Santa Fe Arts Journal

Creative Coverage of Santa Fe's Arts Communities

In the Studio With…Entreflamenco Meet award-winning flamenco dancers Antonio Granjero and Estefania Ramirez

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Dance

“I feel that my mission should be to preserve the legacy of flamenco culture of Santa Fe that Maria Benitez had created, to the authenticity one would find in Spain,” says Antonio Granjero, an award-winning choreographer and the founder of the Santa Fe-based company Entreflamenco, which won a 2017 Mayor’s Arts Award.

“My ambition as a director, choreographer and performer is to present projects for the community to enjoy flamenco in its most authentic and purest form ranging from flamenco’s most traditional, unchanged form to its more modern, innovative side.” [Read More…]

Moving to the Music The Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble return to town

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Dance and Music

“I’m a musician working in dance,” says Mark Morris, the founder, artistic director and choreographer of the Mark Morris Dance Group. Performance Santa Fe presents this 38-year old company based in New York at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on November 30.

The Mark Morris Dance Group has programmed four works from its extensive repertoire for the Santa Fe performance. One of them, “Grand Duo,” was choreographed in 1993 to music by composer Lou Harrison (1913-2003), who was a good friend of Morris.

Connecting with composers is important to Morris, who builds dances around music. [Read More…]

Monet, Through Flamenco Mina Fajardo and company present a new dance concert dedicated to the French painter

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Dance

The paintings of Claude Monet are the inspiration behind Compañia Chuscales y Mina Fajardo’s new production “Monet’s Moon,” which is presented September 28-30 at Teatro Paraguas.

“I was little when I saw first Monet’s work in Japan,” explains the show’s choreographer and dancer Mina Fajardo, who was born and grew up in Japan and feels a special connection with Monet’s paintings. “There is so much Japanese influence in his work. Monet even made a Japanese garden with water lilies at his home.”

Fajardo, along with the show’s assistant director and dancer Monze Diaz, has created a dance production that pays homage to the great impressionist painter. [Read More…]

Kicking Up Their Heels Stars of American Ballet come back to town and present three premieres

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New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht is back in town with Stars of American Ballet, a chamber-sized group of dancers that tours nationally and internationally during ballet companies’ off-seasons.

Presented by Performance Santa Fe on August 3 and 4 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, this summer’s Stars of American Ballet performances feature works choreographed by a few of the company’s dancers.

Creating work for the show are Ask La Cour, a former member of the Royal Danish Ballet and current member of the New York City Ballet; Danielle Diniz, a graduate of Cornell University who was part of the national tour of the show “Dirty Dancing;” and Denys Drozdyuk, a native of Ukraine who studied at the Juilliard School in New York and is a three-time World Ballroom Dance Champion. [Read More…]

Getting Physical Pilobolus showcases four works, including a recent commission

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The New York-based ensemble Pilobolus recreates the feeling of being outdoors in its 2017 work “Branches,” which is included in the dance company’s program presented by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on July 24.

“The piece is a dialogue about and with nature,” explains Pilobolus’s co-artistic director Matt Kent, who choreographed the work with the company’s other co-artistic director, Renée Jaworski. “Renée and I took seven dancers out for a long hike in our area to feel the wind on their faces and do what really became a walking meditation. We wanted our dancers to experience the outdoors before the creation of movements that communicate the feeling of nature.”

“Branches” was commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2017 and premiered at the festival last summer. [Read More…]