Aug 28
New Mexico Dance Project is a newcomer powerhouse on the Santa Fe dance scene. Husband and wife team Erik Sampson and Scarlett Wynne founded the company in New Mexico six months ago. Since then, they have been teaching workshops for students, creating new works nonstop, and performing with the intention to become an integrated part of the community.
Jun 26
Where was the dagger? It was the final act of The Letter, a Santa Fe Opera world premiere that opened in 2009, and forty-mile-per-hour winds were howling across the venue’s open-air stage. The murderous Leslie, played by Patricia Racette, was singing her way towards suicide-by-stabbing. Suddenly, the wind whipped a tablecloth and sent Leslie’s fateful knife skittering down the dining table. This was despite the fact that the properties department had reinforced the linen with a stitch called a swing tack and secured it with a wind skirt.
Jun 26
The question is not merely why Shakespeare, but why make any art at all? Who is art for, and at what cost? In Guards at the Taj, answers to the first question accumulate as if without effort: we make art to create objects of resplendent beauty and experiences of wonder; to revel in the joy of creation; to invent worlds beyond this one; to compete with God; to fail. It’s the second question that’s difficult—brutally so...
May 24
Rulan Tangen’s company, Dancing Earth, performed the culmination of a six-year project called ...SEEDS: RE GENERATION... in Santa Fe this April...
Apr 26
It seems that cinematic sequels are all the rage these days. Even theater is not immune to this urge to put iconic characters in new situations. Take, for example
Nov 28
Warehouse 21, Santa Fe
December 2, 6 pm (monthly performance)
I would like you to imagine you are standing alone on a stage. A simple brown folding chair stands in front of you. The audience of about forty people looks up at you, waiting, expectant. You are dressed in your street clothes. Suddenly, a man in a t-shirt and shorts wanders onto the stage and says...
Oct 30
Mark Morris dances are difficult to describe because they are so innovative. The man’s wit is a source of endless creativity, and his work gives the simultaneous impressions of serendipity and contemplation. His dances can...
Oct 01
Action at a Distance at Theater Grottesco, Santa Fe September 24th-October 10, 2018 the famously depressive actor and theatrical scholar Antonin Artaud writes, “The theater, which is in no thing, […]
Aug 28
Peter Sellars’s new staging of Doctor Atomic refuses to allow the audience to look past the Pueblos...
Jul 30
A tragic awareness haunts every element of the opera Doctor Atomic. The libretto, the music—the tableaux of singers, dancers, scenes, and the one prop that never ceases to cast its shadow on the whole...
Jun 28
“They’ll say, ‘Why won’t it just float there?’” Scott Schreck says with a little smirk. “Then I go, ‘I’ll tell you what, let me work on that antigravity device for you.’” He’s talking through the joys and difficulties of translating artistic visions to brick and mortar...
Jun 01
“I suppose in some ways I’m always trying to achieve the impossible.” Jonathan Winkle, the newly appointed director of Performance Santa Fe ignores his coffee while enthusiastically explaining how he books the perfect season roster. “I want a balance between artistically...
May 25
The third annual Oasis Festival, a youth-led, free event will take place on Saturday, May 26, from 5:30pm-10pm in the Railyard Plaza. New York based electronic-pop duo Overcoats will headline the event supported by local teen musicians and DJs, as well as performances from local...
May 01
Apr 01
“This place. The river is life,” Luke Carr tells me as we walk through a stand of cottonwood trees near the flowing water. He lives on a small farm in a remote part of northern New Mexico, next to the confluence of two rivers. For a musician, this place provides silence for writing...
Apr 01
For fans of Laurie Anderson, and I certainly count myself as one, the book Everything I Lost in the Flood archives her forty-plus-year art career, beginning with a 1974 performance piece called Duets on Ice. This work, even in its simplicity, constellates a certain inscrutable...
Nov 01
It was John Seabrook’s profile of singer Tanya Tagaq in The New Yorker that introduced me to her work as a contemporary performer. Seabrook went on to write, “Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer, and she was in the city for a performance... a jaw-dropping forty-five minutes of guttural heaves, juddering howls, and murderous shrieks—Inuit folk meets Karen Finley."...
Dec 01
If classical ballet isn’t quite your thing (and even if it is), leave it to Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, presented this holiday season by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, to reintroduce you to the art form. Somewhere between high art and lowbrow camp, this all-male ballet...
Nov 01
With its script by Santa Fean Annie Lux, The Portable Dorothy Parker is almost as good as being a fly on the wall while one of the most popular writers and oft-quoted wits of the early twentieth century holds forth. It also serves as an excellent example that good art gets ...
Oct 01
There is something pulsing through our thin mountain air. Something electric and exciting and I’m not describing the lightning-filled monsoon season. Instead, I am talking about the growing and energetic theatre and performance scene that is currently emanating from all over ...
Sep 01
Performance Santa Fe presents cellist Matt Haimovitz, who made his debut as a soloist at age 13 in 1984 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and made his first recording at age 17 with the Chicago Symphony [...]
Jun 01
“It’s one thing to draw a picture of a lady in a blue dress,” says Missy West, Costume Director of the Santa Fe Opera. “But what’s the blue dress made of?" [...]
