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Posts Tagged ‘albuquerque’

Where Flamenco Flourishes in the US

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 30, 2025| 3 Comments »

Photo: Thais Coy/American Flamenco Repertory Company.
Yjastros, the American Flamenco Repertory Company, performing in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Nowadays people don’t seem to talk much about catharsis in theater: the idea that in suffering along with the actors, the audience can feel a kind of cleansing or relief.

That is what you also get experiencing the controlled rage and sorrow of music like Edith Piaf’s, Portuguese fado, or Spanish flamenco.

Today, as I’m reading about flamenco flourishing in part of the US, I’m thinking what a gift it is to be able to convert rage and sorrow into something like peace.

John Burnett reports at National Public Radio (NPR) that the state of New Mexico is “a global center of flamenco — the passionate dance, song and music of the Roma people of southern Spain.

“The epicenter is Albuquerque. New Mexico’s largest city boasts a world-famous flamenco festival. … The University of New Mexico is the only American university that offers graduate and undergraduate Dance degrees with an emphasis in flamenco. The National Institute of Flamenco is home to a world-class repertory company, and a conservatory that teaches students as young as three, to young adults who want to be professional dancers.

“The popularity of flamenco has exploded in the last four decades. You can find its distinctive percussive footwork from Tokyo to Israel to Toronto. … But what’s different about flamenco in Nuevo Mexico is that it’s homegrown. New Mexico traces its deeply Hispanic identity to the arrival of Spanish settlers 400-plus years ago.

” ‘Here in New Mexico it’s got to sound like us,’ says Vicente Griego, a celebrated singer from northern New Mexico who specializes in cante jondo, the deep song of flamenco. ‘There’s other people who want to do flamenco exactly the way it’s been done in Spain. But what makes us really special here and what keeps us honest, is that we have our own history. We’ve had our own resistance, our own celebration, our own liberation.’

“Says Marisol Encinias, executive director of the National Institute of Flamenco: ‘I like to think that there’s something in our DNA that ties us to the antecedents of flamenco from way back.’ …

“Eva Encinias, Marisol’s mother, learned dance from her mother, Clarita, and is considered the grande dame of flamenco in Albuquerque.

” ‘Even though we present all of this very, very high-end flamenco, the rationale behind that is to inspire and cultivate young people,’ says Eva, sitting in the costume room of the National Institute of Flamenco that she founded 43 years ago. She’s surrounded by racks of extravagantly ruffled dresses. ‘We all started as children and we know the impact that flamenco had on us as young people.’

“Outreach is a huge part of their mission. Between Eva and her children, Marisol and Joaquin, they’ve taught thousands of flamenco students at the Institute and at UNM. …

” ‘We’re gonna clap along to the music, in 4/4 time, which means that we count 1-2-3-4,’ intones Sarah Ward, a Canadian who became enthralled with flamenco and now teaches. She’s leading a class of fourth-graders at the Taos Integrated School of the Arts. Fifteen kids happily stomp their sneakers to the count. …

“One of her bright-eyed students is 10-year-old Cypress Musialowski. ‘I feel an opportunity to let out anger,’ she says. ‘I really like stomping my feet. But I also feel like I can just flow and be me.’ …

Flamenco has been called performed aggression—the pounding wooden heels, the feral singing, the baroque guitarwork.

“The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca defined duende, the spirit of flamenco, as ‘tragedy-inspired ecstasy.’ …

“And it’s really hard to learn, says Marisol Encinias, who is also an assistant professor of flamenco dance at UNM. ‘It’s a really, really challenging artform,’ she says. ‘I had a guitarist friend who said you spend your whole life trying to be mediocre.’

“Evelyn Mendoza, the 27-year-old education manager at the Institute, says, ‘I mean, you sweat your heart, soul, tears, blood and everything into any dance form that you do. … But flamenco is so different because it’s fierce.’ “

Read more at NPR, here. (Consider supporting this great public resource, here.)

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Clouds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 18, 2023| 9 Comments »

Photo: Joshua Ware.
Ian Fisher art, “Atmosphere No. 139 (Nate & Marissa)” (2022), oil on canvas.

My friend Nancy L. is a fan of beautiful cloud formations. She is also a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society, where she signed up for cloud-a-day photos and bought a bumper sticker that reads, “I brake for clouds.”

If you think about it, gazing at clouds can really enrich a life. Try stopping where you are sometime and just looking up.

An article by Sommer Browning at Hyperallergic talks about what clouds have meant to a couple of artists.

She writes that the paintings in the “Carey Fisher” exhibit at the Redline Contemporary Art Center in Denver last December were “as expansive and composed as one might expect from landscape paintings, though there isn’t much land in them. The exhibition of new works by Albuquerque-based Beau Carey and Denver-based Ian Fisher, alumni of RedLine’s artist residency program, takes place mainly in the sky, among mountain tops, the moon, and the clouds. The horizon line is often thousands of feet below view or occluded by giant ancient rocks. 

“Carey chooses realistic depictions of mountain peaks and ranges as one of his main subjects, but his work in this exhibition is kaleidoscopic. In ‘Solaris’ (2022), a celestial sphere seems to rise multiple times behind multiple mountain ranges. It might be a moon the color of the sun, or the sun looking as cold and harsh as the moon. The mountain range vibrates with rich purples and Martian-like colors.

“Some of the paintings, like ‘Folie a Deux’ (2022), look like reflections of themselves — the mountain ranges repeat down the canvas, almost upside down at times. In ‘Magdalenfjorden’ (2022), a stark heavenly circle casts a cold glow across a mountain valley. The mountain paintings remind me of the delirium of standing on a cliff. The moon/sun paintings evoke quarantine feelings of desolation; I remembered wondering, after a couple of weeks, if I had forgotten how to interact with other people.

“Fisher paints exquisite hyperrealist oil paintings of cloud formations. He manages to paint these ephemeral, giant puffs of water vapor with such attention and detail that the paintings seem somehow more real than real clouds. … What is approaching transcendent really, is the perspective. I’d have to be flying to see clouds at these angles, to see them this close. But here there was nothing — not a 747’s plexiglass window, not a camera lens — between me and the cloud. It’s as though what I was seeing is how clouds see each other in the sky. …

“The effect of seeing both painters’ work together is disorienting, unmooring. The longer I looked at Carey’s orange moons and icy mountain-scapes and Fisher’s impossible, vertiginous vistas, the more I wobbled. To be removed from the world by looking at paintings of our world is a wonderful experience. That would have been enough to carry (no pun intended) the show, but the exhibition wall text encourages viewers to draw connections to climate change, which feels a bit unearned. … For a while there, Carey and Fisher had me floating.”

I am reminded of a beautiful N.C. Wyeth painting you may have seen of an old man and a young boy digging a trench in the snow. The boy is looking down, focused on the digging. The old man is standing still, gazing up at the light on the snow, the sky, the clouds. So moving.

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall. Subscriptions solicited.

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“If you give someone a hand up …”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 15, 2018| 4 Comments »

Three cheers for cities that come up with creative ways to address homelessness! I’ve written about the practice of offering public-service work to people experiencing homelessness in New Mexico and Rhode Island. Now a city in Maine is testing the concept.

Brian MacQuarrie writes at the Boston Globe, “Seven men, stooped and sweating, tear fistfuls of crabgrass and milkweed from a tangle of overgrowth in a large public garden. It’s dirty work for $10.90 an hour, the minimum wage in Maine’s largest city, but there’s not a complaint to be heard.

“ ‘People are always coming by and telling us, “Thanks for helping — it’s looking good,” ’ says Jeff Vane, 49, standing knee-deep in urban brush. …

“Portland officials are inviting panhandlers to put away their signs and put on a pair of work gloves. They clean parks, beautify public gardens, and even place flags at the graves of veterans in exchange for a small paycheck and a possible path to better, lasting employment.

“ ‘It makes you feel good about yourself, makes you feel that you’ve still got it,’ Frank Mello, 49, says of the job. ‘It shows I’m not the homeless bum that people think I am.’

“Portland’s program, nearing the end of its second year, is not intended to erase panhandling, city officials say. Some men and women who ‘fly their signs’ at Portland intersections, most of them homeless and desperate for money, will never be persuaded to put them away.

“But it’s an effort that passes legal muster. Both Portland and Worcester, Mass., for example, had banned panhandling with ordinances that were overturned by federal courts, which ruled that they infringed on free speech. …

“Panhandlers are pitched on the program as a way to leave the streets, connect with benefits such as housing vouchers and food stamps, and find work in the future through a day-labor agency that partners with the city. Participation is voluntary — workers can drop out of the Opportunity Crew program at any time. But so far, no one has been asked to leave for failing to do the job or follow the rules.

‘I’ve always kind of believed that if you give someone a hand up, and if they’re so inclined, that’s all they’re asking for,’ City Manager Jon Jennings said in an interview. ‘I just don’t see as many people panhandling now.’

“The Opportunity Crew has a budget of only $40,000 per year, but the benefits go far beyond dollars and cents, city officials said. Through [late August], 281 bags of trash had been collected this year and 121 syringes removed from public spaces, said Aaron Geyer, who supervises the program. A total of 936 hours had been logged by crews of 6 to 10 people who work Wednesdays and Thursdays from April until October

“ ‘They show up on time in the morning, and they’re ready to work,’ Geyer said.

“The cost of a crew is pegged at $1,300 per week, and business sponsors that help pay for the program are promoted on city signs at the cleanup sites. …

“So far, 17 men and women have found jobs after participating in the Portland program, which Jennings said he hopes to expand. …

“Frank Mello [gives] each of his teenage daughters $40 a week from his Opportunity Crew earnings. The children’s mother died three months ago from a heroin overdose, he said.

“ ‘Basically, I’m working for my children. They need me right now,’ Mello said in a gravelly voice, straightening up as sweat poured from his face. …

“ ‘We all know each other, you know,’ Mello said, smiling and nodding toward his fellow panhandlers. ‘Now, we want to work.’ ”

Read more at the Globe, here. A previous blog post on the concept is here.

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Jobs for the Homeless

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 19, 2016| 4 Comments »

After Albuquerque’s harsh approach to homelessness resulted in the death of a schizophrenic man in 2015, the city has done a 360.

NY Times reporter Fernanda Santos describes the current approach to homelessness: “Will Cole steered an old Dodge van along a highway access road one recent Tuesday, searching for panhandlers willing to work. … By the third stop, [nine] men and one woman had hopped inside.

“They were homeless. But suddenly, as part of a novel attempt to deal with rising poverty and destitution here, they were city workers for the day.

“Donning gloves and fluorescent vests, they raked a piece of messy ground by some railroad tracks on the edge of downtown … The toil paid off decently: $9 an hour and a lunch of sandwiches, chips and granola bars, enjoyed in a park. For the city, it represented a policy shift toward compassion and utility.

“ ‘It’s about the dignity of work, which is kind of a hard thing to put a metric on, or a matrix,’ Mayor Richard J. Berry said. ‘If we can get your confidence up a little, get a few dollars in your pocket, get you stabilized to the point where you want to reach out for services, whether the mental health services or substance abuse services — that’s the upward spiral that I’m looking for.’ …

“To collect their pay, they must work hard and work an entire shift, from start to finish — five to six hours, on average. They are paid in cash at the hospitality center’s employment office, two blocks from the shelter that feeds 400 people on a given day.

“The sole woman among the day laborers that recent Tuesday was Ramona Beletso, a Navajo Indian in her 40s who had twice fled abuse and destitution on the reservation. …

“ ‘I don’t even know how I ended up homeless,’ said Ms. Beletso, her eyes cast toward a pair of striped pink socks nearby, abandoned in a drying pool of mud. ‘Work helps me forget.’ …

“The mayor said he got the idea for the program from a panhandler he spotted on his way to work, holding a sign that read, ‘Want a job. Anything helps.’ It dawned on him that ‘the indignity of having to beg for money cuts through the soul.’ “

I saw almost the same sign in Providence last week. I usually duck my head and hurry on, embarrassed and not knowing what is right, but the young man who wanted work was so pleasant, perhaps I can think of a place he could ask about a job.

More on Albuquerque at the NY Times, here.

11/23/16 Update: Yesterday I saw the concept being applied by Amos House in Providence. The city has also said it intends to try it.

Photo: Mark Holm for The New York Times  
Panhandlers dug up weeds along a side street in Albuquerque as part of a work program in the city.

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Art Therapy for the Homeless

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2011|

Suzanne’s friend Sara, from Pomona College days, has a nice report on KUMN, the public broadcasting station in Albuquerque. It’s about Health Care for the Homeless — a program serving 7,500 people in the Albuquerque area — and in particular, it’s about a successful art therapy program. The story tends to confirm my observations earlier this week on the “Waste Land” documentary — namely, that art can open up the world for even the most disadvantaged.

Comments may be sent to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com. I will post them.

Asakiyume comments: I, too, felt the resonance with the entry you had posted earlier about Wasteland. On the one hand, when someone tells me in passing about various unusual services for the homeless–like this one–I sometimes roll my eyes and get all practical minded (art? art? how about a PLACE TO LIVE and a JOB).  And yet, on the other hand, the chance to make art, to be “allowed” (as it were) to be a person who creates, and not merely someone desperate to survive, restores dignity and personhood and also, I’m thinking, a kind of autonomy. So yes: ART!

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