Flamenco Fandanguero: Primos de la Raza Cósmica is a work of flamenco dance-theatre in which Yjastros—Albuquerque’s resident flamenco repertory company—joins forces with invited son jarocho and flamenco guests to ask a precise question: what do we hear, see, and feel when related traditions meet again? The title names fandango not as nostalgia but as method. It points to the social gathering at the heart of both traditions, where rhythm, community, and improvisation generate knowledge that cannot be archived on paper.

Co-created with the Los Vega family ensemble from Veracruz, the work is structured in four movements that trace the genesis, divergence, and renewed kinship of two forms that share a common ancestor. The dramaturgy places New Mexico and Veracruz in the same historical frame—Veracruz as a port and cultural crossroads, and New Mexico as a northern frontier of Latin America—so the stage becomes a map of migration, exchange, and return. Inspired by borderlands thinking (Gloria Anzaldúa) and by Southwestern storytelling (including writers such as Rudolfo Anaya), the piece treats mestizaje as lived experience rather than abstraction: a layered identity marked by Indigenous and African lineages, and by the tensions of colonization and power.

Under the artistic direction of collaborators Joaquín Encinias, choreography by Marisol Encinias and theatre direction by Alejandro Tomás Rodríguez the performance and its creation are a dialogue. Musical director Sinuhé Padilla anchors the sound world alongside flamenco artists Vicente Griego (cante), Isa Jurado (cante), and Ángel Ruiz (guitar), and the son jarocho virtuosity of Los Vega. The result is an ensemble-driven evening—more than 20 artists—where compás and fandango become a shared, contemporary ritual. 

Top photo: Thaïs Coy