How Albuquerque Became the Unlikely Flamenco Capital of North America
The Southwest hosts the second largest flamenco festival in the world. Its organizers say it's more of a revolution than a festival.
If your idea of flamenco is confined to short waistcoats and voluminous frilly skirts, Flamenco Fandanguero: Primos de la Raza Cósmica, a show recently performed by the National Institute of Flamenco’s repertory company Yjastros, may have surprised you. Sure, the dance moves were familiar—based in the same folkloric Romani-Spanish dance, bodies twisted in rhythmic intensity— but the costumes were simplified, muted. And the story is very deeply New Mexican.
The show, which ran over two nights in Albuquerque this spring, explored the connection between the Hispanic citizenry of New Mexico—home to one of the most concentrated Hispanic societies in the country—and Veracruz, a Mexican port city with a large Indigenous population. The show’s music was Veracruz’s son jarocho, a cousin (primo) of the music of flamenco, while its storyline drew a path connecting Mexico geographically to the southwestern state. Marisol Encinias, the executive director of the Institute, calls New Mexico the “northernmost frontier of Latin America” and the show attempted to make historic associations which Encinias believes have gone largely overlooked.
“Our interpretation of flamenco is in connection to our identity as native New Mexicans, as people of color with mixed ancestry, with Indigenous and Hispanic influences,” says Encinias. “We share this art form and history in a transparent way in a way that hopefully empowers the community and allows them to feel proud of their identity.”
Though the Andalucian base of flamenco is the same around the world, the Institute’s performances are an example of how the dance is so rooted in place that no two countries will tell the same story. Flamenco in Granada will look and feel different from flamenco in Mexico, which in turn will be different from flamenco in Serbia, or, surprisingly, Japan.
But this phenomenon doesn't fully explain how the dance has taken on a form that is uniquely its own in New Mexico.
Albuquerque is so entrenched in flamenco that it has been dubbed the flamenco capital of the US. The University of New Mexico is the only one in the world to have an accredited dance program that offers an undergraduate major and an MFA dance degree with concentrations in flamenco.
And on June 21–29, the 37th iteration of Flamenco Festival Alburquerque (not a typo; the traditional Spanish spelling) will take over three venues across the city as the biggest and oldest flamenco festival in the world outside of Spain itself. The massive quote on its website reads “What happens in Albuquerque is not just a festival, it’s a Revolution.”
So how did this New Mexican city of Breaking Bad, Route 66, and hot air balloon festival fame become a hotspot for a dance revolution? Well that would be thanks to Encinias herself, and specifically to her rhythmically-inclined lineage.
How flamenco came to New Mexico
It’s not really clear how Clarita Garcia de Aranda, born in 1921, learned flamenco. It’s not clear to her family, anyway. What her descendants do know is that she’d been singing and dancing since she was a child, taught by her mother who immigrated from Mexico. In the early 20th century, local fiestas in New Mexico had already begun to celebrate its Spanish heritage; flamenco was a touchpoint. The dance was in the air.
After traveling the US performing flamenco, de Arenda (now, after marriage, de Arenda Allison) opened the one-room Clarita’s School of Dance in Albuquerque in 1950 with her brother Antonio. They taught tap, ballroom, and traditional folk dances from Mexico. But flamenco was the signature offering.
“When you start dancing as a child you're studying it, but it's also kind of a form of play”
The school became a family affair: both Clarita’s daughter Eva Encinias-Sandoval, and her daughter Marisol attended the dance school from a young age. “When you start dancing as a child you're studying it, but it's also kind of a form of play,” explains Encinias.
In 1979 Encinias-Sandoval enrolled in the University of New Mexico to continue her dance education. But thanks to her flamenco talent she immediately stood out. At the time the university lacked expertise in flamenco, so she was asked to teach a few classes. A growing interest, including students traveling from other states to learn flamenco at the school, meant those few classes soon morphed into a full-on undergraduate major, and an MFA with a flamenco concentration.
In 1982 Encinias-Sandoval went on to found the National Institute of Flamenco, of which her daughter Marisol Encinias is now the executive director. Its mission is to preserve the dance and to enable scholarship through arts education, be it with its repertory company, with its charter school or programmatically with the University of New Mexico. The Institute hosts weekly shows at both the Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque at Hotel Albuquerque and El Farol Flamenco Dinner Show in Santa Fe. But, above all, in 1987 the powers that be launched the Flamenco Festival.
From flamenco festival to flamenco city
It was the festival that really brought attention to Albuquerque’s rapidly growing flamenco scene. Dancers and musicians from all around the world descended with the desire to learn and collaborate. “I think that in a lot of ways that the Flamenco Festival was kind of a catalyst for really continuing to engage the community around flamenco here in Albuquerque,” says Encinias. “It's a modern art form that continues to evolve.” Through the festival’s steady growth and the place that nurtured it, Albuquerque became a bona fide flamenco city.
This year the Flamenco Festival will feature 15 companies representing over 126 dancers and musicians, the majority from Spain. You’ll see both experimental and avant garde work as well as traditional and experimental pieces. The festival will include guitar and dance concerts, US premieres, like award-winning Granada dancer and choreographer Manuel Liñán’s futuristic “Muerta de Amor” and “The Disappearing Act” by Yinka Esi Graves, a London-based dancer born to Ghanaian and Jamaican parents. “She does a performance that kind of speaks about her identity as an African woman doing flamenco,” says Encinias.
If you want to learn techniques yourself, there are workshops for all levels of dance and musicianship. Or, you can just watch. Maybe you’ll even feel something.
“I think that one of the things that makes flamenco so special is that it’s a connected form that’s very beautiful but it's really intense. It’s varied, so it’s exciting. It's energetic. It's powerful,” says Encinias. “It’s complex, but you can enjoy it without understanding what’s happening. It’s tied to just being human.”