As the weather warms and flowers bloom, we wish you

a season of new beginnings!

The company returns to the City Different for two performances on March 29 and March 30, both at 7:30pm at the Lensic. The innovative troupe brings a program of three works, Jiri Kylián’s poignant 1974 piece, Return to a Strange Land, Alejandro Cerrudo’s striking new ballet, Last, and Trey McIntyre’s seductive Like a Samba,  all showcasing the talent and skill of ASFB dancers.

The son of a child-dancer, Jiri Kylián‘s first love was circus, which led to a training regimen in acrobatics. After his acrobatic academy folded, ballet took him to the Prague Conservatory. His studies with the free-spirited choreographer John Cranko at the prestigious Stuttgart Ballet and subsequent work with Carel Birnie of NDT, along with a panoply of world-wide awards, helped form the unique vision that Santa Fe dance-lovers will enjoy.

Return to a Strange Land, photo courtesy ASFB, copyright Rosalie O’Connor

A native of Madrid, Alejandro Cerrudo was educated at the Real Conservatorio Professional de Danza de Madrid. Named a Choreographic Fellow of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, he became the company’s first Resident Choreographer in 2009. Mr. Cerrudo danced in December 2012 at Jacob’s Pillow, partnering the sublime Wendy Whelan. The piece being performed in Santa Fe, Last, with music by Henryk Gorecki, was premiered at the Joyce Theater in October 2012.

Last by Alejandro Cerrudo, photo courtesy of ASFB, copyright Rosalie O’Connor

Trained at North Carolina School of the Arts and Houston Ballet Academy, American dancer/choreographer Trey McIntyre, founded his dance company, the Trey McIntyre Project, in 2005. McIntyre is known for “brainy” ballet melded with visceral physicality, and anything that is characterized as being “like a samba” is sure to be a hit in rhythmic Santa Fe!

Like a Samba by Trey McIntyre, photo courtesy of ASFB, copyright Rosalie O’Connor

Not content with just performing, ASFB offers a curriculum of ballet, jazz and modern dance in both Aspen and Santa Fe. The ASFB School provides quality training for pre-professional students, as well as recreational dancers, all in a supportive environment designed to enhance confidence and accomplishment while nurturing artistic expression and technical skill. Students perform in an annual spring recital, and alongside ASFB’s professional dancers in The Nutcracker.  ASFB deserves great credit for awarding over $30,000 in needs-based scholarships every year, helping to ensure a vibrant future for dance arts in America.

Santa Fe loves to see music and movement together, and if you do too, then head for the Lensic!

Interested in photography? See the best of northern New Mexico with Craig Varjabedian, who will share secrets on how best to capture the Land and Light of Santa Fe.

If textiles are your thing, start with the basics and learn to spin with the help of Santa Fe Buffalo Designs.

Fused glass? We love it, and you will too, in a March 16 glass class with Erik Whittemore of Bullseye Glass. No experience is necessary, and beginners are welcome!

Heidi Loewen Porcelain Gallery will send you home much more educated about the art of ceramics, and all you need to bring is a sense of adventure and a smile.

There is tin-smithing with Sharon Candelario available daily, pysanky or what we locally call Southwestern egg-decorating with Elizabeth Mesh, Venetian plaster with Sandra Duran Wilson, and the list goes on and on and on.

Sound like fun? Then it’s about time you turned your hand and eye to making art in Santa Fe!

An exhibition entitled Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage has just opened at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, and it is so worth a visit. The promotion of great women artists has always been part of  the O’Keeffe’s mission, and Ms. Leibovitz was honored in 2010 as one of the Museum’s Women of Distinction. She has returned to the City Different with over 70 works, in an exhibit organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and sponsored in Santa Fe by a grant from The Burnett Foundation.

Self Portrait © Annie Leibovitz

The exhibit is evocative and unexpected in equal measures. If you follow the curator’s path, you’ll start with a photo of a snake skeleton embedded in a banco at Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and end with an aerial view of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, both representations of a Celtic symbol believed to represent travel from the inner life to the outer soul or higher spirit forms.

The sense of a spiritual journey runs through the whole show, from the places and objects Leibovitz chose to shoot right through to the subtext the viewer intuits from the resulting images. A picture of the worn compass that Thomas Jefferson gave to the Lewis and Clark expedition is positioned across from an amusing shot of a small model of the Lincoln Monument perched alongside the giant foot of the monument itself. John Muir’s notebooks and Charles Darwin’s skeleton of a pigeon shine a light on a few of the curiosities that attract the scientific mind.

Annie Leibovitz, John Muir botanical specimen, John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez, California, 2011. © Annie Leibovitz. From “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011)

Notable women of history receive their due, with a panorama of a evening gown worn by opera singer, Marian Anderson, placed near a photo of Emily Dickinson’s simple white dress. Eleanor Roosevelt’s quiet domicile, Val-Kill, is full of the furniture she had manufactured. The desk of Virginia Woolf is swept clean, in contrast to the quote from her husband that she was “not merely untidy, but squalid.” In a nod to the artistic feminist past, 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (who, interestingly, was Virginia Woolf’s great-aunt) is represented by a piece depicting the garden door through which her famous neighbor, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was able to visit in secrecy (nothing shady, just avoiding his many fans). Both the hard and the soft sides of the famed sharp-shooter, Annie Oakley, are revealed by a bullet hole in the center of a heart.

There are artifacts and architecture of all kinds highlighting other artists, from Martha Graham’s iron gates juxtaposed with Isamu Noguchi’s props to Pete Seeger’s incredibly crowded home workshop to Ansel Adams’ glowing red darkroom. You can turn 180 degrees from a rumination on Sigmund Freud’s couch and see the Graceland graves of Elvis Presley’s family. Bet Freud would have a field day with that!

Georgia O’Keeffe, Purple Hills Ghost Ranch-2 / Purple Hills No II, 1934. Oil on canvas affixed to Masonite, 16 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Of course, the visionary Georgia O’Keeffe herself is acknowledged through photos of her house, her studio daybed and her pastels. And you should definitely allow enough time to head back through the Museum to see Georgia O’Keeffe and and the Faraway: Nature and Image, which will be on display through May 5, 2013.

Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage will be on exhibit at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum through May 5, 2013. This is a pictorial journey worth taking!

Self-Portrait, copyright, Annie Leibovitz

This renowned photographer has turned her talents towards subjects quite removed from the portraits for which she is so well-known. The work in this new exhibit is based purely on the artist being emotionally or intellectually moved by the subject. Over the course of two separate trips to New Mexico, Ms. Leibovitz captured images of O’Keeffe’s Abiquiu home, the stunning landscape at Ghost Ranch and its environs, and in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum vault itself.

And there’s an extra special event in conjunction with this exciting exhibit! Ms. Leibovitz will be speaking about her work on Tuesday, February 12, 2012 at 6:00 p.m. at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in downtown Santa Fe. Tickets will be available at www.lensic.com

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is located at 217 Johnson Street in Santa Fe, NM.

Sunset at the Santa Fe Railyard

By the time the 20th century rolled around, train tourism to Santa Fe had become a big deal, especially with the famed Harvey Girls riding the train into town as tour guides. Locals visited the Railyard to pick wild lettuce and receive free meat during the Depression. In the colder winters of the past, there was ice skating, and in warmer weather, the expanse of the Railyard served as a central performance site when the circus cars rolled into town.

The Harvey Girls, Photo Waynoka Historical Society, Waynoka, OK

Gradually, however, as car ownership became a reality for more American families, rail travel to Santa Fe declined, as it did throughout the USA. Travelers whose destination was Santa Fe disembarked at the Lamy Station, some 20 miles south of the city, where one can still board the Amtrak Southwest Chief west to Los Angeles or the Empire Builder east to Chicago. The Railyard still saw trains pull in and out, but ridership became limited to daytrips between Santa Fe and the Lamy Station on the Santa Fe Southern Railway, on which you can still enjoy the New Mexico scenery from the windows of a historic train car during clement seasons of the year.

Take a Ride on the Santa Fe Southern

The vast and under-utilized acreage was just too tempting for the City Different to ignore, though, and in 1985, then-Mayor Louis Montano proposed acquiring the land for redevelopment by the city. By 2002, through many years of planning by a whole host of interested and committed parties, the Santa Fe Railyard Community assumed the responsibility for development of 37 acres of mixed-use space that eventually included artspaces, restaurants and retail shops, office space and live/work residential units.

The Railyard Dog

Today, the Santa Fe Railyard is a vibrant hub of activity. Surrounded by a cluster of contemporary galleries, SITE Santa Fe anchors a cutting-edge arts scene. Nearby, local artists show their work at the Santa Fe Artists’ Market, and the Railyard Performance Center hosts a variety of dance and movement classes and performances. Warehouse 21 gives talented teens a home in which to express their creativity, and El Museo Cultural offers both art exhibitions and theater. The Santa Fe Farmers’ Market brings crowds of locals and visitors to sample and purchase fresh local produce and products, with demonstrations by local chefs and a summer movie series. The Railyard Park itself is a wonder of xeriscaping lovingly maintained by a cadre of dedicated volunteers. Its ambling paths and community gardens, site-specific sculpture and large lawn create a welcoming space for a variety of local events. You might even see a regular bocce or pétanque game!

The New Mexico Railrunner Pulls in to Santa Fe Daily

And in one of those full circle happenstances so typical of the Land of Enchantment, real rail travel returned to Santa Fe in 2008 when the New Mexico RailRunner began daily service to the City Different, with stops from the capitol city all the way down to Belen!

Be sure to take time to see our Railyard while you are in Santa Fe; we are so proud of the hard work that gave us this blessing of open space!

Spencer Myer, Photo Courtesy Santa Fe Symphony & Chorus

The Santa Fe Symphony and Chorus is one of our local treasures, and not just because they bring us the Messiah every holiday season! The Symphony, under the baton of Stephen Smith, offers the orchestral repertoire, and a range of soloists, to music lovers throughout the year. This Sunday, January 20 at 4:00 pm, a concert entitled Winter Brilliance features pianist Spencer Myer in a performance of Rachmaninov’s riveting Piano Concerto No. 2.  Also on the bill are works by Nielsen and Tchaikovsky, sure to delight away from the cold and crisp afternoon in the warmth of the Lensic.

Pianist Louis Lortie Goes to the Opera with the Santa Fe Concert Association

The weekend that just passed brought us the wonders of Jules Massenet’s comic opera, Cinderella, performed in the historic Scottish Rite Center, the former Masonic Temple of Santa Fe, thanks to the Santa Fe Concert Association. What a delightful adventure that was, and with three free performances at the Scottish Rite, and performances in the Santa Fe Public Schools for over 1200 3rd and 4th graders, once could say the Concert Association paid their New Year’s dues.  But no, they are back again on January 24, when famed pianist Louis Lortie performs a concert of opera music at 7:30 pm in the St. Francis Auditorium. Their educational mission closes out the month of January at 7:30 pm on the 29th at the United Church of Christ as Executive Director Joseph Illick takes his audience inside the compelling story of Richard Wagner’s life in music.

Pianist Jan Lisiecki, Photo Santa Fe Pro Musica

Not to be outdone, Santa Fe’s beloved baroque ensemble, Santa Fe Pro Musica, celebrates a Winter Classic Weekend at the Lensic.  On Friday, January 25 at 7:30 pm, Friday, Jan Lisiecki performs Frederic Chopin’s Etudes, Op. 10 & 25. The Classic Weekend continues on Saturday, January 26 at 6:00 pm and Sunday, January 27 at 3:00 pm, when the ensemble performs Beethoven’s Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, and the Haydn Symphony No. 101 in D Major, “Clock” Hob. I:101. and Mr. Lisiecki performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58. With the crisp, clean sounds of a seasoned ensemble, Santa Fe Pro Musica does itself proud.

Matisyahu: Photo by Natalie Zigdon www.matisyahuworld.com

For those whose musical tastes run to the more contemporary, Heath Concerts welcomes the one and only Matisyahu, the talented Hassidic Reggae singer, once a novelty but now a highly respected and inventive musician with a deeply spiritual outlook. This will be his  first  Santa Fe appearance, and this don’t-miss-it experience is a sure bet to sell out the Lensic, on January 31 at 7:30 pm.

Take time to enjoy some memorable music in Santa Fe!

Enjoying winter in Santa Fe

With a whole string of brief storms whirling though the Southwest this winter, the mountains above Santa Fe are primed with snow and full of opportunities for skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, or just taking a short walk up on a snow-packed trail in winter light. Just look at this webcam up at Ski Santa Fe! Check out the happy hikers enjoying their first snowshoe walk on Outspire’s Facebook page!

Just this past Sunday I needed to get out for some fresh air and exercise, and so I headed up the road to Aspen Basin, just below Ski Santa Fe, and parked at the Nordic Ski Area, armed with snowshoes and a thermos of hot tea. You can’t snowshoe on the Norski trails - those are reserved for cross-county skiers in winter – but the Winsor Trail passes through the parking area, and at this time of year, only snowshoes will let you enjoy this popular hike.

The Norski Trails, especially groomed for cross-country skiing

I headed down the Winsor Trail along a path trenched into well-packed snow.

The Winsor Trail

Lovely winter light streamed down through the trees and kept me warm the entire way.

Down the Winsor Trail!

This particular part of the forest is dominated by wonderful groves of Douglas Fir. Aspen mix in too:

Young aspen along the path

And since we are still within the mixed-conifer zone, a variety of pines and firs tower overhead:

Douglas fir, Ponderosa, and White Fir forming an open canopy below a beautiful winter sky

It wasn’t long before the packed trail became the road less traveled, and the snowshoes proved their worth.

Taking a break for tea

In places the fine, ancient bones of the mountains peeked out on southern slopes,

but along most the the trail the snow was thick and enveloping:

A small stream buried in snow

The winter forest is peaceful, yet remarkably invigorating. I credit the light, which illuminates the forest from below as well as above on sunny afternoons. But even a snowy day will bring its own magic:

"Between every two pine trees is a doorway to a new world" John Muir

So come join us this winter, and make time to enjoy our snowy forests while you are here. The Inn on the Alameda offers an anniversary special that makes a three-night stay in January or February particularly affordable, and there won’t be any summer crowds at your favorite restaurants.  And we’ll be happy to point the way up the mountain for your winter adventure!