She's put together a new dance company, BoánDanz Action, which performs a full evening program at Painted Bride in November. Plus the Bride's bringing in Boán to lead three fall workshops. Best of all, she's teaching at Temple, where she got her MFA two years ago.

"I fell in love with the city when I was here doing my master's," Boán beams. "There are a lot of people interested in working with each other in a wonderful dance community. Something different here is that the dancers stay. They study here, they work here and then they stay."

Her decision to seek permanent residency "is not a political issue." Instead, she explains, "I want to learn, and to improve and study. And I can do all of that here."

Boán is a natural learner. She graduated from the Cuban National School of Dance in 1971 and got a degree in Hispanic literature and language from Havana University in 1981. In 1988, she founded her own troupe, DanzAbierta, in Cuba, often performing in her own choreography. She and her dancers traveled the world, appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe and across most of Europe and the United States.

But she gave up performing "because my whole life now is choreography. It is more interesting to me to be inside the work than performing it." She calls her choreographic method "contaminated. " " It is not pure," she explains. "It is dance that is open. It is like breaking down borders. I use a filmmaker, a musician and two dancers, all put in the same situation. Each has the same level of importance."

False Testimony, which will be presented at Painted Bride, uses the "contaminated" method with a filmmaker, cellist, two dancers — and two large wooden boxes.

"I need to express all the things I am meeting here: poverty, private spaces and surveillance," Boán explains. "The sensation I have here is I am always being checked. In Cuba it is not so sophisticated. Your neighbor might watch you, but here the camera is always there."

"I live here, I bought my house, and my husband is here." She's married to writer Alejandro Aguilar. Formerly a lighting designer and company manager, now she calls him a "capitalist who is here, there and everywhere traveling." Right on cue, he calls to say he's safely arrived in Washington, D.C. "In Cuba everything is for life," she continues. "Here everything is ephemeral. I need to understand that. I do this with the dancers, the filmmaker, the cellist — and the boxes. It all interacts, and always is different."

"And there is the importance of the object in the life of technological countries, the West," she goes on. "In Cuba you have the sense of being out of the world. For me as a creator it is important to live in the world."

The first October Bride workshop invites local dancers to explore her "contaminated" dance methodology, and then a week later she'll work with them on improvisation. Last will be an Afro-Cuban dance workshop open not just to pros, but to anyone who'd like to give it a try.

"Afro-Cuban is different in Cuba than in this country," Boán says. "It changes everywhere because it's a mix of the native forms with African. In our case, Spanish culture mixed with Africa — and the result is more like water: more fluid, more sensuous. The focus is on the hips rather than the chest."

Her dances have been called "exhilarating," "feisty and radical," and "achingly moving." She creates all this working as "a very strict dramaturge. When you use a lot of different elements, you have to be that. You have to make it go where you want and keep the audience with you. Otherwise everything is lost. Freedom is untidy.

"This is the most important thing in my life."

(j_anderson@citypaper.net)