put my ideas on the table and know what was possible. About a week after I got here, we started working on programming with all of the departments of the company: marketing, production, development. Everybody has something to say. The information that each individual has here, especially those who’ve been at MCB for a long time, is very valuable to me.

It’s too early to share, but I can say there will be two big productions. One is more traditional, while the other is more fun, yet equally challenging. And I want to pay tribute to the Balanchine and Robbins’ legacy—that’s always part of our DNA. It’s also important to me to identify dancemakers who haven’t had a voice yet, or who haven’t had a voice yet here in Miami, who could fit well. Then you have to find the theaters, you have to make sure you can pay for all of it. The labyrinth has to come together. Establishing your vision doesn’t happen right away—it’s a process. Some things you can move forward with really quickly, and others you need to let digest.

Have you fielded a lot of emails from dancers looking to audition since your arrival?

Yes! And I answer all of them. I tell them to contact me early next year, when I know more about what capabilities I’ll have here, because we hope to expand a bit next season. I plan to do two big auditions in the beginning of the year: one in Miami and one in New York City.