Festival Flamenco Albuquerque 35 poster created by Santa Fe artist Erin Currier. Courtesy/NIF
Flamenco News:
Every summer, the National Institute of Flamenco and the University of New Mexico host Festival Flamenco Albuquerque, bringing the finest flamenco artists in the world to Albuquerque.
This year, Flamenco Albuquerque 35 returns June 11-18.
For eight days, the city is filled with the pulse of flamenco, and is transformed into a cultural epicenter for the art form. This tradition celebrates flamenco, the incredible art form that UNESCO declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The lure of flamenco is its ability to explore the full range of human emotion with an intense, vibrant quality that leaves audiences and students alike, captivated.
The purpose of this project is to preserve and promote flamenco’s artistry, history, and culture among both national and international communities. While the presentation aspect is primarily cultivated for those seeking an aesthetic experience, the educational piece aims to promote unique and culturally relevant learning experiences for artistic practitioners, theorists, and newcomers.
The educational aspect of the festival includes a series of more than 30 workshops that address many aspects of flamenco, such as the history and development of the art form, dance, music and the sounds and rhythms that are specific to flamenco. These classes are available and designed for students of all ages and backgrounds, creating a multi-generational, diverse atmosphere that promotes excellence, knowledge, and personal growth.
By producing Festival Flamenco for 35 years, the National Institute of Flamenco has been instrumental in building and growing an incredible community.
New Mexico is regarded as the center for flamenco in the United States, and this one-of-a-kind event, unparalleled in the quality of its scope and programming, attracts thousands of students and patrons.
Festival Flamenco Albuquerque is the highest quality, most affordable option for flamenco aficionados and students to participate in as an exciting, visceral festival experience. A number of festivals celebrating the arts occur annually; it is the precision, vigilance, and cultural relevance in the vision of Festival Flamenco that causes it to stand out against others.
For more information, click here.
About artist and illustrator Erin Currier
Each year, the National Institute of Flamenco seeks out an artist to produce an image that reflects this unique festival and its significant legacy. This year’s festival image was created by Santa Fe-based artist and illustrator Erin Currier.
“My artistic practice has taken me on a lifelong ‘shoestring’ adventure—packed with action and magic—that has variously found me training in Beijing with Kung Fu masters; tango dancing in Buenos Aires; in riots in Chile; eating dinner on dirt floors with Tibetan exiles in Nepal and at the dinner tables of famed filmmakers in Italy; on the couches of Panthers and Weather Underground; in medicinal ceremonies in the Amazonian jungle; at Tahrir Square with a million Egyptians … I am a humanist artist: unapologetically narrative, and for whom art and the social world are inseparable. I use the proceeds of the sales of my art to witness the world firsthand—i.e.-when I sell a painting, I buy a plane ticket and go!,” Currier said.
“It all began with a natural integration of my sociopolitical beliefs with a sheer joy of art-making, and has since developed into an artistic praxis by which I integrate the human realm- its individuals, cultures, and struggles – with its refuse, in order to address the issues I feel most passionate about,” Currier said. “I have been to more than 50 countries, immersing myself, to the best of my abilities, in the daily life of countries like Nepal and Nicaragua, cities such as Istanbul and Caracas, studying languages, getting around on foot or by bus, sketching, making friends, and collecting disinherited commercial ‘waste’. Inevitably I return to my studio in Santa Fe to create series of works that are exhibited and collected internationally.”
To learn more about Currier and her artwork, visit erincurrierfineart.com
Festival Flamenco Albuquerque 35 is made possible by the University of New Mexico Department of Theatre and Dance, National Hispanic Cultural Center, The National Endowment for the Arts, Bernalillo County, City of Albuquerque, The Office of Mayor Tim Keller, City of Albuquerque Arts & Culture, Heritage Hotels and Resorts, Acción Cultural Española, The Urban Enhancement Trust Fund, The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce Convention and Tourism Department, TourSpain, The New Mexico Humanities Council, the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain and SPAIN/USA Foundation, New Mexico Arts, WESTAF (The Western States Art Federation), Instituto Cervantes, and the following offices, departments, and programs at the University of New Mexico: the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Office of Student Affairs, Office of Global Education, Friends of Dance, and the Latin American and Iberian Institute.
