Fresh Moves

In the spirit of “keeping it fresh,” the UNM dance program hired two internationally renowned choreographers to teach dance students some new moves.

Each year, a group of faculty members from the dance program choreographs pieces for students to perform for a recital. Vladimir Conde Reche, artistic director of this year’s dance faculty concert, said he called this year’s concert NOVA because the word means “new” in Latin.

“What’s important about the renewing is that you’re keeping it fresh, and the way I believe this program works is to renew something on top of what is already established, what is already strong,” he said. “NOVA plays with the strength of the tradition and everything that is still moving and renewing itself there.”
This year, the program brought in two guest choreographers and a piece from renowned choreographer Martha Graham’s “Sarabande.”

Reche said an anonymous donor allowed the department to hire the choreographers and make the performance financially possible. The choreographers are Takehiro Ueyama, a contemporary dance artist originally from Japan, and Antonio Granjero, a flamenco artist from Spain.

Granjero began studying classical ballet and flamenco in Spain when he was 10 years old. He has toured Europe with flamenco companies Alhama and El Güito, and is a soloist and choreographer with the María Benítez Company.

Ueyama studied with Reche at Juilliard School in New York before he was invited to join the Paul Taylor Dance Company. After eight years with the company, he founded his own, called TAKE Dance.
For NOVA, Ueyama restaged a six-minute excerpt from his piece “Salaryman.” Because students took only two days to learn the original dance, Reche said Ueyama accepted his suggestion to restage an additional piece.

“He was very happy with the speed and the quality that the students had when they learned the material,” Reche said. “He saw how serious and committed they were to the work.”

Flamenco dancer Crystal Zamora said she chose the UNM dance program because it was closely connected with the National Flamenco Institute in Albuquerque. Flamenco instructor Eva Encinias Sandoval established the institute, Zamora said. UNM’s ties with the institute foster a higher quality of flamenco education at UNM compared with other programs around the country, she said.

Zamora said because Granjero came from Spain, the flamenco students had more incentive to do their best.

“When you work with people from Spain, where flamenco originates, you just get a whole new level of dance and learning because they’ve been doing it their whole lives, so they have a deep understanding of flamenco,” Zamora said. “You don’t want them to come to the school and be kind of ashamed or embarrassed that they’re teaching flamenco to people who can’t dance.”

Aaron Hooper is a senior in the dance program and said that over the four years he’s been here, the program has begun to make a name for itself beyond the department. For instance, Eric Newton, a former dancer in the Martha Graham Company, joined UNM as a part-time faculty member. Students also had the opportunity to dance with the company itself, he said.

“I have a friend from Juilliard and he was like, ‘That’s a remarkable opportunity.’ They don’t even get those kinds of things,” Hooper said. “Our faculty know people throughout the dance world, all the big people in the dance world, so they have the ability to get those people in. Getting to work with those people is what makes you grow.”

Learning the Graham technique is essential to being a well-rounded dancer, Hooper said.

Martha Graham was the mother of modern dance, he said. She created a style of dancing and one of the greatest repertoires in the world. Emotion is shallow in ballet, which was popular when modern dance was growing, he said. The Graham technique utilizes natural, primal body movement to deliver an emotionally potent performance.

“A ballet dancer gets on stage, and it’s beautiful, and they portray something with such technical precision. The point of the Graham style was they would have this technical precision whilst having emotion buried deep down inside of it,” Hooper said. “You have to have your character so well-established that when you get on stage, you’re in the moment.”

Reche said even though people would prefer to see a performance in New York rather than Albuquerque, that preference is based on reputation not reality.

“What the students are receiving here allows them, when they graduate, to compete. They shouldn’t be feeling that they’re less than anybody else because they have the tools that every dancer needs to succeed in a dance career,” he said. “The training they are getting here is not less than any training any other place.”

NOVA
UNM Dance Faculty Concert
Rodey Theatre, in Popejoy Hall
Feb. 24 through March 4
Friday, Saturday 7:30 p.m.
Sunday 2 p.m.
$15 general admission
$10 faculty and seniors
$8 staff and students
theatre.unm.edu