Overlooked Flamenco class in Santa Fe. (Readers' Forum).

I am writing in response to Nancy Heller's "Festival Flamenco International," page 53 [June 2001]. It behooves a magazine of your caliber to feature writers who have done proper research on the subject matter of which they write. Ms. Heller writes, "There's nothing remotely like the Festival Flamenco International, where top artists perform and pass on their lore." If she had looked in the same state that features the festival she describes in the article, she would have found that in Santa Fe, New Mexico, there is a very similar workshop held by Maria Benitez Teatro Flamenco. It, too, incorporates flamenco dance technique and repertoire, Spanish classical dance with castanets, cante, cajon, brazeo, guitar, and also includes a course on a regional dance of Spain, called the jota, as well as other informative courses. So your guest columnist omitted an excellent two-week workshop that has taken place here in the U.S. for the past eleven years. I think you deprived your flamenco readers of useful information. Hopefully other flamenco aficionados have brought this fact to your attention.

Angie Wendeborn
Houston, Texas

AUTHOR'S RESPONSE:

I yield to no one in my admiration for Maria Benitez, who founded her Santa Fe-based Spanish-dance company over thirty years ago. Benitez's work as a dancer, choreographer, and director and the annual summer workshops she produces are all admirable and widely recognized among flamenco aficionados. However, Ms. Wendeborn seems to have misunderstood the intent of my article.

Having been assigned to write a brief piece concerning last summer's fifteenth annual International Flamenco Festival, cosponsored by the National Institute of Flamenco (founded and directed by Eva Encinias Sandoval, who rivals Benitez in her accomplishments as a dancer, teacher, choreographer, director, and administrator) and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, I did so. I did not set out to compile a comprehensive survey of all the noteworthy flamenco festivals in the U.S. Nor did I suggest that none of the courses featured at Albuquerque were available anywhere else. What I did say--based on my own experiences attending flamenco workshops in New Mexico, New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, England, and Spain--was that no other program offers the vast range (of topics) or the depth (in terms of multiple teachers for both music and dance) that the Albuquerque Festival does. I stand by that statement, with which readers are of course free to disagree.

--Nancy G. Heller, Ph.D.