Pasatiempo, Jan. 12, 2024 by The New Mexican

The New Mexican’s Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment & Culture January 12, 2024

Cash is queen WARMING UP TO A NEW SEASON OF EVENTS PAGE 20

January 12, 2024 PHOTO COURTESY OUTSPIRE HIKING AND SNOWSHOEING

Dream catchers by Spencer Fordin Community crusaders are transforming Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service into a lifetime of change, honoring the late civil rights leader by finding ways to support communities year-round.

OUT THERE 6 Pro Musica presents the Diderot String Quartet 6 Blue Raven Theatre’s Metamorphosis 7 Snowshoeing season 8 Chatter’s comedic violist 8 Unlimited Breadsticks at SFCC 9 All-State Music Festival in Albuquerque

IN OTHER WORDS

ON THE COVER

Cool Culture

10 A local tale recounts one woman’s heroic fight for survival by Robin Martin 13 Authenticity tempered with humor drives new Pueblo-set thriller by Carina Julig 16 Review Inverno by Cynthia Zarin 16 Review Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

by Mark Tiarks and Spencer Fordin

Discontented with winter? Get out of the house for some glorious events. We sifted through an array of arts and culture offerings from now through May and chose 19 events that we believe are worth your time and ticket budget.

EXTRAS

26 COMIDAS Y MAS

MOVING IMAGES 28 Small screen Four operas you can stream at home 29 Review American Fiction 30 Chile Pages In theaters and special screenings

Meet the pie maker at Harry’s Roadhouse by Spencer Fordin

4 Editor’s Note: A day for reflection 32 Star Codes 35 Pasa Week 36 Pasa Planner 39 Final Frame

Cover: Rosanne Cash; photo Steve Laschever Cover design Marcella Sandoval

PA S AT I E M P O MAG A Z I N E.CO M Visit Pasatiempo at pasatiempomagazine.com and on Facebook ©2024 The Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo is an arts, entertainment, and culture magazine published every Friday by The New Mexican, P.O. Box 2048, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87504. Email: pasa@sfnewmexican.com • Editorial: 505-986-3019

PASATIEMPO PASATIEMPO EDITOR Carolyn Graham 505-986-3044 cgraham@sfnewmexican.com

ART DIRECTOR Marcella Sandoval 505-395-9466 msandoval@sfnewmexican.com

P.O. Box 2048, Santa Fe NM 87504 OWNER Robin Martin PUBLISHER Pat Dorsey

ENTIRE STORE ON SALE.. ITEMS STOCKDERS! N I N R SALE O SPECIAL O AND

EDITOR Phill Casaus

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Taura Costidis 505-986-1310 tcostidis@sfnewmexican.com

ADVERTISING

This is our way of saying thanks and kicking off 2024 with an array of imaginative furniture and objects at incredible prices.

505-995-3852

COPY EDITOR Holly Weber

hweber@sfnewmexican.com

CALENDAR EDITOR Pamela Beach 505-986-3019

pambeach@sfnewmexican.com

STAFF WRITERS Spencer Fordin 505-986-3048

RETAIL ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Wendy Ortega, 505-995-3852 ADVERTISING SALES / PASATIEMPO Maria Lopez Garcia, 505-995-3825 Clara Holiday, 505-995-3892 Deb Meyers, 505-995-3861 Trina Thomas, 505-995-3840 Lisa Vakharia, 505-995-3830

sfordin@sfnewmexican.com

Brian Sandford 505-995-3862 bsandford@sfnewmexican.com

CONTRIBUTORS Carina Julig, Robin Martin, Heather Roan Robbins, Mark Tiarks

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Rick Artiaga, Justin Bixler, Elspeth Hilbert

AD DEADLINE 5 PM FRIDAYS www.santafenewmexican.com

OUR MOST WONDERFUL SALE OF THE YEAR. EVERYTHING! Open Monday through Saturday 10am to 6pm.

design warehouse 130 Lincoln Avenue 988.1555

The Button Factory JOE FERGUSON, PhD

PhD Clinical Psychology, Fielding University MBA, Wharton School of Business

here do your personal buttons come from, the ones that can be so easily pushed? Over the holidays you may have returned to the bosom of your complicated family; to the psychosocial factory where your original buttons were manufactured and installed, and where they know how to press them! A personal button is just a trigger that initiates some conditioned psychosocial response, as the proverbial nuclear button initiates an elaborate process of global annihilation. The theoretical foundation of personal button manufacturing is behaviorism and operant conditioning, which dominated academic psychology during the middle half of the last century, until the “cognitive revolution” rediscovered thinking as an important element of human behavior. Behaviorism and operant conditioning describe you, accurately, as a machine that is programmable by means of reward and punishment, which is how personal buttons are manufactured. But, ironically, your programming also includes the possibility of rational thinking and decision making, by means of which you can customize and transcend your factory settings. In addition to your various buttons, you have probably learned to think for yourself to some extent, and to take a certain class of decisions and actions on that basis. Even your original factory buttons can be disabled or modiﬁed without undue fuss once you have chosen to do that radical thing. There are button factories and service stations everywhere, not only in your family, and your personal buttons can be reconditioned and repurposed throughout your lifetime. It is better when your programming is voluntary and intentional. Trust me. Call me.

PAYNE’S

NURSERIES Payne’s South 715 St. Michael’s 505-988-9626 Payne’s North 304 Camino Alire 505-988-8011 Winter Hours Mon-Sat 9- 5 Closed Sundays Payne’s Organic Soil Yard 6037 Agua Fria 505-424-0336 Mon-Fri 8- 4 Closed Weekends

NM LICENSE 1401 / CA LICENSE 22260

ANNUAL GREEN SALE

Join us for our Annual Green Sale with bright, colorful, healthy houseplants. YES, healthy! Indoor plants are more than decorative: these plants take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen which makes you FEEL physically better!

Payne’s PASA Coupon

20% OFF!

Tropical Houseplants, Pottery, & Potting Soil Offer good at either Payne’s retail location. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Coupon expires 1/31/24 or while supplies last.

Payne’s PASA Coupon

50-75% OFF! ALL CHRISTMAS ITEMS

Concise Personal Counseling

$225 per 70-minute session ~ Walking Distance From St. John’s College (505) 913-7159 ~ DrJoe@Fergi.com ~ www.Fergi.com

SAVE 20% OFF!

paynes.com

Offer good at either Payne’s retail location. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Coupon expires 1/26/24 or while supplies last.

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

+ downsizing made simple – senior design and relocation support

downsizing-made-simple.com + 575 779 6826

g Glass Yarn n i k o Lo Santa Fe’s Favorite Fiber Destination

Fiber Needles Notions

Yarn Classes Patterns

1807 2nd St Suite 2

www.lookingglassyarn.com

Vintage For ALL Your Real Estate Needs

Paul Duran

Paul Duran 505.310.5566

Keller Williams Realty 130 Lincoln Ave., Ste. K, Santa Fe, NM 87501 505.983.9161

EDITOR’S NOTE

Celebrating civil rights In a recent meeting about upcoming stories, the Pasatiempo editorial staff discussed ways to put Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the spotlight. Only a handful of New Mexico communities hold events tied to the holiday. Perhaps that’s not a surprise in a state whose population was 2.7 percent Black in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. One could argue that the late civil rights leader should be celebrated regardless, but I’ve lived in enough states to understand that locally cherished celebrations often reflect the demographics. I’m sharing some personal thoughts about modern civil rights struggles in the U.S. and honoring Dr. King with full understanding that I will never endure mistreatment in this country based on race. That’s privilege, and I own it. I moved to Tampa, Florida, at age 20 to finish school and begin a job as a clerk at a large newspaper. I’d heard plenty of racial epithets growing up in rural Ohio. The ignorance in that and other areas was one of the primary reasons I moved away. One of Tampa’s main arterials was Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It had been renamed several years earlier, in 1989, yet many businesses on the road still sported “Buffalo Avenue” addresses on their storefronts. My employer published a story about this in, I believe, 1996, interviewing proprietors about why they’d resisted the change. Some said it was too costly to change signage; others, troublingly, suggested their property values would drop if they embraced the MLK name. Most disturbingly, one interviewee said he didn’t think King had done enough to merit having a road named after him. A titan of American democracy whose importance I and others would rank alongside those of the most influential Founding Fathers doesn’t deserve recognition? That cannot be defended as anything but racist. Unfortunately, in my experience, for every person willing to utter a progressively unfashionable opinion, many more share it but keep it to themselves. About two decades later, I was living in Las Vegas, Nevada. My girlfriend, who was Black, had just moved there from the Tampa area, where she worked as a newspaper reporter. Her job had required her to knock on strangers’ doors to conduct interviews, and she often feared people would make incorrect assumptions about her intentions and possibly shoot her. A job that I’ve done, on and off, for 30 years without worry caused her to fear for her life. I could list many ways in which I was stunned at how racism affected her. One that I’ll bring up: When we crossed the street, I would walk ahead of her. This is because the one time she walked ahead of me, a car making a left turn nearly hit her, and the driver got out and yelled at her even though we had the right of way. It was one of many examples in which people didn’t see my girlfriend — didn’t sense or acknowledge her presence the way they did mine. Spending a few years with her shone a spotlight on hundreds of specific privileges I’d previously been too ignorant to know I was taking for granted. I’m not trying to praise myself as a paragon of racial sensitivity and wisdom. But I’m dismayed when people make presumptions or, worse, pronouncements about the realities faced by members of different ethnic groups. Now that I’m more sensitive to it, I notice it often, in politics but also in daily life. So when Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives on Monday, I’ll feel a mix of pride in the man’s accomplishments and shaping of modern society and somber awareness of how far we still have to go. Brian Sandford, Staff Writer bsandford@sfnewmexican.com

PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

Don’t Pay Too Much For Botox® You will only see an MD Call or text 505-690-6333 Ageless MDSolutions

Best Best Brunch Brunch in Town. Cocktails Beer Wine

505-471-3800 471-3800 joesdining.com joesdining.com joesdining.com RodeoRd. Rd. at Zia Rodeo Zia Rodeo Rd. Open OpenTue-Sat TU-SA: 8am-8pm Sun 8am-3pm SUN:

LOcaLLy-SOuRced,, euROpeaN-iNfLueNced & uTTeRLy deLiciOuS ameRicaN cOmfORT fOOd

530 S. GUADALUPE STREET, SANTA FE, NM 87501 / 505 982 9836 / SANTAFEREALESTATE.COM

659 Bishops Lodge Rd 1 And 2 $1,677,000 / MLS #202341877

501 Salazar

$679,000 / MLS #202400027

Empowering Your Vision

816 Bishops Lodge Road $1,099,000 / MLS #202338932

941 Calle Mejia 715

$310,000 / MLS #202341028

Stefan Lark Associate Real Estate Broker / License # 48623

505 501 6100 / slark@santaferealestate.com

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

OUT THERE RANDOM ACT

Emotional emergence

PHOTO KAIT MORENO

Talia Pura has had a powerful presence on Santa Fe stages in recent months, even if viewers didn’t realize it. Pura, president of the nonprofit arts marketing collaborative Theatre Santa Fe, organized the annual Theatre Walk Santa Fe in late September at Fashion Outlets of Santa Fe. She also designed the distinctive As a caterpillar in her one-woman lizard costumes worn by actors Emily Rankin show Metamorphosis, Talia Pura and Hania Stocker in New Mexico Actors Lab’s becomes a dominatrix, then at September staging of Seascape by Edward the end of the show emerges from a chrysalis as a butterfly, Albee. suspended above the stage. This weekend, the dancer, actor, and singer will be front and center in the one-woman show Metamorphosis, which she wrote. The hourlong show follows the life cycle of a butterfly, beginning with a small girl inside her egg — in reality, a homemade bomb shelter — around 1962. As a caterpillar, she becomes a dominatrix, then an aging movie star in the chrysalis. At the end, she emerges as a butterfly, suspended above the stage. Metamorphosis has multiple definitions. One is the transformation of an insect or amphibian from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages. Another is a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means. The show is presented by Blue Raven Theatre, which Pura founded in 2017. It lists its mission as producing “new, original dramas and comedies, sometimes adding aerial dance as a dramatic element.” — Brian Sandford

The Diderot String Quartet (left) will perform Punctum by composer Caroline Shaw (right) in a program presented by Santa Fe Pro Musica.

FOR THE EARS

Old instruments open new year Santa Fe Pro Musica’s 2023 Holiday Bach Festival may be over, but its exploration of Bach’s music and his legacy continues in 2024 with a visit from the Diderot String Quartet and a program titled J.S. Bach’s Legacy on Sunday, January 14, at St. Francis Auditorium. What makes this concert different, and more compelling than those offered by most of our visiting string quartets, is that the Diderot foursome plays on historic instruments, which aren’t often heard in Santa Fe. The group, whose members were educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School, formed in 2012 after discovering their shared passion for historical performance practice. Its concert here includes selections from J.S. Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet No. 2, and Caroline Shaw’s Punctum. Shaw, the youngest person ever to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, at age 32 in 2013, describes Punctum as “an exercise in nostalgia” that makes use of musical material from Bach’s Passion According to Saint Matthew. Mendelssohn’s passion for Bach helped fuel its rediscovery and reappraisal during the 19th century. He was 18 at the time he composed the Quartet No. 2 and had recently fallen in love with a still-unidentified woman. His quartet makes use of a song he had written about her a few months earlier, in a pioneering cyclic manner, with the same motif being used in each movement. If you’re curious (or skeptical) about what differentiates historical instruments from their modern counterparts, you can attend “Why Historical Instruments?” It’s a free conversation and demonstration by the members of the quartet at 10 a.m. on the day of the performance, where you hear the differences and learn about what they make possible for modern players and listeners. — Mark Tiarks/For The New Mexican

7:30 p.m. Friday, January 12, and Saturday, January 13; 2 p.m. Sunday, January 14 Teatro Paraguas 3205 Calle Marie, Suite B $15-$25 blueraventheatre.com

3 p.m. Sunday, January 14

$24-$94 505-988-4640; sfpromusica.org

PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

PHOTO WILLIAM PURA

St. Francis Auditorium, 107 W. Palace Avenue

OUTDOORS

For more information, visit outspire.com; for reservations, call 505-660-0394.

IN OE SH OW SN D AN NG KI HI RE PI TS OU Y ES RT OU SC TO HO LP AL

The trails are heavily snowed in, and the conditions should hold for months. New Mexico’s brief and glorious snowshoe season is in full effect, and the Santa Fe National Forest’s backcountry trails should be open well into March if past seasons are any indication. Scott Renbarger, the owner and guide of Outspire Hiking and Snowshoeing, has lived in Santa Fe since 1996, and over the decades, he’s gotten a good feel for the winter season in the backcountry. “The demand is way more than anyone can handle between December 20 and January 3. I could be completely booked by Thanksgiving for those dates,” says Renbarger. “Based on experience, snow conditions deteriorate by mid-March, but in exceptional years, we go through the entire month of March.” For Renbarger, who specializes in taking beginners and small groups out onto the trails, it’s a labor of love. He says that up to 90 percent of his customers are firsttimers, but that the nature of snowshoeing means that they can easily pick it up as a hobby. “If you can walk, you can snowshoe. If you can hike, you can snowshoe,” he says. “There are small pointers as far as backing up and obstacles on the trail. But you can pretty much put on the gear and go. If you’re on a packed trail, not only is it not more resistance, but you feel more secure because snowshoes grip the snow. If you break trail through fallen snow where no one’s gone before, it can be difficult. Otherwise, it’s a very secure feeling on snowshoes.” Renbarger is permitted by the Santa Fe National Forest to take guests out onto the trails, and he says snowshoers are not allowed anywhere downhill skiers can go. Dogs are allowed on snowshoeing trips in Santa Fe National Forest, but Renbarger says that’s been a very rare occurrence. Outspire provides the equipment for its snowshoers, and Renbarger says the shoes fit 90 percent of people. They have a universal fit and bindings that will correspond to most hiking shoes or snow boots. The main exceptions, he says, are people with extra-large feet and children under eight years old. For most youngsters, he says, their legs are too close together to make a comfortable fit. Renbarger personally interviews his snowshoers before he takes them out on the trails, and he says he generally suggests another snow-friendly activity like sledding for families with kids under eight. The Santa Fe snowshoeing community is also very tight and helpful with each other, Renbarger says. He singled out two other companies — Santa Fe Mountain Adventures and Less Traveled Trails — that have earned a reputation for taking people out snowshoeing locally. The best month for snowshoeing, Renbarger says, is probably February. That’s when the snow base is at its deepest; the days are longer, and the temperatures are warmer. And generally speaking, he says, the ideal snowshoeing trip is about two hours. It takes 15-30 minutes to get to the trailhead, and then two hours of exertion to get the full experience. “The trails are a range from gentle loops to challenging ridge climbs,” Renbarger says. “Families with younger children prefer a gentle experience because they don’t know how the kids will react. If it’s a party of adults, we can do challenging things. After two hours on the trail, people have had a good time. They’re ready to take off the gear and have lunch.” — Spencer Fordin

Good, cold fun

“If you can walk, you can snowshoe. If you can hike, you can snowshoe,” Outspire Hiking and Snowshoeing owner Scott Renbarger says. While February is peak snowshoeing season in the Santa Fe area, recent snow has made for pretty ideal conditions right now.

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

OUT THERE FOR THE EARS (AND THE FUNNY BONE)

Stand-up comedy + sit-down viola playing = Isabel Hagen Pop Quiz: What’s funnier than a professional violist? (“Anything!” is not the correct answer.) How about a professional violist who’s also a stand-up comic? A rare beast to be sure, but there’s at least one — Isabel Hagen — and she’s here for a Chatter performance on Saturday, January 13, at the Center for Contemporary Arts. She has impeccable musical credentials, including multiple performance degrees from The Juilliard School, but you probably want to know more about her comedy bona fides, which include two appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and being featured as a New Face of Comedy at Montréal’s Just for Laughs Festival. Music and humor were big parts of Hagen’s childhood. Her father is a jazz saxophonist and an older brother a pianist and conductor. Both her parents have quirky senses of humor and, she says, “I learned early on how to crack them all up, and I liked doing that.” At age 10, Hagen switched from the violin to the viola and discovered the rich heritage of viola jokes, most of which portray the instrument and its players as the Rodney Dangerfields of the orchestra. “I looked them all up online,” she says, “so it was another early introduction to joke telling for me.” (Sample: What happens when a violist dies? They move him back a stand in the orchestra.) Isabel Hagen combines her skills for both Nowadays Hagen likes to combine comedy with viola playing in different stand-up comedy ways and in various media. For an online iteration, check out her IS A and viola playing for a VIOLIST series of short videos on YouTube. Chatter performance. For the up-close-and-personal version here in Santa Fe, she’s providing comedic commentary plus full-bore viola playing as part of a foursome tackling Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 33, No. 2, popularly known as “The Joke,” and Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen’s “Shine You No More” from 2017. I won’t spoil Haydn’s joke by giving away his punch line, but I will mention that it comes in the work’s final movement, so wait for it. Sørensen is one of the Danish String Quartet’s violinists; he told the online journal theautumnsalon.com: “A lot of people think “Shine You No More” sounds something like Daft Punk, but it was actually inspired by a work from the English composer John Dowland called ‘Flow My Tears,’ originally written in 1596!” Hagen’s accomplices on the concert are violinists David Felberg and Elizabeth Young and cellist Felix Fan. They’ll also get a chance to listen and laugh along with the audience, as Hagen estimates the comedy-to-music ratio at about 55%/45%. “I really consider myself a comedian now before anything else,” she says. “Some people have interpreted what I do as a way to ‘save classical music’ by attracting younger audiences, but my goal was just using all the tools I have to entertain people, while being open to what it brought along [for] the ride.” — M.T. 10:30 a.m. Saturday, January 13

EXHIBITIONISM

Bread winners The Santa Fe Community College Art on Campus exhibition might share its name with a famous menu item at the chain restaurant Olive Garden, but Unlimited Breadsticks promises to be a bit more high-end. The show, which runs through February 1, features the art of 10 drawing and painting instructors at the college: Julia Catron, Del Curfman, Steven Eckert, Gary Kim, Jennifer Lynch, Kathleen Richards, Anne Rocheleau, Sudeshna Sengupta, Shane Tolbert, and Jared Weiss. The show opens Tuesday, January 16, with a reception set for 2-4:30 p.m. Thursday, January 18. — B.S.

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail

Through February 1

$17 in advance, $20 at the door if tickets remain

Santa Fe Community College Visual Arts Gallery

chatterabq.org

6401 Richards Avenue Free 505-428-1501; linda.cassel@sfcc.edu

PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

Winter Lecture Series COURTESY MARILYN BARNES

FOR THE EARS

Instrumental for success Ten schools in the Santa Fe area are set to take part in this weekend’s All-State Music Festival & In-Service Conference. The festival, put on by the New Mexico Music Educators Association, is in its 80th year and features nearly 1,000 students from Nearly 1,000 students around the state. Some concerts are free; some are are set to take part in $7-$14. View a list of events at sfnm.co/NMMEA. this year’s All-State Music Festival & Local schools participating include the Academy for In-Service Conference. Technology and the Classics; Mandela International Magnet School; New Mexico Connections Academy; New Mexico School for the Arts; Santa Fe Preparatory School; and Capital, Los Alamos, Robertson, Santa Fe, and St. Michael’s high schools. — B.S.

Jayne Aubele New Mexico’s Geological Landscape and Its Effect on Our Culture and Social History January 30 | 6pm Dr. Stephen Lekson Of Noble Kings Descended: Colonial Documents and the Ancient Southwest February 27 | 6pm Dr. Thomas Chavez The Diplomacy of Independence: Benjamin Franklin and Spain March 26 | 6pm St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art Tickets $10, Free for Members of Las Golondrinas and MNMF Reserve your tickets online at golondrinas.org!

Partially funded by the city of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax, County of Santa Fe Lodgers’ Tax, and New Mexico Arts.

Friday, January 12, and Saturday, January 13 Popejoy Hall University of New Mexico, 203 Cornell Drive, Albuquerque Costs vary

Self Portrait by Daylight, a 22-by18-inch charcoal-on-newsprint piece created by Steven Eckert in 2023, is part of Unlimited Breadsticks, running through February 1 at the Santa Fe Community College Visual Art Gallery.

COURTESY SANTA FE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Coronado Paint & Decorating 2929 Cerrillos Rd, Santa Fe, NM M-F: 7:30 am - 5:30 pm Sat: 9:00 am - 1:00 pm, Sun: Closed (505) 473-5333 www.coronadodecoratingwindows.com

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

IN OTHER WORDS

Her tale to tell

The Ballad of Plácida Romero recounts one woman’s harrowing and heroic fight for survival Robin Martin l The New Mexican REGIONAL HISTORY

THE BALLAD OF PLÁCIDA ROMERO: A WOMAN’S CAPTIVITY AND REDEMPTION by A.E. “Bob” Roland, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2022, 140 pages

A Dios le pido memoria y permiso al mundo entero para dictar esta historia de la Placida Romero que tal ves sera notoria en y fuera de Cubero

 I beg God for my memory And permission of the entire world To tell this story Of Plácida Romero Who perhaps might well be famous Inside and outside of Cubero.

Above: Plácida Romero’s granddaughter Rosa Trujillo holds a photo of her mother, Manuelita Armijo (left), and Plácida in a photo of three generations that appears on the book cover. Right: Plácida’s brother, Calletano Romero, pictured with his wife, Apolonia, had taken Manuelita and Plácida’s other children from the ranch a day prior to the kidnapping of Plácida and the infant daughter who had remained with her.

10 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

PHOTO COURTESY MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO PRESS

PHOTO MIGUEL GANDERT/COURTESY MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO PRESS

he story of the 1881 kidnapping of Plácida Romero is a slice of New Mexico folklore that was preserved in a Spanish ballad, capturing the essence of Plácida, a strong woman who persevered to have her tale of misfortune and survival told, placing her firmly in the pantheon of New Mexican heroes. Her story — and the ballad — are detailed in The Ballad of Plácida Romero: A Woman’s Captivity and Redemption, released in November by the Museum of New Mexico Press, by New Mexico history buff and Grants author Aulton E. “Bob” Roland. The author includes the 26-verse ballad that Plácida — with the help of neighbor María Gutierrez — composed. His succeeding chapters give the story context with maps, photos, reprinted newspaper articles, and a family tree. Scholar Enrique Lamadrid and poet Leslie Marmon Silko provided the introduction and the afterword. Plácida, as Roland recounts, did not have an easy life. She was born in 1853 in Valencia County, south of what is now the Interstate 40 town of Grants, and by the age of 12 or 13, she had delivered her first child. Several years later, she married Domingo Gallegos and bore more children. The family lived at the remote Cebolla Springs Ranch.

PHOTO BEN WITTICK, CIRCA 1880-90, PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS PHOTO ARCHIVES/COURTESY MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO PRESS

On the day the ballad begins, August 8, 1881, Plácida and Domingo were having breakfast. They were alone at the ranch except for their 9-month-old daughter, Trinidad, and Domingo’s ranching partner, José María Vargas. Her brother, Calletano Romero, had taken the couple’s other five children to Cubero, where they would celebrate the Feast Day of the town’s patron saint, San Lorenzo. The couple saw a dozen Navajo acquaintances approaching, along with a group of seven Apaches. According to information compiled by Roland, this was how Plácida’s travails began. Domingo was a good shot, and the Navajos knew it, so they asked him to demonstrate to their Apache companions. Domingo didn’t realize he was being tricked and complied, set up a target, and emptied his gun, showing off his skill. When he had no more bullets, the visitors shot him, beat his head with a branding iron, and threw his body into the chicken house. When José María heard the commotion and came to help, the raiders killed him and left his body near the corral. They took Plácida and her baby captive, riding on to find more victims. The leader of the Apache band was 66-year-old Nana, nephew of Chief Victorio, whose war party had raided many settlements in the Southwest before being killed in October of the previous year by Mexican militia; many warriors were executed, and more than 90 women and children enslaved. The murders and kidnapping at Cebolla Springs were part of a revenge raid by Victorio’s surviving warriors. At Mesa Escoba, the Apaches parted with their Navajo guides. Navajo families took Plácida’s daughter, Trinidad, into their encampment. En la mesa de la Escoba sequedo mi hija querida Hay Sierra de la Sebolla por que fuistes tan esquiba las piedras los palos lloran a verme salir cautiba.

 PHOTO A.E. ROLAND/COURTESY MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO PRESS

On the Mesa de la Escoba I left behind my beloved daughter Oh Sierra de la Sebolla Why were you so disdainful The rocks and the trees weep On seeing me captive. The Apaches continued raiding with Plácida in tow, escaping from an engagement with U.S. Buffalo Soldiers. Some 60 miles away, a splinter group of Nana’s Apaches attacked Rancho García, killing six people and stealing horses — they kidnapped 9-year-old Procopio García, who joined Plácida on her trip south. As the war party headed south to Mexico, the warriors killed miners, settlers, and travelers they met along the way and battled U.S. troops. The party arrived in Mexico on August 23 and proceeded to an Apache camp near San Buenaventura, where their wives and children were camped. But there was hope for Plácida — as the men skirmished with Mexican soldiers on September 25, Apache women helped Plácida and Procopio escape, giving them a burro and food. En que trabajo me he visto con estos indios tiranos ho Sierra Madre del Cristo donde Dios me dio sus manos y donde libre me he visto y en los manos de Cristianos

Top to bottom: Nana, chief of the Warm Spring Apaches, led the party that kidnapped Plácida in 1881.

continued on Page 12

Plácida’s grave can be found at the Campo Santo Viejo de Cubero. She died around 1902 at about age 50.

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

Ballad, continued from Page 11

Upcoming shows at the Lensic 12

JAN

In what travail I’ve seen myself With those tyrannical Indians Oh Sierra Madre del Cristo Where God gave me his help And where I found myself free And in the hands of Christians

LEO KOTTKE

TONIGHT! 7:30 PM

PHOTO CHRISTOPHER BUELL

JUD DITH HILL

FEB



Stellar powerhouse vocals —ROLLING STONE

FEB

MAR

ROSANNE CASH

SOLD OUT!

NEKO CASE

APR

CHRIS BOTTI

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

APR

MAY

ANGEL OLSEN

SARAH JAROSZ

M O R E I N F O AT L E N S I C .O R G 12 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

Plácida survived her 49-day captivity but had been raped. A Mexican posse that was chasing Nana found Plácida and Procopio and took them to the U.S. border, where they waited months for family to collect them. Plácida’s brother, Calletano, arrived in a wagon and took her to back to Cubero, arriving in April 1882. But Placida’s ordeal wasn’t over: She gave birth to the baby that resulted from the rape, and this child, also named Trinidad, was nicknamed “La Apacha” by the family after her kidnapper father. Plácida never recovered the older Trinidad, who was raised by Navajos at a settlement called Baca. Plácida begged the authorities to help with the return of the Author A.E. “Bob” Roland (2005) learned child, but a corrupt U.S. Indian of the story from his friend Arty Bibo, who agent would not help. The girl, helped Roland research the events. nicknamed “Colorada” because she had red hair like her mother, grew up among her captors and raised a Diné family. Rancho Cebolla was never inhabited again. Roland’s friend, rancher Arty Bibo, collected stories about Plácida and was able to guide the author to Rancho Cebolla and helped retrace the path of Plácida’s Apache kidnappers. Roland recounts seeing the murdered men’s graves in the chicken house and near the corral, mounds of dirt and rocks. In 1886, Plácida married Víctor Romero, a member of the party who had collected her from the Mexico border. Her ordeal damaged her, causing long fits of weeping, yet she was able to produce the ballad about her story that she and townspeople of Cubero performed in 1900. Her daughters performed the ballad in later years. Many of her children lived long lives and, well into the 20th century, were able to recount their mother’s captivity. Plácida died around 1902 at about age 50. In the book’s afterword, Silko details how the Spanish took Native slaves for hundreds of years and continued the practice into the 19th century. American newcomers also enslaved Indigenous people. Various tribes often raided Spanish settlements for captives, and the cycle of violence went on for centuries. While the ballad of Plácida Romero is a moving account of one of New Mexico’s last slave raids, it unfortunately contains no written music. The last time the original ballad was sung was in 1962 by Felipe Trujillo (married to Plácida’s granddaughter), who died long ago, taking the music with him. The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque preserved other versions of the ballad. To fully understand Plácida’s story, readers should study the book cover to cover. From the foreword by Civil War historian Jerry Thompson, through Roland’s text, to the book’s maps and photos, reprinted contemporary newspaper accounts, and extensive footnotes, the book contains important history nuggets on every page. Roland lives in Grants with his wife, Nelcine, and gives presentations to interested groups and leads tours to Rancho Cebolla. Contact him at 505-287-4365 or rolandbob39@gmail.com. ◀

IN OTHER WORDS

Authenticity tempered with humor drives new Pueblo-set thriller Carina Julig l The New Mexican

CRIME FICTION

REDEMPTION by Deborah J. Ledford, Thomas & Mercer, 2023, 365 pages

In 2016, crime fiction writer Deborah J. Ledford was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment she underwent saved her life, but left her so depleted she couldn’t do any creative writing for the next six years. “Cancer is no fun,” Ledford says of the experience. In 2022, her friend and fellow Arizona writer Isabella Maldonado “kind of lit the fire back in me,” and after signing a contract, she wrote the first draft of a new crime novel in just four months that spring. The draft became Redemption, the first in the Eva “Lightning Dance” Duran series, which was released in September. The novel is set on the Taos Pueblo and follows the eponymous main character, the only Native American and one of just a few female deputies in the Taos County Sheriff’s Office. The book is the first of a two-book contract with mystery and true crime publisher Thomas & Mercer, which Ledford hopes will be extended to a trilogy. The second, titled Havoc, is scheduled for release in July. Ledford, who is part Eastern Band Cherokee, says Thomas & Mercer was searching for a new series by a Native author at the time her creative juices started flowing again. “The timing was just right,” she says. Ledford’s first crime series also features Native American characters but is set in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, where her mother’s side of the family is from. The second book in the series, Snare, took place partially on the Taos Pueblo, which is the setting she chose for her new series. Ledford grew up in Albuquerque and is now based in Phoenix. For her second series, she wanted to focus on a Native American tribe closer to home, “but the Hillermans fully covered the Navajos,” she says with a laugh. “I wanted somewhere that I could go back and forth, and I knew that I wanted to visit and make everything as authentic as I possibly could,” she says. “So I decided on New Mexico because it’s kind of my old stomping grounds.” She had already done a lot of research on the Taos Pueblo for Snare and did more for her new series. Ledford says she was fortunate to be able to speak to many people on the Pueblo who shared their stories with her and answered her questions. “If you do a deep dive on the Internet, you certainly can find everything that I’ve written about, but hearing the stories firsthand is fascinating,” she says. Ledford says figuring out what storylines would be appropriate for her characters was an important part of her process. Redemption incorporates many issues ripped from the headlines, including opioid addiction, kidnapping of Native women, and illegal gun trafficking. The plot centers on Eva’s search for her lifelong best friend, Paloma “White Dove” Arrio, who went missing about 10 days before the novel begins, abandoning her 18-year-old son, Kai. Once a nationally recognized hoop dancer, she was badly injured coming back from a competition in a car crash that killed several fellow dancers and her Navajo husband. Grief and her injuries stopped her from performing and eventually caused her to develop an addiction to opioids. She then entered a downward spiral of stealing from friends and relatives to fuel her addiction, ultimately causing her banishment from the Pueblo. Eva is one of the few people who hasn’t given up on Paloma, and when she doesn’t show up after a couple days, Eva starts to worry. Kai insists Eva use her police skills to search for his mother, even though she hasn’t officially been declared a missing person. She agrees and enlists the help of her friend (and

occasional lover) Cruz “Wolf Song” Romero, an officer on the Tribal police force. In the meantime, she tries to foster a relationship between Kai and his uncle Santiago, a powerful tribal official who’s been burned one too many times by his sister’s actions and is wary of his half-Navajo nephew. As the search continues, several of Paloma’s friends — talented artists in their own right who also fell into the trap of addiction — begin to turn up dead at locations throughout Taos. Autopsies show they died of overdoses, but the circumstances of their deaths don’t add up. Eva is grateful to have the support of the sheriff, who is committed to building a rapport with the Taos Pueblo community, but she worries federal agents will get wind of what’s going on and she’ll be shut out of the investigation. Eva and Cruz race to find out what’s behind the deaths before more victims appear — and pray the next body they find won’t be Paloma’s. Ledford says she’s thrilled to have re-entered the publishing world and is pleased with reactions to Redemption. “People seem to really connect with it,” she says. “I’m really, really happy with the reception I’ve received.” While Redemption doesn’t shy away from heavy topics, it also doesn’t paint a dismal portrait of Indigenous life. The lead character’s sardonic wit infuses the story with plenty of humor, and instead of being battered by forces beyond their control, she and the other characters are the driving agents of the narrative. Ledford has been writing since 2009 but says in recent years, there seems to be more of an appetite for “Native writers writing about Natives.” She credited Diné author and filmmaker Ramona Emerson’s novel Shutter (Soho Crime, 2022) and Cherokee Nation citizen Vanessa Lillie’s novel Blood Sisters (Berkeley, 2023) for making inroads into the mystery genre. “I think also with the success of Dark Winds and Reservation Dogs, finally people are opening their eyes up to it,” she says. “We’re not talking only about plight, we’re not talking only about tragedies. We write about everyday things that happen to people of our own background.” It’s also an opportunity to share Native cultures with people who might not otherwise learn about them or visit a reservation, Ledford says, which is why she worked hard to make sure she was representing everything about the Taos Pueblo as accurately as possible. “I do my very, very best,” she says, “to keep it real and to honor who it is I’m writing about.” ◀ PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

New Year New Team

Welcoming our new producer

Catie Ish

Santa Fe’s Top Selling Team (2023)* *sales volume per SFAR

$82 Million in Volume Sold 97 Homes Sold (2023) Best of Zillow 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

Stephanie Duran

sduran@santaferealestate.com 505 204 2491 / lic # 38495

Amanda Godlove Erwin, mba amanda@amandaerwin.com 505 372 5500 / lic # 53159 duranerwingroup.com Barker Realty

530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 / 505 982 9836 Barker Realty is an exclusive member of Forbes Global Properties. Forbes® is a registered trademark used under license.

santaferealestate.com / forbesglobalproperties.com

Amanda Morris associate

Catie Ish

associate

Stephanie Duran partner

Amanda Godlove Erwin partner

Amelia Robinson associate

Ria Bacigalupa assistant

Your Santa Fe Oasis Awaits Built to Showcase Extraordinary Homes

243 Double Arrow Road / $3,700,000 / #202341602 Sherie Stiver Zinn / 505 930 4105 / lic# 42325

Barker Realty

530 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501 / 505 982 9836

Barker Realty is an exclusive member of Forbes Global Properties. Forbes® is a registered trademark used under license.

santaferealestate.com / forbesglobalproperties.com

IN OTHER WORDS

REVIEWS

A beautiful, tricky novel questions the way we tell love stories FIC TION

Cynthia Zarin’s debut novel, Inverno, is a beautiful, tricky, compressed gem of a book that seems determined to upend your expectations of it. Though it’s short, it follows its two characters across decades. Though it’s mostly set in New York, it makes abrupt detours to Italy and Somalia. Though a romance is at its center, the prevailing mood is heartbreak and a chilliness implied by its title — Italian for “winter.” And though Inverno is Zarin’s first novel, it carries the grace and intellectual heft of her decades as a poet, where she’s specialized in elegant, fragile, metaphorically rich verse, in the vein of Louise Glück or Elizabeth Bishop. Emphasis on fragile for this novel: Its two lead characters seem to be forever on the brink. We first meet the protagonist, Caroline, in the early 2010s walking through a snowy Central Park, waiting for a call from an ex-lover, Alastair. The reason for their impending talk isn’t entirely clear — a tryst? a reconciliation? a fight? — but Caroline’s need is urgent and sensual. She “had her cell phone in her glove so that she would feel it on her palm if he called.” From there, the novel begins to flow backward and forward in time, sometimes shifting course in the middle of a paragraph. The images that emerge start to shed light on the pair’s lives, but only dimly, as if everybody is hesitant to confess their past sins. Caroline is a well-off New Yorker, married twice, unhappily, and the product of an abusive home. Alastair suffered a closed-off mother and was so desperate to escape as

INVERNO by Cynthia Zarin, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 132 pages Mark Athitakis I For The Washington Post

a child that one night he headed to Central Park and, absurdly, attempted to carve out a hiding place with a pen knife. A lifelong urge to spread outward has gripped him — he grew up to become a journalist, thinking for a time he’d move to Somalia. It’s not entirely clear if, for Caroline, he’s the one who got away or a bullet she’s dodged. Processing all this, Caroline can’t seem to keep her memories under control: “The truth changes as she gets hold of it, like a kite or a snake; it does not like to be held, it thrashes.” Zarin’s book does much the same, which is sure to exasperate some readers — the book returns, fuguelike, to Caroline’s waiting in the snowy park, only for her mind to rocket off in a new direction. In the same way that the plot of Inverno involves obsession with the past, the novel itself is something of a throwback. Its stream-of-consciousness narration evokes Virginia Woolf or Italo Calvino, and its meta structure — we get glimpses of an author writing Caroline and Alastair into existence — suggests the postmodern experimentalists who followed their lead. But this is very much Zarin’s book, marked by a lyricism that turns its deliberate disarray into a kind of poetic logic — Caroline and Alastair’s lives are like line breaks, snapped off in unexpected places. Alastair’s instinct for self-sabotage is severe; we learn that he has intentionally infected himself with poison ivy and flagellated himself with a belt. Caroline

describes him, at one point, as a “madman.” But in the moments when their lives brush together, all that pain practically sings: When “Caroline put her arms around Alastair steamy from the shower, his hand at his throat where he had just loosened his tie, she felt the small lizard of fear, a tiny hunch, skitter across his shoulder blades.” The mood is so gentle yet intense that Caroline kissing his shirt on the shoulder feels like a deeply erotic act. Such fleeting moments highlight how this is ultimately a story about fracture, about how hard it is to connect across time and distance. “This world like a knife,” Zarin writes more than once, implying that we’re always at risk of a schism. A different, more conventional novel might make Caroline and Alastair’s story less opaque and put their romance in clearer context. But that would make for a less graceful, less universal book. Zarin’s approach dispenses with a story arc, but for a purpose: to question the stories we spin about our love relationships. Beyond that somber theme, Inverno is also lavish with detail, filled with gorgeous imagery of New York in winter and family gatherings in sultry summers. (One beautiful passage tracks the paths of ants and fireflies on a porch on a warm night.) The novel evokes the Joseph Cornell shadow boxes that Zarin mentions early on, beautiful but abstract dioramas of stray mementos. It makes for a lovely story, if one that requires accepting the idea that any honest reckoning with our lives is told out of time, splintered and unfinished. ◀ Mark Athitakis is a critic in Phoenix and the author of The New Midwest.

An awkward alien reports from Earth by fax machine FIC TION

“He was too good for this earth,” Abraham Lincoln said of a son who died young. So it seems was Adina Talve-Goodman, an aspiring writer who survived a heart transplant only to perish of cancer at 31 in 2018 (her essays were published posthumously) and is acknowledged by Marie-Helene Bertino at the conclusion of her astonishing third novel, Beautyland. Bertino’s protagonist is also named Adina, which means “noble” or “delicate” depending on the source. 16 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

BEAUTYLAND by Marie-Helene Bertino, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 336 pages Alexandra Jacobs I The New York Times Before we went down internet rabbit holes to scrabble up such information, Beautyland reminds us, we were fascinated by black holes. Never mind the fault in our stars (though one character gets cancer as well), this is a book that exults in them. The fictional Adina may be too good for this earth, but more significant: She is not exactly of it, having been somehow sent pre-utero by alien life-forms on an endangered planet — “her superiors” — to find out if they can live here, endangered though it also is. In one

of Bertino’s cleverest conceits, Adina communicates with them from a very young age by fax machine. Beautyland begins in the late 1970s, when the American space program had passed through the wide-eyed phases of Project Mercury and the moon landing and become a little more, well, mundane. Star Wars was in movie theaters and Johnny Carson was making fun of his frequent guest Carl Sagan, who, Adina faxes, is “a polarizing astronomer who wears natty turtleneck-blazer combos and has been

An ineffable sadness and sense of resignation hang over Beautyland, which refuses to give in to sentimentality or serendipity or the idea of everything working out for a reason.

denied Harvard tenure for being too Hollywood.” (“YES WE KNOW ABOUT HIM AND HIS TURTLENECKS,” the superiors write back wearily.) Though Adina’s consciousness is expansive, her orbit is constricted — she is vulnerable, a mollusk without a shell, like E.T., another of the era’s cultural touchstones, though passing as a human. She grows up skinny, bucktoothed, myopic, and sensitive to sounds in a sinking home in Logan Triangle, Philadelphia. Her single, Sicilian mother serves boiled chicken and drives a Volkswagen that has to be prayed up hills. The popular girls adopt Adina, then shun her. She gravitates to New York City, where one of her longer missives concerns the vagaries of alternate side street parking. As messages from her superiors mysteriously begin to recede, locals step up. “Trust the group,” a halal vendor tells her. “Living in New York,” Adina writes in a notebook, “is like sitting at a nine-million-person blackjack table. We work together against the dealer.” The story closely and lovingly follows her Sisyphean life of promise — she is “gifted,” at both acting and writing, but quickly learns Earth is not a meritocracy — through to the 2017 discovery of the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua and her first foray onto Twitter, where she attracts 650,000 followers after writing a memoir about being an alien, whose veracity is hotly debated online. Like its heroine’s name, Beautyland is titled Beautyland for a reason, and it’s not just because, as writer Amy Sohn has noted, “Land is the new Nation” in book titles. It’s the name of the cosmetics supply store where Adina’s mother stocks up on eightounce bottles of Jean Naté, a dash of glamour to sweeten her job working at a facility for the disabled; and where the arrival of John Frieda’s Frizz-Ease, circa 1989, is announced as a major event. It takes an alien, perhaps, to remind us how much of femininity is a disguise, armor — shell. For Adina the world is divided by gender, yes — as when that clique of more confidently coifed high school girls decides to exclude you for the sin of laughing after your high school crush reveals his penis, which looks like an “angry mushroom,” rather than doing his bidding. But otherness is a more central theme. Where humans zag, Adina zigs: hating the Beatles, believing Yoko the true artist. Bound lobsters in tanks and season finales on TV make her cry (“the Worst Feeling”) or even vomit. She submits to a boyfriend, a pianist with synesthesia, only because she suspects he too is from another planet. An ineffable sadness and sense of resignation hang over Beautyland, which refuses to give in to sentimentality or serendipity or the idea of everything working out for a reason. Being an alien here might just be a metaphor for the difficult blessing of feeling enough apart from the thrum of life on Earth to report on its goings-on: to tell a story. ◀

NM residents use code MONDAYFUNDAY for half price admission from 3pm-8pm meow.wf

Get your tickets at meow.wf/santafeshows PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

Spencer Fordin l The New Mexican

Dream catchers

OT OS TH IS PA G

COMMUNITY CRUSADERS

EC OU R

ARE TRANSFORMING

TES YJ U

A DAY OF SERVICE INTO

STI C EC OD

aia Brown considers herself more of a networker than an activist. But when she sensed a niche and a way she could help her local community, she went right to work. Brown, a teacher in the Albuquerque Public Schools, reacted to the social upheaval of the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic by creating Justice Code, an organization dedicated to nurturing opportunities for kids in New Mexico to excel in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) fields. The ultimate goal, she says, isn’t just to help students improve across the board in subjects they haven’t excelled in; it’s ultimately to prepare the next generation of New Mexico residents to find careers at places like Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. “There are a plethora of high-paying and highdemand STEAM jobs here,” says Brown. “Justice Code is the answer to a problem I was wondering how I could help to solve. … We’re preparing local talent here in New Mexico to fill the jobs right here.” Brown, and others like her, are dedicated to serving their communities year-round and into the future, furthering the service-oriented mission bestowed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, January 15 — also known as the day we observe the birthday of the enigmatic leader of the Civil Rights Movement. Brown knows how STEAM opportunities can change lives and impact futures. She grew up in Chicago, later teaching high school there, then moved to New Mexico to follow a family member who worked for Honeywell International, an aerospace and technology company that has a facility in Albuquerque. Over the last few years, Brown built Justice Code to reach more people. Currently, about 60 students, mostly based in New Mexico, participate, and they 18 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

A LIFETIME OF CHANGE

meet twice a week to study, both in person and remotely, and to also build relationships. Justice Code is staffed by volunteers, and Brown says it has partners such as the Supercomputing Challenge, the Computer Science Alliance, and the Igbo Union of New Mexico, a nonprofit representing the Igbo people from southeastern Nigeria who are committed to preserving the Igbo culture and other minority communities in New Mexico. Justice Code takes students to participate in such community service endeavors as serving at food banks and to such competitions as the Supercomputing Challenge and the Try-Math-A-Lon, sponsored by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). One of Brown’s star pupils, Aileen Ukwuoma, was recently named a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist. Ukwuoma, a senior at Early College Academy in Albuquerque, serves as Justice Code’s junior president and earned a handful of awards at the NSBE National Convention last March. Ukwuoma says she has been a part of Justice Code since her freshman year, and that it’s helped increase her knowledge of computer science as well as her cultural roots. “Justice Code has enriched my life in so many different ways,” she says. “Academically. Culturally. It’s allowed me to connect with Black history and with the Igbo community.” Another student, Mekhi Bradford, is just 13 but already has big plans. Bradford serves as Justice Code’s

student ambassador and says he hopes to study law at Georgetown University. He adds that he sees students’ imaginations fired up by competing in challenges in which they try to imagine how a future city might work. All the students, in fact, are expected to compete in at least one challenge per year. Many are learning coding and robotics and other growth-industry areas, and Brown says even if they don’t pursue a career in those fields, Justice Code helps by creating “global citizens.” “They might end up working with somebody who grew up in Hawaii. They might end up working with somebody who grew up in Brazil,” she says. “We’re preparing them, for whatever they are in life, to have less biases and more empathy.” Justice Code is seeking volunteers with experience in any of the STEM or STEAM fields to help educate and nurture the students, Brown says, and is also seeking to raise about $100,000 to send the kids and their chaperones to the NSBE National Convention in Atlanta in March. To continue to grow and serve more students, Brown says the organization needs more volunteers in non-technical areas too, including those who can help plan community events or who can volunteer to make sure the kids are safe. Some volunteers, Brown says, help behind the scenes by using their skill sets to assist Justice Code in whatever manner they can. “Justice Code works,” she says, “because we all work in our areas of giftedness.”

Cathryn McGill, the founder and CEO of the New Mexico Black Leadership Council, says that with test scores in crisis, it’s incumbent on society to do whatever it can to reverse the trend. McGill hopes to recruit 50 volunteers of her own to assist in mentoring Albuquerque Public Schools students, and she looks at Justice Code as a template. “They sort of embody the principles of youth empowerment and being able to prepare young people for careers that will put them on the path to wage self-sufficiency,” she says. “They go against the belief that students of color can’t be good at math and STEM fields; they’re walking the talk as it relates to that. It Opposite page (top to bottom): also shows community organizations Justice Code student Aileen are so very needed to change the narUkwuoma received four awards at rative in public school systems about the 2023 National Society of Black these particular fields of endeavor.” Engineers (NSBE) National ConvenMcGill’s program, which she’s tion in Kansas City, Missouri. Led by executive director Caia Brown, developing as a pilot, would recruit members of Justice Code take part eight volunteers for six different in the 2023 MLK Commemorative Title 1 Albuquerque schools and two March/Parade in Albuquerque. volunteers that could float between Justice Code’s FIRST LEGO League the six schools. The volunteers just Explore team members show off two of the three awards they need to have flexible schedules and be received at the 2023 NSBE National invested in their community. Convention. If the program works, she hopes to expand it to other cities. In light of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, McGill says people should be asking how they can be of service not just on this day, but well into the future. “I believe it’s possible for people to commit to assisting this organization, or another, not just on MLK Day and then going away and saying, ‘I’ve done what I could,’” she says. “If there are people who have money or a talent they can contribute or some other treasure, those contributions can be made 365 days a year. Perhaps the Day of Service can be said to be taking personal responsibility for making our communities better year-round. Whether you have kids in the public school system or not, it’s in all of our benefit to see Learn more about these kids thrive.” ◀

While in St. Augustine, Florida, on June 19, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. learned that the senate passed the civil rights bill. King commented, “This is the dawn of a new hope.” The Civil Rights Act would be signed into law on July 2, 1964.

($*'!'$ &)*#"+% T THE KING RETURNS ELVIS IS BACK IN THE BUILDING

THE ONLY FATHER & SON ELVIS TRIBUTE SHOW IN THE NATION! 90 Minute Performances | 3 Shows

4 pm | Fri-Sat-Sun Jan. 26, 27 & 28 WIN SHOW TICKETS IN THE CASINO OR $20 AT THE DOOR !"% #$$

!" #

FRI. SAT. & SUN. • JANUARY 26, 27 & 28

FRI. & SAT. SHOWTIMES:

volunteering or supporting Justice Code at 505-226-2832 or justicecode.org. To learn more about Cathryn McGill’s work with Albuquerque Public Schools, call 505-407-6784 or email info@nmblc.org. The New Mexico Black Leadership Council offers a variety of resources and information on events, programs, and youth-oriented support services.

6:30 p.m. & 8:30 p.m.

SUN. SHOWTIMES: 6:30 p.m. COUNCIL’S BALLROOM

MC/HOST: CARLOS MEDINA

HEADLINER: MIKE PACE

FEATURING: JOHN PADON

WIN SHOW TICKETS IN THE CASINO OR $10 AT THE DOOR

NEW!

$&!' ( %"## AP PHOTO

Find additional resources and information about this weekend’s events — including the MLK Commemorative March/Parade at 10 a.m. Saturday, January 13, at UNM — at the New Mexico MLK State Commission website, nmmlksc.org.

$("* ) !%& ')# )(

Wednesday Nights At the Cottonwood Lounge 6-9m Live Jazz Bands Chef Ruben’s Prime Rib Special $19 - 3 pm to 9 pm While it lasts Happy Hour 4pm to 6pm Featuring New Mexico Wines Half Price Wine 4-10pm

FOODFOOD & JANUARY & BEVERAGE SPECIALS The Cottonwood Kitchen Sun: Chef Ruben’s Special Tues: Taco Tuesdays 3 for $10 Wed: Prime Rib Special-$19 Thurs: Chef Ruben’s Pasta Fri: Seafood Special Fish & Shrimp Basket-$15 Sat: Prime Rib Special-$19 The Cottonwood Lounge NFL Viewing Sun-Mon-Thurs All Playoff Games Tues, Wed, Fri & Sat Live Entertainment

0$2.4.$&+2/'%9&%*

(/31-+) ;#75;" :,/0 86!6

Happy Hour 4pm to 6pm PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

JANUARY The Met Live in HD series at the Lensic launches its 2024 season on January 27 with Carmen starring Aigul Akhmetshina, one of the world’s hottest young mezzos, in the title role. She’s partnered by tenor Piotr Beczała as Don José and soprano Angel Blue as Micaëla, in a new production that emphasizes the characters’ desires to break through societal boundaries.

COURTESY METROPOLITAN OPERA

C• ool C ulture Mark Tiarks and Spencer Fordin THE NEW MEXICAN

DISCONTENTED WITH WINTER? GET OUT OF THE HOUSE FOR SOME GLORIOUS EVENTS

continued on Page 22

Top: Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash Left: Composer Terence Blanchard Opposite page: Tenor Piotr Beczała as Don José and mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina in the title role perform in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Carmen.

PHOTO CEDRIC ANGELES

20 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

Even if you’re not a skier, shredder,, or snowshoer, there’s plenty going on in and around Santa Fe this winter and spring to tempt you out of the house. We’ve compiled a roundup of 19 offerings from the arts and culture calendar that we think deserve your special attention, not to mention your ticket-buying dollars, so get out there and help these great organizations (and others) have a happy new year! (See sidebars for contact and ticket information.)

The Grammy Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is up first this month, in a February 10 appearance for the Los Alamos Concert Association at Los Alamos High School’s Smith Auditorium. The program features Romani music from Hungary and the Balkans and the composers it influenced, who include J.S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Aaron Copland. It takes real skill to parody something as difficult to master as classic ballet, which Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo has been doing for 50 years. The all-male troupe dons tutus and pointe shoes to plié and jeté its way into your hearts and funny bones at the Lensic on February 12 as part of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet season. All these years later, she’s still got that “Seven Year Ache.” Rosanne Cash has been touring and releasing critically acclaimed albums for four decades, and she’s coming to both Albuquerque (February 13, Kimo Theatre) and Santa Fe (February 14, the Lensic), courtesy of Lensic 360. Cash, the eldest daughter of Americana music legend Johnny Cash, was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contributions to American art and culture in 2021. The New Mexico Philharmonic tackles Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 on February 17 at UNM’s Popejoy Hall. The five-movement, circa 90-minute work is a deeply emotional exploration of life, death, and what lies beyond, in music that ranges from despairing to exultant, told by an enormous orchestra, large chorus, and two soprano soloists. (If you’ve seen the recent film Maestro, it’s the piece Leonard Bernstein conducts in Ely Cathedral.) Terence Blanchard is on a roll. The seven-time Grammy Award-winning trumpeter and composer recently brought his opera about boxer Emile Griffith, Champion, to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones made

PHOTO STACIE MCCHESNEY/TED

FEBRUARY

• PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

Cool culture, continued from Page 21 history in 2021 as the first work by a Black composer performed at the Metropolitan Opera. Here in Santa Fe, though, Blanchard will be working in the jazz genre, and his performance at the Lensic on February 22 will be a tribute to composer Wayne Shorter.

PHOTO EBRU YILDIZ

The legendary bluesman Taj Mahal (birth name Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., the son of a jazz arranger from Saint Kitts and Nevis) hits town on March 1, under the Lensic Presents banner. A three-time Grammy Award-winner, he’s best known for expanding the blues vocabulary to include influences from India, the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific. Gambian composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Sona Jobarteh opens the program. The Santa Fe Playhouse season begins with a pair of plays — Or, and Born With Teeth — by Liz Duffy Adams that will be running in repertory together March 6-31. Or, takes the audience back in time to the 17th century for a comedic look at a day in the life of Aphra Behn, one of the first women professional playwrights. Born With Teeth, another play set in historical times, stars William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe as its characters. Born With Teeth premiered in Houston in 2022 and won multiple awards at the Houston Theater Awards. Get ready for one of the great American voices. Alt-country and indie rock chanteuse Neko Case has gained great distinction on her own intricately written and impeccably performed albums. You may also recognize her powerful contralto as one of the most prominent instruments for indie rock supergroup The New Pornographers. She released her latest solo album, Hell-On, in 2018, and released a career retrospective, Wild Creatures, in 2022. She appears as part of Lensic 360 on March 30 at the Lensic.

PHOTO ALYSSE GAFKJEN

MARCH

APRIL Americana is on the menu when the Old 97’s cruise into town to play the Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery on April 3. The Dallas-based roots band fronted by Rhett Miller has moved from alt-country to power pop over the years, and their name refers to a famous American railroad disaster that occurred in 1903. Their 12th and most recent album — fittingly titled Twelfth — came out in 2020. Miller has also released a number of solo albums and pushed the boundaries of his work farther with The Misfit in 2022, which leaned a little more into electronica and psychedelia. Family Ties alumni Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross give four staged readings of Talley’s Folly as a benefit for New Mexico Actors Lab from April 11-14. (The final performance is followed by a meet-the-cast reception.) Lanford Wilson’s twohander, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, is a romantic comedy about two seemingly mismatched sweethearts. Angel Olsen doesn’t believe in wasting time. The indie rock singer-songwriter has released three albums in the last four years — All Mirrors in 2019, Whole New Mess in 2020, and Big Time in 2022 — and all show off a diverse array of sounds. All Mirrors was recorded with a 14-piece orchestra, and Whole New Mess features the same songs stripped down. Olsen takes a continued on Page 24

22 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

•

Top, from left: Musicians Neko Case, Old 97s, and Taj Mahal Bottom, from left: Actors Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, and playwright Liz Duffy Adams

WHERE TO BUY Aspen Santa Fe Ballet 505-988-1234 (Lensic box office); aspensantafeballet.com Chatter chatterabq.org Lensic Presents & Lensic 360 505-988-1234; lensic.org Los Alamos Concert Association 505-662-9000; losalamosconcert.org The Met: Live in HD 505-988-1234; lensic.org PHOTO ALEX BROWN

New Mexico Actors Lab 505-395-6576; nmactorslab.com

Opera Southwest operasouthwest.org

THAT’S S THE TIC CKET

•

New Mexico Philharmonic 505-323-4343; nmphil.org

Performance Santa Fe 505-984-8759; performancesantafe.org Santa Fe Playhouse 505-988-4262; santafeplayhouse.org Santa Fe Pro Musica 505-988-4640; sfpromusica.org Santa Fe Symphony 505-983-1414; santafesymphony.org Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery 505-303-3808; tumblerootbreweryanddistillery.com

WHERE TO GO Center for Contemporary Art 1050 Old Pecos Trail Lensic Performing Arts Center 211 W. San Francisco Street Los Alamos High School 1300 Diamond Drive National Hispanic Cultural Center 1701 Fourth Street SW, Albuquerque New Mexico Actors Lab 1213 Parkway Drive, Suite B Popejoy Hall, UNM 203 Cornell Drive, Albuquerque St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art 107 W. Palace Avenue Santa Fe Playhouse 142 East De Vargas Street Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery 2791 Agua Fria Street

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

•

Cool culture, continued from Page 22

Top to bottom: Musician Sarah Jarosz Soprano Ana María Martínez Playwright Eleanor Burgess

24 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

little country turn on Big Time, returning to the roots of early albums like the 2012 release Half Way Home. She performs at the Lensic (presented by Lensic 360) April 15. Jordi Savall, one of the world’s leading early music specialists, comes to Santa Fe with his Hespèrion XXI ensemble on April 16, thanks to Performance Santa Fe. Savall, who has made more than 200 recordings, pioneered a highly energetic playing style combined with historical accuracy in performances; his repertory here focuses on Baroque-era musical gems by less-familiar composers. Santa Fe Pro Musica closed its prior season with Haydn’s sublime oratorio The Creation. This year, it travels to the opposite end of the spectrum for Mozart’s Requiem, an exceptionally powerful work no matter how much of it he actually completed before his death. Co-founder and conductor laureate Thomas O’Connor leads the performances at the Lensic on April 27 and 28.

MAY Opera Southwest has become New Mexico’s most creative opera company, thanks to its repertory and production choices. Its commitment to Spanish-language programming continues in 2024 with six performances of Carmen. That’s not a typo — it’s being sung in a Spanish translation created in 1904 for a Barcelona opera company. It runs May 4-12 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Rotating repertory continues in May at New Mexico Actors Lab, with two plays centered on professor/student conflicts. Opening on May 8 is Eleanor Burgess’ The Niceties, which The New York Times called “a bristling, provocative debate-play about race and privilege.” David Mamet’s Oleanna follows on May 15; it deals with sexual harassment and was inspired by the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy. Both run through May 23. It’s a political play for a political time, and Heidi Schreck succeeded in tapping something universal by telling her own personal story. Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, which she wrote and starred in, was named a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and it takes place in two timelines — the present day and when the author was a teenaged competitor in a debate society. Schreck’s writing addresses a number of themes — such as women’s rights and domestic abuse — and relates personal family anecdotes to famous American historical landmarks. The Santa Fe Playhouse presents the work May 9-June 2. The Santa Fe Symphony ends its 40th anniversary season in high style on May 19 at the Lensic, with Beethoven’s titanic “Choral” Symphony No. 9, featuring a quartet of recent Santa Fe Opera apprentices as soloists, along with soprano Ana María Martínez performing Hector Berlioz’s luminous song cycle Les Nuits d’Été (Summer Nights). Sarah Jarosz, a mandolin-and-banjo virtuoso from Wimberly, Texas, has been hailed as one of the brightest acts in bluegrass, and she’s won a Grammy Award for best album in both the Folk and Americana categories. Jarosz will be touring behind her latest album, Polaroid Lovers, which is set to be released on January 26, when she plays the Lensic for Lensic 360 on May 28.

Get Your News Your Way, Every Day

AFTER CHRISTMAS

SALE & CLEARANCE LIMITED TIME SAVINGS DEC. 26 - JAN. 14

ENTIRE STOCK OF ORNAMENTS

% OFF

SELECT HOLIDAY DÉCOR

50 5

Print and digital subscription plans available to meet your needs. Save up to 56% off the newsstand price.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY santafenewmexican.com/subscribe

Retail $25 - $35

OFF O

E ENTIRE STOCK OF DISCONTINUED PRODUCT

*HURRY IN FOR BEST SELECTION

Nambé at 924 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501 P: 505.988.5528 Nambé at 104 W. San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 P: 505.988.3574 Nambé in Pojoaque. 90 Cities of Gold Road, Santa Fe, NM 87506 P: 505.455.2731

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

COMIDAS Y MAS

Humble pie

Baker Karina Lira rolls in the dough at Harry’s Roadhouse Spencer Fordin l The New Mexican

TWO DAYS, 208 PIES — and only eight hands to make it

PHOTO SPENCER FORDIN/THE NEW MEXICAN

happen. Karina Lira, the pastry chef at Harry’s Roadhouse, led a team of four through a record pie-making Thanksgiving season that brought sweet fulfillment to the tables of hundreds of families. By the end of the two days, says Kathleen O’Brien, Harry’s owner, nearly every flat surface in the restaurant was covered with a cooling pie. “Every table in the front room and the middle room … and the counter,” she says. “It smelled fantastic. We had to clear four shelves in the walk-in refrigerator.” For Lira, who has been at Harry’s for about a half-dozen years, the Thanksgiving rush is just another crazy time of a crazy year that begins with President’s Day weekend. The full summer brings the numbers of tourists to a peak with Spanish Market, Folk Art Market, and Indian

Market, and Lira even finds herself busy pounding out opera cake during opera season, which kicks off at the end of June. Then there’s Balloon Fiesta before Thanksgiving, which means there’s rarely a quiet moment before the holidays begin. But the hardest part of the job, Lira says, is making sure all the ingredients are ready to go on a regular basis. “Just making sure we have enough dough, enough pie shells for the cold pies, making sure all the fillings are done,” she says. “After that, it’s not too bad. It’s waiting for them to cook and taking them out. I think what really takes the longest is getting them out of the oven.” Baking has been a lifelong passion for Lira, who dresses in pink kitchen attire from head to toe. Growing up in Santa Fe, she began helping her mother make quinceañera and wedding cakes starting at about 5 years old. When she got to Harry’s, she spent several seasons learning her

Apple and coconut cream pies are just two of the many treats pastry chef Karina Lira, a product of the Santa Fe Community College Culinary Arts program, whips up for customers at Harry’s Roadhouse.

26 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

2023–24 SEASON

craft alongside former owner Peyton Young. Lira also spent two years in Santa Fe Community College’s Culinary Arts program, where she studied commercial baking, pastry presentation, and chocolate and sugar work. The chef helps out during Thanksgiving’s frantic assembly process, but Lira says she usually has two people assisting her with the pie-making. Her team starts at about 5 a.m. and usually makes about 20 pies a day and about four or five different varieties. “We’ll sit down with Kathleen a week before and decide what we’d like to do,” she says. “Once we walk in, we do the list, turn on the ovens, and start the morning. We’ll do anything we need for the morning — the

Ti c k e t s $22–$9 2

“Every time I make something, I try to do it with the most amount of love possible. That’s my biggest and most creative ingredient, and I think it makes the pastries almost come to life. I try to put all my energy into it so when you bite into it, you have a burst of love.” — Karina Lira batters and the muffins and the pizza dough — because we need to let them rise. And then we’ll move on to the pies, which are the biggest thing here. We make sure we roll out all the doughs, make the fillings, bake off the ones that take the longest.” Does she have any favorites? Lira loves to make layer cakes and singles out a love of chocolate above everything else. “I like chocolate everything. Chocolate and raspberry,” she says. “Anything with lemon or fresh fruit is great. You can never go wrong with fresh fruit.” Everything at Harry’s is made fresh, she says, including the apple pies, which begin with apples harvested from trees directly outside the restaurant. The apples get peeled, then cut and flavored to the team’s desire. The mixture sits for a day, and when Lira and her team come in the next day, they turn it into one of the restaurant’s signature desserts. “We pre-portion all our dough,” she says. “It has to be made at least one day in advance so that it rests. Then we roll out circles, and we roll out the strips for whichever pies need strips. We make whatever fillings have to be made. Strawberry rhubarb or pecan filling.” There are no secrets to baking, she says, and no ways to cut corners. For the coconut cream pie, for instance, she says you have to take the time to make sure the custard comes out smooth, and that means using a strainer. Her lemon meringue pie is probably her most complicated dessert, and it comes down to making sure that the filling is properly cooked. “We whip the egg whites, and then we make our stabilizer, which is water, sugar, and cornstarch,” she says. “You cook that, and the meringue is whipping. Once the stabilizer is cooked, you slowly put it into the egg whites. You put the juice and the egg whites into the stabilizer; that’s your filling. The filling has to cook. It has to bubble. If it doesn’t bubble, the cornstarch didn’t activate.” The lemon meringue pie, along with the coconut and chocolate cream, are the desserts that need to be pre-cooked; all the other pies cook with their filling and shell together. The veteran baker says that even when she was young, her aunts would ask her what she did to make boxed brownies taste better than theirs. She says the main thing she did was read and follow the recipe. Her process now is mostly the same, although she’s baking for all of Santa Fe and not just family. “Every time I make something, I try to do it with the most amount of love possible,” she says. “That’s my biggest and most creative ingredient, and I think it makes the pastries almost come to life. I try to put all my energy into it so when you bite into it, you have a burst of love.” ◀

DIDEROT QUARTET QUARTET DIDEROT

J.S. Bach’s Bach’s Legacy J.S. Legacy NMFrancis Museum of Art | St.|Francis Auditorium St. Auditorium NM Museum of Art Sun, at 3PM 3 PM SUN, Jan JAN 14 14 at CAROLINE SHAW Punctum BACH BACH selections selections from The Art of the Fugue MENDELSSOHN MENDELSSOHN Quartet Quartet in in A A Minor, Minor, Op. Op. 13 13 J.S. Bach’s legacy permeates this concert, both

J.S. Bach’s legacy permeates this concert, both subtly and overtly, across continents and centuries. subtly and overtly, across continents and centuries.

Why Historical Instruments? Why Historical Conversation and Instruments? Demonstration St. Francis Francis Auditorium Auditorium|| NM NM Museum Museumof of Art Art AM | Free Sun, Jan 14 at 10 SUN, JAN 14 at 10AM | Free

Explore Bach in this fun and festive one-hour concert!

Conversation and Demonstration

505.988.4640 sfpromusica.org

Harry’s Roadhouse 96 B Old Las Vegas Highway 505-989-4629; harrysroadhousesantafe.com

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

MOVING IMAGES I STREAMING PHOTO MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

PHOTO BILL COPPER/ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

Simon Neal is Don Pizarro in Fidelio (left) at the Royal Opera House in London in 2020. Both Fidelio and Der Zwerg (right) were directed by Tobias Kratzer, the latter for the Deutsche Oper in 2019.

4 operas you can stream at home Seth Colter Walls l The New York Times Enjoying opera — fully staged opera — at home has become easier. Recent productions from top European houses have begun to appear for rental and purchase on Amazon Prime Video. So, on an impulse, you can take in these works — and keep them too. (There are other opera-focused streaming platforms, but those rarely allow for purchases.) The productions include rarely staged gems and feature some of today’s boldest directors and greatest vocal talents. Here are four recent additions.

FIDELIO

Tobias Kratzer is a director who is willing to jerk a canonical text around to fit a contemporary concept. In his take on Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio, for the Royal Opera in London in 2020, he upends both acts: The first takes place in a Jacobin milieu, amid the French Revolution; the second, however, departs from historical specificity, showing its chorus in modern dress. This approach fits an opera that has always proved a challenge for straightforward storytelling. Crucially, Kratzer’s direction of singing actors tends to be marvelous; star soprano Lise Davidsen is truly gripping as Leonore. Kratzer makes many small alterations. One involves a partial disrobing by Fidelio (Leonore disguised as a man) in front of Marzelline during the first act. But the humanist impulse of this opera — clearly about more than saving just one man from prison — is emphasized by a strong cast, the Royal Opera orchestra, and the conductor, Antonio Pappano. And Davidsen, 28 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

a powerhouse soprano known for blowing the roof off the Metropolitan Opera, also indulges her talents for delicate scene partnership, as in the early Canon Quartet.

DER SCHATZGRÄBER

Franz Schreker’s music goes almost entirely unplayed in American concert halls and theaters. When it is programmed, you can often tell that it has been produced on the smallest of budgets. That’s too bad, because this early 20th century composer’s music dramas are wild delights. At the hinge of late Romanticism and early modernism, they’re also unabashedly sensual. Music by Schreker, whose father was Jewish, was popular in German houses during the 1920s, but banned by the Nazis after 1933. “For him, eroticism is like a way of escaping from the dilemma of societal failure,” says director Christof Loy, who piloted this staging for the Deutsche Oper in Berlin last year. As with his recent presentation of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane, the production is spare; he often lets singers do the storytelling. And this cast handles Schreker’s lushly complex and demanding idiom with aplomb. As a humble innkeeper’s daughter with an eye for the queen’s jewels, soprano Elisabet Strid is a powerhouse, pivoting between memories of youth, desires for fame, and manipulative seductions. The Deutsche Oper orchestra, under Marc Albrecht, attends to the gorgeousness of Schreker’s style.

LA MORTE D’ORFEO

When Pierre Audi was the artistic leader of the Dutch National Opera, he knew how to throw a festival bash. In 2018, I saw his staging of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo (1619) — which extends the tale Claudio Monteverdi told in L’Orfeo — during the Opera Forward Festival in Amsterdam.

On a recent rewatch, I was delighted to find that this staging still works plenty well. The lightly surreal set design is in line with the abstraction that Audi has brought to Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder and Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise. But Audi’s designs in La Morte have a glam quality. That’s fitting, given the sumptuous allure of this early Baroque music, which receives a fine reading at the hands of Les Talens Lyriques and conductor Christophe Rousset. The cast is great, too, particularly mezzosoprano Cecilia Molinari in multiple roles.

DER ZWERG

OK, one more from Kratzer. This production was for the Deutsche Oper in 2019, with the company’s orchestra led by Donald Runnicles. Alexander von Zemlinsky is another early 20th century composer who could use more fans, and his one-act drama Der Zwerg — about a dwarf (a dual role for actor Mick Morris Mehnert and tenor David Butt Philip) whose romantic hopes are exploited by a superficial court culture — is given wrenching life by Kratzer and his creative team. On this occasion, Kratzer’s anachronisms work wonders. If the selfish, selfie-taking partygoers offer a blunt form of commentary about contemporary beauty standards and those who enforce them, it’s also right on the money when it comes to the pathos of Zemlinsky’s work. Kratzer prefaces the opera with a short orchestral work by Schoenberg, who studied with Zemlinsky. In the director’s pantomimed telling, this morsel depicts Zemlinsky’s doomed love affair with Alma Schindler (later Alma Mahler). It’s an interesting concept, but not as urgently staged as what follows. Still, watching Kratzer take conceptual swings is one of the great delights of opera today — particularly when he is also highlighting repertoire like this. ◀

MOVING IMAGES I REVIEW

The pen is mighty, the pressures mightier AMERICAN FICTION

Amy Nicholson I The New York Times Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is a cagey, cerebral dramedy about a joke that backfires on its author, a stone-faced literature professor named Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) who becomes a pseudonymous success writing a potboiler he loathes. Tweedy, stubborn, and aloof, Ellison, who goes by Monk, specializes in academic reworkings of Ancient Greek plays, i.e. books no one reads. He’s also Black, which gets his books misfiled under “African American fiction” instead of “Mythology” and emboldens editors to insist he urbanize his Aeschylus. The literary world wants another Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) — a pandering sellout, he believes. Early on, Monk wanders into a reading by Sintara of her new bestseller, We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. Cut to a slow horror zoom into his face, eyebrows crinkled upward as if in a prayer for deliverance. Wright, a master of stillness, barely twitches. But you sense his furious inward scream. And so in his childhood home, an upper-class manor with decorative tassels on the staircase and lacrosse sticks leaning against the walls, Monk pounds out My Pafology, a poisonous cocktail of every impoverished Black cliché. “It’s got deadbeat dads, rappers, crack,” he cackles to his agent (John Ortiz), ordering him to send it to publishers as the debut novel from a felon named Stagg R. Leigh. Monk thinks he’s throwing a drink in their faces. This is the swill you want from Black authors? Oops. It is. The whip-smart screenplay updates and expands Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, Erasure. (Everett has also written his own take on Medea.) Jefferson, a firsttime filmmaker whose TV writing credits include Watchmen and The Good Place, builds out the meta implications of a Hollywood producer (Adam Brody) who sees My Pafology as an awards contender (as this movie is, deservedly), and slicks a nouveau-woke

Jeffrey Wright shines in American Fiction, director Cord Jefferson’s adaption of the novel Erasure by Percival Everett.

polish on readers who think they can solve racism by hailing Monk’s pablum as raw and real. One nasally marketer, played by Michael Cyril Creighton, pitches rushing the book’s publication for Juneteenth. “White people will be feeling — let’s be honest — a little conscience stricken,” he says with calculation. Yet, Jefferson — like Monk himself and Everett before them — is clued into the big catch: It’s impossible to write about not wanting to write about race without, bah, writing about race. He directs his comic scenes about Stagg R. Leigh’s snowballing career with bite and snap. They look good in the trailer — in fact, those comic scenes are the only scenes in the trailer. But to make good on his movie’s message, Jefferson is determined to give space to the moments of Monk’s life that don’t hinge on race at all. Can Monk convince his mother (Leslie Uggams) that she needs round-the-clock medical care? Can he drop his guard and connect with his brother (Sterling K. Brown) and sister (Tracee Ellis Ross), and perhaps even a winsome public defender (Erika Alexander)? And must he sell the beach house? Jefferson puts his heart into the moments that even his movie’s own marketing leaves out. Satire is just a wraparound gimmick for a marvelously acted, naturalistic drama about a prickly, privileged Black man and his family, set to Laura Karpman’s tender piano-forward score. The film is radical only in the

HERE Gallery

&'# "+ ,$!## $!+

%*"(-(# !!(�!)� '&!" ! !""" !""#! !"!#!!!

�"! ! $$! '' ! " #'(!(%&!'!%$ !!!!"$$$!!"#$#!$"!"#"%

$!&% !""%&!%## '!!"%%$&% (%!%% $"#!$# !$#+ '" &!" *,

*%"�$ ! !")"

�$$"!!" ,$!!í#"! �"%%# !!#""$"!$

fact that we haven’t seen many like it, a point Jefferson hammers home in a montage of real movies — New Jack City, Precious, Antebellum — cut to promote a cable channel’s Black Stories Month, a hit parade of gunfire, teen pregnancy, and enslavement. There’s a tonal tension in fusing these two movies together, in stitching Monk’s sardonic prank to his soulful reality. The script feels like flashy gold buttons on a hand-knit cardigan. Afterward, you pull at the loose threads: Doesn’t any part of Monk like being a millionaire? (Not that we see.) Does Jefferson actually buy his own ending? (Not likely.) But Jefferson makes the smartest possible moves in a knotty game of chess, like when he conjures up the two fictional leads of My Pafology, Van Go Jenkins (Okieriete Onaodowan) and Willy the Wonker (Keith David), to sip paper-bagged bottles of booze and squint suspiciously at the lines their creator has given them to say. The characters get such a laugh that you figure they’ll keep coming back, but Jefferson limits them to just one scene. No more screen time for stereotypes. Instead, he pans across photos on a wall in the Ellison family’s home, as if to say: Look at all these other human stories that remain to be told. ◀ Comedy/drama, rated R, 117 minutes, Center for Contemporary Arts Cinema, Violet Crown, 4 chiles

“Holding your “Holding your hand through the hand through the entire process” entire process” 20 Years Experience • Over 30

Expert Personalized | Service & Instruction • Over• No 20“Geek YearsSpeak” Experience ExpertHome Personalized & Instruction or Office| |Service Onsite Repairs • Same Day Service Speak” PC•orNo Mac“Geek | iPhones & iPads Home or Office | Onsite Repairs • Remote Access Repairs • Same Day Service PC or Mac | iPhones & iPads

505-919-9055 PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

MOVING IMAGES

CHILE PAGES compiled by Holly Weber

LaKeith Stanfield (far left) plays a streetwise hustler in the shadow of Jesus in Jeymes Samuel’s slightly subversive film The Book of Clarence.

Opening AITAMAAKO’TAMISSKAPI NATOSI: BEFORE THE SUN The feature documentary debut of Banchi Hanuse (Nuxalt) is an intimate portrait of Logan Red Crow, a young Siksika woman preparing for one of the most dangerous horse races in the world, the male-dominated bareback Indian Relay. With the dual pleasures of serenity and suspense, lyrical immersion in rural life alternates with thrilling race footage. As Logan pushes toward her goal, the connections between animal and human, family and community, ancestral tradition and contemporary life are profound and lasting. “Before the Sun excels as a sports documentary. Hanuse presents with clarity, artistry and respect the unmistakable force of the horses and the might required to compete.” (POV Magazine) Documentary, not rated, 90 minutes, CCA AMERICAN FICTION Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Monk (Jeffrey Wright) is a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment that profits from Black entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, he uses a pen name to write an outlandish Black book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain. “This brilliant film not only destroys the single Black narrative, it obliterates it — and puts pressure on every single film dealing with race that will come after.” (Salon) Comedy/drama, rated R, 117 minutes, CCA, Violet Crown. Review Page 29 30 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

ARCHANGEL (1990) Presented in a new 4K restoration, Guy Maddin’s wild and warped Archangel sits between Tales from the Gimli Hospital and Careful in the Maddin filmography and showcases his re-creations of faux early-cinema aesthetics and surrealist sensibility for which he is renowned. The film sets a delirium-dream tale of obsessive love in the remote Russian Arctic town of Archangel during World War I. The war may actually be over, but no one’s remembered to tell onelegged Canadian soldier Boles, beautiful Veronkha, whom Boles confuses for his dead love Iris, or any of the film’s other amnesiac characters, all lost in murky, melodramatic memories of lovers lost or misremembered. “Stylized, convoluted, visionary … A deadpan whatzit of the highest order … Bizarrely romantic … Very delicate in its way — the wilted flowery dialogue and crazed-soap-operatics waft out like incense.” (Village Voice) Comedy/drama, not rated, 90 miutes, CCA THE BEEKEEPER One man’s brutal campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after it’s revealed he’s a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as Beekeepers. With Jason Statham, Jeremy Irons, Minnie Driver, and Josh Hutcherson. Action/thriller, rated R, 105 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Violet Crown THE BOOK OF CLARENCE A down-on-his-luck man struggles to find a better life for his family while fighting to free himself of debt. Captivated by the power and glory of the rising Messiah, he risks

everything to carve his own path to a divine life, ultimately discovering that the redemptive power of belief may be his only way out. With LaKeith Stanfield, James McAvoy, David Oyelowo, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Adventure, rated PG-13, 129 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Violet Crown MEAN GIRLS: THE MUSICAL New student Cady Heron gets welcomed into the top of the social food chain by an elite group of popular girls called the Plastics, ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George. However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, she soon finds herself caught in their crosshairs. Tina Fey updates her 2004 social critique. Musical/comedy, rated PG-13, 112 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown

Special Screenings THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) Saturday, January 13, and Sunday, January 14 When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route they meet a Scarecrow that needs a brain, a Tin Man missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who

SPICY

MEDIUM

MILD

BLAND

HEARTBURN

wants courage. The wizard asks the group to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) to earn his help. Musical/fantasy, rated G, 112 minutes, Jean Cocteau Cinema

Continuing ANSELM 3D Director Wim Wenders creates a portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 3D and 6K-resolution, the film presents a cinematic experience of the artist’s work that explores human existence and the cyclical nature of history, inspired by literature, poetry, philosophy, science, mythology, and religion. For more than two years, Wenders traced Kiefer’s path from his native Germany to his current home in France, connecting the stages of his life to the essential places of his career that spans more than five decades. Documentary, not rated, 93 minutes, Violet Crown ANYONE BUT YOU Despite an amazing first date, Bea and Ben’s initial attraction quickly turns sour. However, when they unexpectedly find themselves at a destination wedding in Australia, they pretend to be the perfect couple to keep up appearances. Romantic comedy, rated R, 104 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Violet Crown AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM After failing to defeat Aquaman (Jason Momoa) the first time, Black Manta wields the power of the mythic Black Trident to unleash an ancient and malevolent force. Hoping to end his reign of terror, Aquaman forges an unlikely alliance with his brother, Orm, the former king of Atlantis. Setting aside their differences, they join forces to protect their kingdom and save the world from irreversible destruction. Action/fantasy, rated PG-13, 124 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6 THE BOY AND THE HERON Twelve-year-old Mahito struggles to settle in a new town after his mother’s death. However, when a talking heron informs Mahito that his mother is still alive, he enters an abandoned tower in search of her, which takes him to another world. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki. “This is not a happy-go-lucky story, but an old-school fairy tale meant to frighten, confuse, and excite. It’s the good kind of scary: the kind that helps prepare children for the terrors of the real world.” (The Washington Post) Fantasy/adventure, rated PG-13, 124 minutes, Violet Crown THE BOYS IN THE BOAT During the height of the Great Depression, members of the rowing team at the University of Washington are thrust into the spotlight as they compete for gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. George Clooney directs. Drama, rated PG-13, 124 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Violet Crown FERRARI During the summer of 1957, bankruptcy looms over the company that Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) and his wife (Penélope Cruz) built 10 years earlier. He decides to roll the dice and wager it all on the iconic Mille Miglia, a treacherous

1,000-mile race across Italy. Drama, rated R, 131 minutes, Violet Crown THE HOLDOVERS A curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War. “This is [director Alexander] Payne’s first movie set in any kind of past … But it doesn’t feel stuck there.” (New York Times) Comedy/drama, rated R, 133 minutes, Violet Crown THE IRON CLAW The true story of the Von Erich brothers, who make history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s. Through tragedy and triumph under the shadow of their domineering father and coach, the brothers seek larger-than-life immortality on the biggest stage in sports. Drama, rated R, 130 minutes, Violet Crown MAESTRO The biographical drama Maestro centers on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Directed by Bradley Cooper from a screenplay he wrote with Josh Singer, the film stars Carey Mulligan as Montealegre alongside Cooper as Bernstein. Maestro uses the love story between Bernstein and Felicia — complicated by Bernstein’s bisexuality — as the impressionistic framing device to cover the renowned conductor’s five decade career. “The most immediately striking aspect of the film is Cooper’s uncanny resemblance to Bernstein. It’s partly a triumph of Hollywood’s skill with prosthetics, makeup, and wigs, but more the way in which Cooper inhabits Bernstein’s personality, magnetism, and physicality.” (Mark Tiarks/For The New Mexican) Musical/romance, rated R, 129 minutes, streaming on Netflix

Box office Center for Contemporary Arts Cinema, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, 505-982-1338, ext.105, ccasantafe.org Dreamcatcher 10, 15 State Road 106, Española; dreamcatcher10.com Jean Cocteau Cinema, 418 Montezuma Ave., 505-466-5528, jeancocteaucinema.com No Name Cinema, 2013 Piñon St., nonamecinema.org Regal Santa Fe Place 6, 4250 Cerrillos Road, 505-424-6109, sfnm.co/3o2Cesk Violet Crown, 106 Alcaldesa St., 505-216-5678, santafe.violetcrown.com

MIGRATION A family of ducks decides to leave the safety of a New England pond for an adventurous trip to Jamaica. However, their well-laid plans quickly go awry when they get lost and wind up in New York City. The experience soon inspires them to expand their horizons, open themselves up to new friends, and accomplish more than they ever thought possible. Featuring the voices of Elizabeth Banks, Kumail Nanjiani, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, Carol Kane, and Danny DeVito. Animated comedy/adventure, rated PG, 91 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6 NIGHT SWIM Forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, former baseball player Ray Waller moves into a new house with his wife and two children. He hopes that the backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for himself. However, a dark secret from the home’s past soon unleashes a malevolent force that drags the family into the depths of inescapable terror. Horror, rated PG-13, 98 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown OPPENHEIMER Christopher Nolan’s biographical feature film about American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. “Murphy embodies Oppenheimer so naturally that you may start thinking you’re watching documentary footage of the real thing. The film humanizes Oppenheimer. … Murphy’s perfect portrayal leaves us with an image of a brilliant mind put to work to kill a nation, a people, and maybe the entire world. There’s a price to pay for that kind of knowledge.” (Robert Nott/The New Mexican) Drama, rated R, 180 minutes, Violet Crown POOR THINGS From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale of the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation. “Beautifully garish, wonderfully twisted, unabashedly raunchy, and at times grotesquely striking.” (Chicago Sun-Times) Sci-fi/fantasy, rated R, 141 minutes, Violet Crown WONKA Armed with nothing but a hatful of dreams, young chocolatier Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) manages to change the world, one delectable bite at a time. “In addition to committing to its sense of fun, Wonka reminds us that life is made sweetest by the people we share it with. If that’s not particularly novel, it’s still as comforting and scrumptious a notion as a chocolate bar.” (Entertainment Weekly) Fantasy/ comedy, rated PG, 116 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown SOURCES: Google, IMDb.com, RottenTomatoes.com, Vimeo. com, YouTube.com

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

STAR CODES

Daniel Nadelbach

Welcoming, Full-Service Club

Santa Fe’s Best Kept Secret – Just Minutes from Downtown!

Golf • Swim • Gym • Spa • Tennis • Pickleball Dining • Bar • Social Activities Memberships Available – Come Join our Community

Find out more at QuailRunSantaFe.com or schedule a tour today: 505-795-7211 • membership@qrsf.com

This Season: Give the Gift of Fitness

Heat Up 2024 STOVE

& FIREPLACE INSERT SALE

CHOOSE FROM GAS, WOOD, PELLET NEW YEARS SAVING EVENT

ENDS JANUARY 31ST

UP TO

30%

20% OFF s u l P OFFERING EASY SELECT MODEL STOVES/INSERTS

FEDERAL TAX CREDIT

ON QUALIFYING STOVES/INSERTS

FINANCING with

LOW MONTHLY PAYMENTS*

OUR SHOWROOM IN SANTA FE

199 Paseo De Peralta

*Finance charges will be waived if promo balance is paid in full in 12 months, on approved credit. Not valid with other offers.

DeVargas Center (east end) 505-982-4210

*On approved credit. Not valid with other offers. See representative for details. **Refer to IRStax code for details on qualifying products and tax credit details. Up to 30% tax credit applies to purchases and installations occurring by 1/31/24.

32 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

THIS IS A WEEK TO ACCOMPLISH. Choose a hill and take a step, achieve a small goal toward the larger goals; any sense of progress furthers. We’ll feel a lot better while climbing our mountain as Mercury joins Mars, the sun, and Pluto in ambitious, organized Capricorn. Capricorn is the image of a mountain goat that can gracefully climb a mountain but looks pretty silly walking on flat terrain. The Capricorn goat is a fishtailed mer-goat; first it has to dive down to the dreamworld ocean to find a vision, then walk it up the mountain top. Martin Luther King Jr. is a powerful example of this elevated Capricorn energy: he had a dream and he walked across the country to make it so. Capricorn energy can help us clarify our goals but also makes us pushy. It can enrich politics by building systems to enact a provision, take a theory and make it so. But it can also leave people strategically manipulating just for the fun of it or depressed when they don’t have a goal. If we don’t have a big goal at the moment, make a small one. Decide to drink a glass of water and then drink it. If blocked in one direction, make progress where the road is open. And if we need to rest, make that the goal and enjoy the accomplishment. FRIDAY, JANUARY 12: This political day is good for meetings, assessment, negotiations; we’ll feel better working collaboratively, if somewhat impatient with the process under a collective Aquarius moon and as motivating Mars trines expansive Jupiter. Tonight, find a pub or coffeehouse and share conversation. SATURDAY, JANUARY 13: We can be slow off the mark this morning, with good collaborative action once we wake up. Keep the communication flowing or it can get tricky to coordinate timing and action. Some will cry into their beer and get belligerent tonight; we’re emotional and easily opinionated as Mercury enters Capricorn and the moon enters Pisces. SUNDAY, JANUARY 14: If we wake up grumpy or in some kind of mood, pour that seriousness into meditation or some creative concentration under a focused moon-Saturn conjunction in Pisces. Acknowledge a fear, not as a probability, but as a concern. Steer that active mind toward a balanced perspective. MONDAY, JANUARY 15: Sensitivities heighten, and we’re more aware of injustices to ourselves and others this MLK day as both the moon and sun aspect empathic, idealistic Neptune. This can bring us to our ideals of social justice — or to a good nap. How we channel our dreams into this world is up to us; note the vision and ask how to make it so. TUESDAY, JANUARY 16: An executive Aries moon heats up the action; stop talking and start doing, but do so thoughtfully. Stay active and involved with important decisions as the chess pieces are moving. Have caution around short tempers midday as the moon squares Mercury and Mars. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17: We move forward in fits and starts — sprints rather than marathons — but can take advantage of those bursts. Let’s watch where we’re going and not run into — or over — each other in the process. Take advantage of a collaborative moment mid-afternoon as the moon trines Venus, and work around clashing wills tonight as the moon squares the sun. THURSDAY, JANUARY 18: The mood is more tortoise and less jumpy hare as the moon enters stabilizing, stubborn Taurus while Mercury sextiles hard-working Saturn. An optimistic moon-Jupiter conjunction midday helps us nurture possibilities. Approach people with practical yet delicious solutions. ◀ Contact astrologer Heather Roan Robbins at roanrobbins.com.

THE RIGHT PA ATH FOR YOU

Annu nnnual sale TROY SICE HARP-PLAYING BEAR Antler, red coral, lapis lazuli, turquoise, gold lip shell, jet, 2 3/4˝tall, 2 1/4˝wide, 1˝deep

A R T S A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N BUSINESS T E A C H E R E D U C AT I O N

20% OFF

L AW A N D S O C I A L S C I E N C E S T R A D E S A N D S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y H E A LT H S C I E N C E S

It's once a year and it's here!

SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

JANUARY 12–31

Educational Pathways at Santa Fe Community College help you identify an area of interest and guide you on your journey toward academic and career success.

FETISHES JEWELRY POTTERY

227 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe Keshi.com 505.989.8728

sfcc.edu/pathways ®

CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S SMILE Sunday, January 14 4:00 pm—THE LENSIC

Multiple GRAMMY® Award-nominated violinist Philippe Quint joins The Symphony for this critically acclaimed multimedia program featuring orchestral works from the iconic actor, composer, and musical legend Charlie Chaplin and his most celebrated films. Interspersed with rare video footage and still imagery, this program includes “Smile” from Modern Times, Debussy’s Clair de Lune, “The Terry Theme” from Limelight, and works by composers who inspired Charlie Chaplin’s musical style—such as by Brahms, Stravinsky, and Gershwin. Tickets start at $25. Call 505.983.1414.

santafesymphony.org

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT

This is a performance that will speak directly to your heart.” —Philippe Quint Concert Sponsors-In-Part

40th Anniversary Season Underwriters THE PEDOWITZ FAMILY

Reach for the Stars Sponsors

ANN

NEUBERGER

ACEVES

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

Give a gift that makes a difference Give Today ONLINE: sfnm.co/esfund BY MAIL: Empty Stocking Fund c/o Santa Fe Community Foundation | PO Box 1827 | Santa Fe, NM 87504 -1827 IN PERSON: Santa Fe New Mexican | 150 Washington Ave. Ste. 105 • 10am – 4pm, Mon – Fri Make checks payable to Empty Stocking Fund

Empty

stocking fund ®

Thank You 2023 Partnering Organizations

34 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

compiled by Pamela Beach

A R T S . E N T E R TA I N M E N T. C U LT U R E .

FRIDAY 1/12

Books/Talks

Gallery and Museum Openings

Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo Street6 The author reads from her novel Welcome Home, Stranger; 6 p.m.; 505-988-4226.

Kate Christensen

LewAllen Galleries

1613 Paseo de Peralta, 505-988-3250 Fritz Scholder: On Paper, acrylics, lithographs, and monotypes; through Feb. 10.

Tim Maxwell

Pecos Trail Café, 2239 Old Pecos Trail Looking at the Protection of History and Archaeology in Santa Fe, a free presentation by the Fulbright research scholar; 7-9 p.m.; sfarchaeology.org.

Nüart Gallery

670 Canyon Road, 505-988-3888 Winter Selections, group show of paintings; through Jan. 28; reception 5-7 p.m.

Nightlife

In Concert

Flashbacks

Johanna Hogell-Darsee and Scott Darsee

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Oldies, country, and standards; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

First Presbyterian Church, 208 Grant Avenue, 505-982-8544 Medieval, Scandinavian, and Celtic ballads; 5:30 p.m., doors 5:15 p.m.; donations accepted.

WEDNESDAY 1/17

Leo Kottke

Nightlife

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street Unplugged; 7:30 p.m.; $39-$49; 505-988-1234, lensic360.org.

Wine & Jazz Night

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Dixieland jazz with the Crawfish Boyz; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

Theater/Dance

Metamorphosis

Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601 Aerial dancer Talia Pura’s performance based on the life cycle of butterflies; 7:30 p.m. today through Sunday; $25; blueraventheatre.com.

THURSDAY 1/18 Gallery and Museum Openings

SFCC Visual Arts Gallery

Books/Talks

IAIA Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

Center for Lifelong Education Commons, Institute of American Indian Arts, 83 Avan Nu Po Rd., 800-804-6422 Readings by and Q&A with Kim Blaeser and Deborah Taffa; 4:30-6 p.m.; no charge; iaia.edu.

Nightlife

Annalisa Ewald

Agave Restaurant & Lounge, Eldorado Hotel & Spa, 309 W. San Francisco Street, 505-995-4530 Classical guitarist; 6 p.m.; no cover.

Violinist Stephen Redfield joins Oliver Prezant on Thursday in Discovering the Music of Bach at CCA.

SUNDAY 1/14 Gallery and Museum Openings

Art on Barcelona

Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Street Kaleidoscope: A Diversity of Artistic Expression, group show; through March; reception 2-4 p.m.

Carlos Medina & Trio CPR

Classical Music

SATURDAY 1/13

St. Francis Auditorium, 107 W. Palace Avenue Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, music of J.S. Bach, and Mendelssohn; 3 p.m.; $24-$94; 505-988-4640, ext. 1000, tickets.sfpromusica.org.

Classical Music

In Concert

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail Violinists Elizabeth Young and David Felberg, violist Isabel Hagen, and cellist Felix Fan; 10:30 a.m.; $5-$17; chatterabq.org/boxoffice.

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street Multimedia program accompanying clips from classic Chaplin films, with the violinist and the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra; 4 p.m.; $25-$92; boxoffice.santafesymphony.org/8733.

Contra Dance

Books/Talks

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Traditonal Hispanic music; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

Chatter North

Events

Odd Fellows Hall, 1125 Cerrillos Road Traditional folk dance; music by The Virginia Creepers; beginners lesson 7 p.m.; dance 7:30 p.m.; $10; folkmads.org.

CALENDAR LISTING GUIDELINES

Diderot Quartet

Philippe Quint in Charlie Chaplin’s Smile

Poets@HERE series

HERE Gallery, 213 E. Marcy Street, 562-243-6148 Valerie Martinez and Tommy Archuleta read their poems of transformation; 2 p.m.

Santa Fe Free Thinkers’ Forum

Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Road Debra Oliver of Common Ground Mediation Services and Mary Ellen Gonzales of Unitarian Universalist Congregation discuss the benefits of restorative justice; 8:30 a.m.; no charge; 505-438-6265; meetup.com/freethinkersforum; available to view online.

MONDAY 1/15 Books/Talks

6401 Richards Avenue, 505-428-1501 Unlimited Breadsticks, group show of works by art instructors; through Feb. 1; reception 2-4:30 p.m.

In Concert

Yungchen Lhamo

San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail Tibetan singer-songwriter on her Monkey Mind tour; 7:30 p.m.; $25 and $35; ampconcerts.org.

Books/Talks

Discovering the Music of Bach

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail A musically illustrated presentation with conductor Oliver Prezant and violinist Stephen Redfield; 6 p.m.; $25; 877-466-3404.

Nightlife

Southwest Seminars

David Geist

Hotel Santa Fe, 1501 Paseo de Peralta, 855-825-9876 Historian Dwight Pitcaithley on Mad Men and Spunky Boys: What Caused the Civil War; 6 p.m.; $20 at the door; 505-466-2775.

Osteria d’Assisi Cabaret, 58 Federal Place, 505-986-5858 Geist Cabaret, Broadway, pop tunes, and originals; 7-10 p.m.; $5 cover.

TUESDAY 1/16

TerraCotta Wine Bistro, 304 Johnson Street, 505-989-1166 Jazz guitarist; 6-8 p.m. Thursdays; no cover.

In Concert

The Lone Bellow

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Indie-folk trio’s 10th anniversary tour; 7:30 p.m.; $25-$130; 505-988-1234, lensic.org.

Email press releases to pambeach@sfnewmexican.com at least two weeks prior to the event date.

Pat Malone

OUT OF TOWN Los Alamos

Delirium Musicum

Duane Smith Auditorium, 1300 Diamond Drive Chamber orchestra; 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 12; $35, ages 6-18 no charge; losalamosconcert.org. ◀

Inclusion of free listings is dependent on space availability.

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

A guide to performances & events for the weeks ahead

Music

Albert Castiglia

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Music of Mozart, Shostakovich, and Mendelssohn; 3 p.m. Feb. 11; $24-$94; performancesantafe.org.

Brentano Quartet

Grady Spencer & The Work

Amy Ray Band

Matisyahu

Judith Hill

An Evening of the Blues, with Jhett Black, Felix y Los Gatos & Dry Suede

Rosanne Cash

Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Blues guitarist; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24; $25; ampconcerts.org. Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Touring in support of her album If It All Goes South; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29; $25; tickets.lensic360.org. Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Doors 6 p.m., show 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3; $15 and $25; tumblerootbreweryanddistillery.com.

Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Folk/roots-rock band and New Mexico string band; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 5; $20; ampconcerts.org.

Cory Wong

El Rey Theater, 622 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque Funk-rock, rhythm guitarist; 8 p.m. Feb. 5; $35 and $160; tickets.lensic360.org.

KiMo Theatre, 423 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque Performing Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon; plus, a full set of the band’s hits; 8 p.m. Feb. 17, doors 7 p.m.; $35 and $40; cabq.gov/artsculture/kimo/events.

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 The jazz pianist performs cuts off his new composition; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 7; $35-$95; performancesantafe.org.

Robert Jon and The Wreck

Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Southern rock band; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8; $30; ampconcerts.org. GiG Performance Space, 1808 Second Street Folk singer/banjo player and fiddler; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 9; $25; gigsantafe.tickit.ca.

Rio Chama Steakhouse, 414 Old Santa Fe Trail, 505-955-0765 A fundraiser for the Santa Fe Symphony, with pianist-singer Doug Montgomery; 6 p.m. Feb. 24; $125; 505-552-3916, santafesymphony.org.

Las Migas

National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth Street SW, Albuquerque, 505-246-2261 Spanish flamenco-crossover quartet; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24; $22-$44; ampconcerts.org.

Opera Southwest

National Hispanic Cultural Center, 1701 Fourth Street SW, Albuquerque, 505-246-2261 Before Night Falls, Jorge Martín-Buján’s opera based on the life of the gay Cuban political dissident Reinaldo Arenas; Feb. 25, March 1 and 3; $22-$105; 505-724-4771, operasouthwest.org.

Elias Quartet

Mauro Durante & Justin Adams

New Mexico School for the Arts, 500 Montezuma Avenue Telemann in Paris, with flutist Sandra Miller, violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock, viola da gambist Mary Springfels, cellist Katie Rietman, and harpsichordist Kathleen McIntosh; 4 p.m. Feb. 25, $30 in advance; severallfriends.org.

Santa Fe Pro Musica Organ Recital Series

Duane Smith Auditorium, Los Alamos High School campus, 1300 Diamond Drive Known for programs ranging from bluegrass to Bach; 3 p.m. Feb. 10; $35, ages 6-18 no charge; losalamosconcert.org.

Champagne & Chocolates

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Music of Haydn (Quartet in G Major, Opus 54, No. 1), Stravinsky (Three Pieces for String Quartet), and Beethoven (Quartet in E Minor, Opus 59, No. 2); 3 p.m. Feb. 25; $24-$94; 505-988-4640, ext. 1000, tickets.sfpromusica.org

San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail The percussionist-violinist and guitarist fuse love songs of southern Italy and the blues of North Africa and North America; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20; $30 and $50; ampconcerts.org.

Kelly Hunt and Stas Heaney

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Singer-songwriter; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23; $30-$55; lensic.org/events.

Santa Fe Symphony

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 American Classics, with violinist Alexi Kenney; Barber’s Violin Concerto No. 1; also, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Copland’s Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo; 4 p.m. Feb. 18; $25-$92; boxoffice.santafesymphony.org.

Brad Mehldau: 14 Reveries

BLUE RAVEN THEATRE

The Black Jacket Symphony

Paradiso Santa Fe, 903 Early Street, 505-577-5248 Dance to hits from the 1960s-80s; 4 p.m. Feb. 18; $20; 505-473-5706, corodecamara-nm.org.

Sunshine Theater, 120 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque, 505-764-0249 Portland, Oregon-based rock band; 8 p.m. Feb. 6; $43; tickets.lensic360.org.

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Part of the 2024 Art + Sol Winter Arts Festival; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 10; $35-$115; performancesantafe.org.

Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Cajun band; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16; $30 in advance, $35 at the door; southwestrootsmusic.org.

Coro de Cámara & the Joe Cox Trio

Portugal. The Man

A Mardi Gras Celebration with Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 With John Leventhal; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 14; $59-$84; lensic.org/events.

BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet

David Wax Museum & Lone Piñon

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet

Meow Wolf, 1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 Reggae singer/rapper on his Hold the Fire tour; 7 p.m. Feb. 14; $50.50-$145.50; meowwolf.com.

Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, 2791 Agua Fría Street, 505-393-5135 Groove-based rock ‘n’ roll band; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23; $15; tickets.lensic360.org.

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Free performances; noon Feb. 21-May 15; kicks off with David Solem (music of Vierne, J. S. Bach, and Franck); Frederick Frahm March 20, Solem April 17, and Maxine Thévenot May 15.

Dylan LeBlanc

Paradiso Santa Fe, 903 Early Street, 505-577-5248 Singer-songwriter-guitarist; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22; $18; ampconcerts.org.

Terence Blanchard, E-Collective, and Turtle Island String Quartet

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Paying tribute to jazz composer Wayne Shorter; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 22; $49-$72; lensic.org/events.

Severall Friends

Donavon Frankenreiter

Taos Center for the Arts, 145 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, 505-758-2052 Surfer-cum-singer-songwriter; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28; $30; tickets.lensic360.org.

Taj Mahal Quartet & Sona Jobarteh

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Double bill with the kora virtuoso; 7:30 p.m. March 1; $55-$94; lensic.org/events.

Wailin’ Jennys

KiMo Theatre, 32 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque Folk trio; 7:30 p.m. March 4; $49-$59; tickets.lensic360.org.

Santa Fe’s strong and vibrant theatre scene welcomes you!

TEATRO PARAGUAS

presents

Metamorphosis

Mariana Pineda

written and performed by Talia Pura Thursday, January 11 Sunday, January 14 @Teatro Paraguas 36 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

by Frederico Garcia Lorca

We represent over 20 theatre companies! For company info, show listings and to join our email newsletter. Visit www.Theatresantafe.org

February 16 - March 3 @Teatro Paraguas

Benjamin Grosvenor

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Piano recital of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne, Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Opus 35, and Liszt’s Berceuse in D-flat Major and Sonata in B minor; 7:30 p.m. March 6; $35-$95; 505-984-8759, secure.performancesantafe.org.

Tony Furtado & Stephanie Schneiderman

San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail Banjo/slide guitarist and multi-instrumentalist; 7:30 p.m. March 8; $30; southwestrootsmusic.org.

Kronos Quartet Five Decades Tour

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 The string ensemble performs new commissions, signature works, and selections from its Fifty for the Future project; 7:30 p.m. March 19; $35-$115; 505-984-8759, secure.performancesantafe.org.

Raul Midón

San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail New Mexico-born singer-songwriter; 7:30 p.m. March 20; $37; tickets.lensic360.org.

Jimmie Vaughan & The Tilt-A-Whirl Band

KiMo Theatre, 32 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque Fifty-plus years of the blues; 7:30 p.m. March 28; $45-$65; lensic360.org.

Herb Alpert & Lani Hall

KiMo Theatre, 32 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque Performing their classic recordings; 7:30 p.m. March 29; $39-$59; tickets.lensic360.org.

On Stage

Macbeth

New Mexico Actors Lab Theater, 1213 Parkway Drive, 505-395-6576 Upstart Crows of Santa Fe presents a Blackfriars production, directed by Rylie Philpot; 6:30 p.m. Jan. 19-21 and 26-28; $10 and $20; upstartcrowssantafe.org.

Monster in a Box

The Toolshed, N.M. 75, Dixon Actor/writer Spalding Gray’s autobiographical monologue, performed by Jeff Spicer; 7 p.m. Jan. 20, 2 p.m. Jan. 21; $15; dixonplayers.com.

Jammed

Santa Fe Playhouse, 142 E. De Vargas Street, 505-988-4262 Staged reading of Joan Tewkesbury’s 2009 drama, with Ali MacGraw, Brooke Palance, Brent Black, and Patrick Janssen; 2 p.m. Jan. 28; $15-$60; santafeplayhouse.org and at the door.

The Peking Acrobats

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Accompanied by musicians; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1; $35-$59; lensic.org/events.

Charlotte’s Web

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 A TheatreWorksUSA production based on E.B. White’s 1952 children’s book; 3 p.m. March 3; $15 and $18; lensic.org/events.

Cirque du Soleil

Rio Rancho Events Center, 3001 Civic Center Circle NE, 505-891-7300 Crystal, ice arena touring show; 7:30 p.m. March 7 and 8, 3 and 7 p.m. March 9, 1 p.m. March 10; $32-$165.75; cirquedusoleil.com/crystal.

Happenings

Ways of Seeing: Four Photographic Collections

New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Mid-20th century photographs, including works by Ruth Bernhard, Edward Burtynsky, Harry Callahan, Adam Fuss, David Michael Kennedy, and Minor White; opening Jan. 20; through July 7, 2024.

Creative Connections — A Celebration of Aunties

Institute of American Indian Arts, 83 Avan Nu Po Road Art, food, music, and a presentation from Indigenous Performance Productions, with director Kendra Potter (Lummi), executive creative producer Andre Bouchard (Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d’Orielle/Salish); performers include Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo), Laura Tohe (Diné), and IAIA students; 5:30 p.m. Jan. 23; $40; performancesantafe.org.

Winterbrew

Santa Fe Farmers’Market Pavilion, 1607 Paseo de Peralta Annual New Mexico Brewers Guild’s craft beer tasting event; 6-9 p.m. Jan. 26, $10-$45; eventbrite.com.

2024 Souper Bowl

Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street, 800-777-2489 The Food Depot’s fundraiser with local chefs competing in this best-soup challenge, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Jan. 27, adult VIP $100 in advance, $150 day of, child VIP (13 and up) $30, general admission $30 in advance (by 12/27), $50 in advance, $75 day of, children $15, ages 12 and under no charge; 505-471-1633, thefooddepot.org.

El Rancho de las Golondrinas Winter Lecture Series

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Jan. 30: Jayne Aubele (New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science) on New Mexico’s Geological Landscape and Its Effect on Our Culture and Social History; Feb. 27: Archaeologist Stephen Lekson on Of Noble Kings Descended: Colonial Documents and the Ancient Southwest; March 26: Historian Thomas Chavez on The Diplomacy of Independence: Benjamin Franklin and Spain; all 6-7 p.m.; $10, 505-471-2261, golondrinas.org.

Taos Wine Festival

Opera in the Films of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese

El Monte Sagrado Resort, 317 Kit Carson Road, 575-758-3502 Champagne and caviar reception, with chef Louis Moskow of 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar, 4 p.m. Feb. 1, $60; reserve wine tasting and silent auction follows, $135; taoswinterwinefest.com.

The Writing Generation Series

108 Cathedral Place, 505-983-8900 Opening Feb. 2: Inuk Silis Høegh: Arctic Vertigo, video installations and carvings by the Greenlandic artist/filmmaker; through July 14. Womb of the Earth: Cosmovision of the Rainforest, artworks by Indigenous Brazilian women; through July 19.

Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Street, 505-982-9674 Pasatiempo contributor Mark Tiarks kicks off the first of Santa Fe Opera Guild’s public offerings; 6 p.m. Jan. 23; $10 and $20; santafeoperaguild.org. Surveymonkey.com/r/WritingGenSpring24 Free readings by New Mexico writers, and creative-writing sessions; Santa Fe Poet Laureate Janna Lopez launches the series with a reading of her collection such is; 6 p.m. Jan. 24; session follows 6 p.m. Jan. 31. The series continues with online readings and workshops offered by Santa Fe Community College and Institute of American Indian Arts graduates and professors through spring.

Backcountry Film Festival

SALA Los Alamos Event Center, 2551 Central Avenue, Los Alamos, 505-412-6030 Winter Wildlife Alliance presents films on outdoor adventures, the environment, and ski culture; 7 p.m. Jan. 24; $15; winterwildlands.org.

The Aunties: Women of the White Shell Water Place

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Multimedia storytelling, with Nora Naranjo Morse (Kha’p’o Owenge/Santa Clara Pueblo), Deborah Taffa (Quechan/Laguna Pueblo), and Laura Tohe (Diné, Tsénahabiłnii, Sleepy Rock People clan); 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24; $25-$85; performancesantafe.org.

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

Raven Chacon: Three Songs

Harwood Museum of Art, 238 Ledoux Street, Taos, 575-758-9826 A multimedia exhibit paying tribute to Indigenous women; public opening 6:30-8:30 p.m. Feb. 23; through July 7; pop-up performances by Kona Sunrise Mirabal and Masa Rain Mirabal opening day; performances continue April 6, May 4, and June 7, with Autumn Chacon, Laura Ortman, and Marisa DeMarco; $8 and $10.

The Psychology of Serial Killers

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 A touring master class led by clinical psychologist Rachel Toles; 7:30 p.m. March 2; $35-$55; ampconcerts.org.

MOMIX

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 The modern-dance troupe in Alice, Moses Pendleton’s choreography inspired by Alice in Wonderland; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6; $36-$114; lensic.org/events.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Comic drag troupe celebrating its 50th anniversary; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 12; $36-$114; lensic.org/events.

Mariana Piñeda

Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601 Teatro Paraguas presents the play by Federico García Lorca, based on the life of Spanish liberalist heroine Mariana de Pineda Muñoz; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, Feb. 16-March 3; $15 and $25; teatroparaguasnm.org. Call for reservations.

Tradition and Invention: American Jazz Dance with Nan Giordano & the Giordano Dance Chicago

LewAllen Galleries, 1613 Paseo de Peralta, and Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street Presentation by the artistic director of Giordano Dance Chicago; 5:30 p.m. Feb. 20; $125 (at the gallery); secure.performancesantafe .org/9039/9064. Giordano Dance Chicago jazz troupe; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21; $35-$115; secure.performancesantafe.org/842/8865.

Spectrum Dance Theater

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Choreographer Donald Byrd’s production of Grief, depicting the experiences of Mamie Till-Mobley after the murder of her son Emmett Till; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 29; $49-$75; lensic.org/events. AMP Concerts presents Albert Castiglia and his blues band Jan. 24 at Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery.

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

AT THE GALLERIES

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

704 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-982-4636 California Stars: Huivaniūs Pütsiv, the first Californian artists whose works reflected personal experiences, mythology, and social justice; through Sunday, Jan. 14. Long term: Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry, devoted to Diné and Pueblo traditions • Rooted: Samples of Southwest Basketry; works from the collection; wheelwright.org. Closed through Feb. 9.

Santa Fe

Aaron Payne Fine Art

1708 Lena Street, Suites 202 & 203, 917-319-5430 Group show; through Feb. 3.

Evoke Contemporary

550 S. Guadalupe Street, 505-995-9902 Retablos, paintings by Patrick McGrath Muñiz; Past Lives, paintings by Aron Wiesenfeld; through Jan. 20.

Abiquiú

form & concept

Florence Hawley Ellis Museum of Anthropology

435 S. Guadalupe Street, 505-780-8312 Salt Pillars, group show of photographs and sculpture; through Jan. 20.

Ghost Ranch, 280 Private Drive, 505-685-1000 The Gathering, photographs by Cara Romero; through December; opening reception 4-7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 13.

Gerald Peters Gallery

1005 Paseo de Peralta, 505-954-5700 Cabinet of Curiosities, group show; through Feb. 2.

Albuquerque

Hecho a Mano

National Hispanic Cultural Center

129 W. Palace Avenue, 505-916-1341 A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky, ceramics by b. brown; through Jan. 29.

1701 Fourth Street SW, 505-246-2261 Hecho en Nuevo México, showcases New Mexican artists whose artworks have been added to the museum’s permanent collection; through Jan. 21 • Hourglass: Paño Arte from the Rudy Padilla Collection, celebrating paños as an art form and the contributions of incarcerated artists to the broader fields of Chicano and American art; through April 14; nationalhispaniccenter.org. Open Tuesdays-Sundays.

Strata Gallery

125 Lincoln Avenue, Suite 105, 505-780-5403 Selfhood, group show of multidisciplinary works; through Jan. 19.

Webster Collection

54½ Lincoln Ave. (upstairs), 505-954-9500 Multidisciplinary works by Darren Vigil Gray, Maggie Hanley, Adam Feibelman, and others; prehistoric and historic pottery and textiles; through Jan. 27.

MUSEUMS & ART SPACES Santa Fe

Coe Center for the Arts

1590-B Pacheco Street, 505-983-6372 African, Asian, European, Native American, and Oceanic objects; email info@coeartscenter.org for tours; coeartscenter.org. Open by appointment.

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

217 Johnson Street, 505-946-1000 Rooted in Place, O’Keeffe’s studies of trees; through April 15 • Georgia O’Keeffe: Making a Life, art and objects from the collection; through Nov. 15; okeeffemuseum.org. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts 108 Cathedral Place, 505-983-8900 The Stories We Carry, jewelry from the museum collection; through September 29, 2025; iaia.edu/mocna. Closed Tuesdays.

Meow Wolf

1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 The House of Eternal Return, immersive, evolving exhibits; meowwolf.com. Days and hours vary.

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

710 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-476-1269 Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, historic and contemporary weavings, prints, photographs, and other related items; through June 2 • Here, Now and Always, artifacts from the collection; long term; indianartsandculture.org. Closed Mondays.

Museum of International Folk Art

706 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-476-1204 Protection: Adaptation and Resistance, works by Alaskan Indigenous artists ranging from regalia to images of traditional tattooing and graphic

38 PASATIEMPO I January 12-18, 2024

New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum

Webster Collection shows photographs by Elliott McDowell through Jan. 27.

design; through April 7; Ghhúunayúkata/To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka, examples from the mid-19th century to contemporary reinterpretations; through April 7 • La Cartonería Mexicana: The Mexican Art of Paper and Paste, historic sculptures from the collection, exhibited with the work of three visiting cartoneros; through Nov. 3. Core exhibits: Multiple Visions: A Common Bond, works in the Alexander Girard Wing • Lloyd’s Treasure Chest: Folk Art in Focus, thematic displays from the permanent collection; moifa.org. Open daily.

Museum of Spanish Colonial Art

750 Camino Lejo, museum@spanishcolonial.org Generations and Imagination: What Lies Behind the Vision of Chimayó Weavers, highlighting the shifting traditions through four generations of the Trujillo family’s work; through April 1; spanishcolonial.org. Open Wednesdays-Fridays.

New Mexico History Museum

113 Lincoln Avenue, 505-476-5200 Solidarity Now! 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit exploring the grassroots movements of the civil rights era; through Monday, Jan. 15 • 18 Miles and That’s As Far As It Got: The Lamy Branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, model train crafted by Santa Fe Model Railroad Club members; through Jan. 16, 2025. Core exhibitions: Working on the Railroad; images from the Palace of the Governors photo archives and the Library of Congress • Palace Seen and Unseen: A Convergence of History and Archaeology, photographs and artifacts • The Massacre of Don Pedro Villasur, graphic art by Turner Avery Mark-Jacobs • The First World War, ephemera relating to New Mexicans’contributions • Setting the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy, objects

from the collection and photographs from Palace of the Governors archives; through December • Telling New Mexico: Stories From Then and Now, artifacts, photographs, films, and oral histories; nmhistorymuseum.org. Closed Mondays.

616 Central Avenue SW, 505-247-0606 Overturned: A Life Etched in Stone • Hate in America. Permanent exhibits, With Evil Intent • African American Experience, Phase 2: Slavery 1866-1945 • Czech Torah • Armenian Genocide • Hidden Treasures • Colonization: Racism and Resilience; nmholocaustmuseum.org. Open Wednesdays-Saturdays.

Taos

New Mexico Museum of Art

Couse-Sharp Historic Site

New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary

Harwood Museum of Art

107 W. Palace Avenue, 505-476-5072 Manuel Carrillo: Mexican Modernist, photographic exhibition; through Feb. 4 • Rick Dillingham: To Make, Unmake and Make Again; through June 16 • Out West: Gay and Lesbian Artists in the Southwest 1900-1969; through Sept. 2; nmartmuseum.org. Closed Mondays. 404 Montezuma Avenue, 505-476-5062 Shadow and Light, including works by Larry Bell, Judy Chicago, Agnes Martin, and Leo Villareal; through April 28 • Oswaldo Maciá: El Cruce, sound sculpture; through Sept. 22; nmartmuseum .org/vladem-contemporary. Closed Mondays.

Poeh Cultural Center and Museum

78 Cities of Gold Road, 505-455-5041 Di Wae Powa: They Came Back, historical Tewa Pueblo pottery • Nah Poeh Meng, 1,600-squarefoot core installation highlighting works by Pueblo artists; poehcenter.org. Open Mondays-Fridays.

Santa Fe Botanical Garden

715 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-471-9103 18-acre living museum; santafebotanicalgarden .org. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

SITE Santa Fe

1606 Paseo de Peralta, 505-989-1199 Interference Patterns, multidisciplinary work by Nicholas Galanin; and Water, paintings by N. Dash; through Feb. 5 • Field of Dreams, textile compositions by Billie Zangewa, through Feb. 12; sitesantafe.org. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

138 & 146 Kit Carson Road, 575-751-0369 Plein Air Painters of America: Out West, annual exhibition; through Jan. 20 • Joseph Henry Sharp: The Life and Work of an American Legend; through December; couse-sharp.org. Open by appointment Tuesdays-Saturdays.

238 Ledoux Street, 575-758-9826 Harwood 100: Taos Municipal Schools Historic Collection, including works by Emil Bisttram, Andrew Dasburg, Gene Kloss, and Agnes Martin; through Jan. 28; harwoodmuseum.org. Open Wednesdays-Sundays.

La Hacienda de los Martinez

708 Hacienda Way, 575-758-0505 Northern New Mexico-style, Spanish colonial “great house.” Built in 1804 by Severino Martinez; taoshistoricmuseums.org; open daily.

Millicent Rogers Museum

1504 Millicent Rogers, 575-758-2462 Tuah-Tah/Taos Pueblo: Home, highlighting the Pueblo’s culture and artistic achievements • Pop Chalee! Yippee Ki Yay!, paintings; millicentrogers.org. Closed Wednesdays.

Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, 575-758-2690 Natural Forms, sculpture by Britt Brown; through Jan. 21; taosartmuseum.org. Closed Mondays.

FINAL FRAME

COURTESY ART ON BARCELONA GALLERY

[

Desert Dreams, a 10-by-10-inch cold-wax-and-oil painting by Sally Swisher, is among five artists’ work featured in Kaleidoscope: A Diversity of Artistic Expressions at Art on Barcelona Gallery. Other artists are Virginia Asman, Jeanne Lubey, Heather Murphree, and Ruth Omlin. A reception is 2 p.m. Sunday, January 14. The gallery, housed at Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, is curated by Asman. Through March 31, 107 W. Barcelona Road, uusantafe.org/art-on-barcelona — Brian Sandford

]