The Spark and the Stage

Toby Lerner Ansin, Founder of Miami City Ballet, celebrates her 85th birthday and 40 seasons of transforming a city through dance.

In 1985, Miami was a city in motion but still searching for its cultural heartbeat. Amidst the hum of jet engines at a converted Pan Am hangar, dancers twirled across a makeshift stage under the banner of the city’s “Dance Umbrella” festival. The performance was earnest, the energy electric—but Toby Lerner Ansin, seated quietly among the audience, saw a gap only she could fill. 

“If Miami is going to have a really great company,” she recalls thinking, “we’ll need a spark—a luminary, someone to bring it all together.” 

She turned to the friends beside her—David Eden, then head of Dance Umbrella; Octavio Verdeja, a prominent Hispanic businessman; and Laurie Horn, a discerning critic—and asked: “Would you help me start a ballet company?” It was a simple question with profound consequences. She later called it her “Eureka moment.” And so began a journey that would forever change the city’s cultural landscape. 

From the start, Ansin knew she couldn’t do it alone. “I knew what I knew, I knew what I didn’t know—and instinctively, I asked the right people,” she recalls. Two of the first calls she made were to Charlie Cinnamon, beloved Miami publicist, for guidance on publicity, and Robin Reiter-Faragalli, whose administrative expertise became indispensable. “They were instrumental in the success of the ballet,” she says. “I didn’t know what I was doing—but I knew to ask people who did.” 

The genesis of Miami City Ballet was as practical as it was inspired. Just weeks later, Ansin hosted Edward Villella—the legendary New York City Ballet Principal Dancer—at her dining room table. Over coffee and conversation, they mapped out a ten-year plan: an Artistic Director, a Board, a company of dancers. It was bold, meticulous, visionary. And when Ansin picked up the phone to rally six friends, she raised $7,000—a modest sum that would launch a legacy. 

“There was no staff, there was no money,” she remembers. “But there was commitment. There was community. Everyone poured themselves into this dream.” Volunteers stuffed envelopes, licked stamps, even trimmed invitations by hand. When it came time to secure the Gusman Theater for the company’s debut, Ansin booked the performance under her own name. “Donors teased me: ‘Are we going to see you dancing up there?’ But it wasn’t me on stage. It was my heart.” 

Launching a classical ballet company in Miami in the 1980s was audacious. The city had yet to blossom into the international arts hub it is today—no Art Basel, no music or film festivals, no symphony. What it lacked in infrastructure, it made up for in hunger, imagination, and a certain fearless optimism. 

“It wasn’t hard,” Ansin insists. “It was like breathing. I couldn’t wait to wake up every morning and get to the ballet.” 

Her determination carried the company through every obstacle: hurricanes, staffing changes, fundraising challenges. Even the second-season tour to Israel, fraught with missing costumes and delayed lighting, became a triumph—earning the press moniker “The Miami Miracle.”  

Yet it is the human element, more than the accolades, that defines Ansin’s legacy. Volunteers who once licked envelopes became Board Chairs and Trustees. Students from the school grew into Principal Dancers or took MCB’s influence to stages across the country. And for Ansin, there is incomparable joy in sharing the ballet with newcomers—especially the skeptics.  

One of her favorite stories involves an accountant who adored orchestral music but refused to take his wife to the ballet. Over dinner, Ansin teased him with a challenge: she would choose a program with the best music, and he could come—but only if he kept his eyes shut so his wife could enjoy the dancing. He agreed. He peeked. And that was the end of his resistance. That skeptic was Frank “Pancho” Olazabal—who soon became not just a convert in the audience, but Treasurer of the Board. 

This year, Miami City Ballet celebrates its 40th anniversary alongside Ansin’s 85th birthday. To honor both, The Ansin Foundation has commissioned a new work from Alexei Ratmansky, the choreographer she, and many others, consider “the greatest of our time.” What began as a modest pas de deux has blossomed into a full ballet, set to Strauss’s sweeping waltzes. 

“If I was going to do it at 85,” Ansin says, smiling, “I wanted to do it all the way.” 

Her admiration for Ratmansky is profound. “The inventiveness of his lifts, the way his dancers weave intricate patterns across the stage—it’s breathtaking. I can’t wait to see what he creates for us.” 

At 85, Ansin reflects with gratitude rather than nostalgia. “I think I’m lucky to be here to see this,” she says softly. “It’s a blessing.” 

Her advice to the next generation is characteristically simple and elegant: “Take the risk to follow your dream. Don’t be afraid to fail. Sometimes your biggest achievement comes out of failure. Had I been a ballerina, you wouldn’t have Miami City Ballet.” 

She hopes the company continues to ascend on the world stage, while preserving the qualities that make it uniquely Miami: joy, camaraderie, and family. “From the beginning, we wanted nice people,” she says. “Forty years later, you still feel that on stage.” 

Miami City Ballet is her passion. It always has been. And as the curtain rises on Ratmansky’s world premiere, that spark—first lit in a hangar four decades ago—continues to shine, illuminating not only a stage but an entire city.